In today’s heavily digital environment, it seems that web addresses are getting longer and longer, especially on sites that have thousands, even millions of pages. Take for example the address to one of Bob’s recent posts http://brandmanagersnotebook.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/no-recession-in-creativity/.
Usually, in the online environment, I could mask the address and simply have you click on the word “posts,” and you’d be automatically redirected. However, it gets trickier in emails, for example, where not all email providers allow active links in the body of the email. To be safe, you should always include the full address of the link so a person could cut and paste it into a browser. And, finally, in printed materials, these long addresses can get very unwieldy. However, getting your IT department to change a link name to something prettier every time you want to promote a page can be next to impossible for most and an exercise in patience for others…and frankly, today, you don’t need to. You can do it yourself; and very simply.
There are a host of what are known as alias generators out there that convert long URLs into nice neat short ones. Many of these generators allow you to create a custom name for the URL that will be more message appropriate. The best known is tinyurl.com. Other popular generators include tr.im and bit.ly and there are a number of others as well. Features to look for include URLs that don’t expire and the ability to customize. Some even include tools that allow you to track stats of how many people have clicked the URLs you generate – a useful mechanism to measure response to a specific communication.
Here’s an example of how they work. Using tr.im, I’ve turned the URL I mentioned above into http://tr.im/norecession (go ahead click on it, and it will take you to the blog).
A drawback to using these types of URL trimmers is that your domain name isn’t in the address; however, arguably, if the address gets so long that it’s hard to see where it’s pointing to, your domain name and the user’s patience with typing in the long address from a printed piece (for example) become a moot point anyway. These alias generators aren’t the answer every time, sometimes it’s worth the battle with IT to get the short discrete address, but sometimes they can be the right solution to keeping your communication flow simple and easy for your audiences.
January 16, 2009 at 1:11 pm
These URL trimmers are very helpful especially when gong between two websites controlled by the same person/organization. For example, on EMG’s Twitter page, the tiny URLs are used to link to EMG’s website and the blog (but also because Twitter has the 140 character limit). It has also been used on EMG’s Facebook group to connect to Twitter and the EMG website.