Short Link Concepts

The mental model behind short links, so the editor and the reporting make sense before you start clicking through them. If you only want the steps, go to Creating a short link.

What a short link is made of

A short link has four parts:

• A name. Human-readable, and also the event name recorded on every scan and click.
• A destination URL. Where the visitor ends up.
• Campaign tags. Up to five optional UTM values, recorded on every click and, by default, added to the destination URL.
• A QR design. The visual styling used when you export a QR code for the link.

Ours Privacy generates the short code for you when the link is created, or you can supply a custom one in the editor or via the API. The code is immutable once the link is published.

The short URL

The public URL follows a fixed shape:

https://<your-domain>/r/<short-code>

• /r/ is the path prefix short links resolve on.
• <short-code> is the link's code.

The editor composes this URL for you. Copy it from the Copy link button on the back of the QR card rather than assembling it by hand.

What happens on a scan or click

1. The visitor opens the short URL, from a tap, a click, or a phone camera pointed at a QR code.
2. They go straight to your destination URL, with your campaign tags added if forwarding is on. Nothing is shown in between.
3. The click is recorded as an event in your account, with approximate location, device details, and the link's campaign tags. Recording the click never slows down the redirect.

Note: If a link has no destination set, or has never been published, the visitor is forwarded to the Ours Privacy website rather than shown an error page. A redirect to an unexpected site is the signal that a link is not finished.

The name is the event name

When you name a link Spring Postcard QR, every scan records an event called Spring Postcard QR. That is the name you will look for in Analytics, the name you select when building an audience, and the name you map to a destination.

Consequences worth planning around:

• Name links the way you name events. Consistent, specific, and stable. Spring Postcard QR is better than link 3.
• Renaming a link changes the event name going forward. The link's Analytics tab keeps its history together. Event-name reports and audience conditions need both names to cover clicks before and after, so settle the name early.
• A link left unnamed emits a generic name. Links created from the dashboard start out named Redirect, so rename before you publish or your reporting will be full of events called Redirect.

Grouping several links under one campaign is what the campaign tags are for. Use distinct names per link and a shared campaign value across them.

Publishing is what makes a link live

Short links follow the same versioning model as the rest of your configuration. Saving a link stores it. Publishing a version is what pushes it live so the short URL actually resolves.

The editor tells you where a link stands with a readiness pill in the header:

The publish screen has its own Short Links section, so you can see which links a version will make live before you push it.

Edits to an existing live link, including a new destination, also take effect on the next publish.

The QR code is dynamic

A QR code encodes the short URL, never the destination. Everything downstream follows from that:

• Changing the destination on a published link repoints every printed code without reprinting.
• Renaming the link changes the event name recorded, but the printed code keeps working.
• Deleting the link breaks every printed code, permanently. Disable instead when you want a link to stop working temporarily.

Scans and clicks are the same thing

The QR code encodes exactly the same URL as the Copy link button, so a camera scan and a browser click produce an identical event. Reporting counts them together as clicks. To report them separately, create two links with different names, one for the printed code and one for the digital placement.

Custom redirect parameters

To attach custom event, user, or identity parameters to a link, open Redirect Tracking settings in the short link editor. See Redirect Tracking.

Next Steps

• Creating a short link: build one end to end.
• Short link click events: exactly what each scan records.
• Campaigns and UTM tags: group links under a campaign.