Most Amazon URLs are long and ugly. This is a problem if you’re an Amazon seller trying to send off-Amazon traffic to your product listing.
The link you give customers to view your product makes a whole lot of difference in how your funnels perform. Compared to a normal Amazon link, a short URL will attract more clicks, help with branding, and gives you access to several powerful tools for tracking, optimizing and retargeting.
Keep reading to find out why URL shorteners and link management are so important for Amazon sellers, and how you can level up your Amazon link game.
How Amazon URLs Work
Amazon is huge, but it’s a website like any other. Links to pages on Amazon (like your product listings) start with “amazon.com” and end with a bunch of complicated parameters, which may include:
- ASIN
- Product name
- How the person came to this product (search results, sponsored click, related/recommended products)
- Keywords used to search for the product
- Organic search position of the product
- Timestamp (time the person clicked through to the product)
- Affiliate tags/tracking IDs
For example:
Obviously this is long and ungainly. If you ran the site yourself, you could create your own URL structure, in a way that’s clear and user-friendly.
E.g. “https://www.onnit.com/primal-bells/” or “https://landingcube.com/traffic”.
However, you don’t have such luxury on Amazon. You don’t have much control over the URL makeup.
You can shorten the Amazon link a bit, so when you link to your product, you cut out a lot of the fluff.
Let’s cut out the search parameters and timestamp from the example above:
https://www.amazon.com/Super-Complex-Vitamins-Supplement-Vegetarian/dp/B07414752B
We can even cut it down further, to just the ASIN:
All these links go to the same place. So, as you can see, it’s possible to cut down and shorten your Amazon URL manually.
However, as we’ll explain in the next section, it’s best to use an Amazon URL shortener tool to do this for you.
How an Amazon URL Shortener Works
An Amazon URL shortener lets you create a custom URL to your Amazon product listing, without actually stripping out all the parameters, as in our example above.
This means you can send someone this link: lncb.me/product
And it will redirect the customer through this link:
Why would you want to keep all this extra fluff in the URL?
Sometimes the extra stuff in a URL is important. Such as an affiliate tag, or tracking tags (such as Amazon Attribution tags). If you strip this info out of the URL, the affiliate/attribution tracking won’t work anymore.
Same goes for any third-party tracking code you may add to the URL.
Then there are also keyword-targeted URLs (such as 2-Step URLs and Super URLs), which rely on the keyword info in the URL to work.
There are certainly a number of scenarios in which cutting the URL down to just the ASIN is not an option. In this case, you’ll want to use a URL shortener.
Benefits of an Amazon URL Shortener
We know how Amazon URLs work, and how you can use a URL shortener to maintain the original structure and parameters of an Amazon URL, while showing a shorter, simpler URL at first.
Let’s dive a little deeper into the benefits of using a URL shortener for your Amazon links.
More memorable links
What do you think is easier for someone to remember?
“Hey, you can find my product at amazon.com/dp/B07414752B.”
Or,
“Hey, you can find my product at acme.com/promo.”
There are a lot of situations when you want people to remember the link to your product. If you give people the link with your ASIN, no one’s going to remember that (I bet you don’t even remember your own ASIN off by heart).
However, with something memorable, you’ve got more chances they will go to the link, even if they can’t click it straight away.
Links that are easy to type
Memorable, customized links are also easier to type.
People can’t always simply click on a URL. Some cases – let’s say if you have a link on a leaflet or product insert, or mention a link in a podcast or YouTube video – the person needs to type it into their browser manually.
This is a whole lot easier with a custom link, featuring real words, compared to a complicated ASIN string.
Branded links
Customizing links also lets you add your brand name to the URL. This lets you incrementally build your brand each time you post a link out there somewhere.
Instead of marketing for Amazon, you’re marketing for your own company.
Adding branding to your URL helps build brand recognition with your audience. If they see this link over and over, they’ll eventually begin to remember you, which is a huge plus among all the faceless and generic brands on Amazon.
You may also see spillover traffic to your own site (if you have one), when people see a promo link for your product with your brand name, and head over to your main domain to check out your other products.
2-Step URLs and Super URLs
Keyword-targeted URLs, such as 2-Step URLs, Super URLs, and Search Find Buy, are powerful ranking tools. Unfortunately, they require precise terms to be included in the URL.
This makes them look kinda spammy, which is not good for attracting clicks.
However, by shortening your URL, you can keep the benefits of 2-Step and Super URLs, without all the ugliness.
Learn more: 2-Step URLs – Super URLs – Search Find Buy
Embedding tracking pixels
With a tool, you can embed tracking code such as the Facebook pixel or Google Analytics, and get the lowdown on how your campaigns are really performing.
This lets you collect super important data on the type of people who click your links. You can use this for audience building, retargeting, and more.
Tracking results
One final benefit of using a tool is being able to see all your links and how many clicks each link attracted, all in one place.
Any URL shortener worth using will have an analytics dashboard, showing you the number of clicks you’ve gotten from each of your links. This data is priceless when it comes to testing and weighing up different traffic sources, or monitoring the success of particular promotions or marketing campaigns.
Why LandingCube’s Amazon Link Shortener is the Best Tool For You
We’ve gone over why link shortening and link management is important – now here’s the tool you want to use.
LandingCube’s link shortener is a tool made specifically for Amazon sellers, to create short, branded links to products on Amazon.
Our Amazon URL shortener is included in all LandingCube subscriptions. Click here to try it out, free for 21 days.
Watch this short video for an introduction, and read more about the key features below.
2-Step URL Builder
Use our tool to create 2-Step URLs for your products, to target important, high-volume keywords. Then, shorten them to something that’s easy to share.
You can also rotate through multiple keywords, to spread ranking power across several search terms, using just one link.
Automated Search Find Buy
Along with 2-Step URLs, you can create Search Find Buy links with our URL shortener. When a shopper clicks on the link, they’ll be taken to a landing page with instructions on how to buy your product and up to date product information, before clicking through to Amazon.
Pixel Integrations
Integrations with the Facebook pixel, Google Analytics and Amazon Associates are all hooked up and ready to go. Just add your tracking ID in the link builder. You can also integrate your links with your own custom tracking code.
Custom subdomains
You can integrate with your own domain, to link to your products using branded links. As well as adding your brand’s domain to your links, you can create short, share-friendly links and vanity URL slugs.
If you don’t have your own domain, you can also use our default, share-friendly domain, lncb.me.
Link management, analytics and tracking
With this tool, you can track the links used in your external marketing campaigns, in order to monitor and compare the traffic coming through each channel.
By creating unique links for different use cases you can get a better idea of which channels are performing and which are not.
Our link management system also gives you advanced data on traffic sources, devices, and locations of those who clicked your links.
Amazon URL Shortener Use Cases
Here are the most common ways to use a shortened Amazon URL.
Product inserts
Product inserts are a fantastic opportunity to build your email list, promote your products, and get reviews.
Put a link on your insert card to a landing page, offering an incentive (such as an informational ebook, or a discount on their next purchase) if the customer opts in via email.
You can then take that email and up-sell other products, or ask for a review on their initial purchase.
To do any of this, you want the link on your product insert to be simple and easy to type. Use the URL shortener to cut it down to something short and sweet, and more people will follow your link.
Posts from social media
Many companies use short, branded links on social media posts. This gives a few advantages over a regular link.
- It allows you to track and see how many people clicked your links.
- Creates a more attractive, less spammy link, which people are more likely to click.
- It cuts down the character count (for social networks like Twitter that have a limited number of characters).
Check out these examples, from Starbucks and Mercedes:
Influencers
It’s usually necessary to track the clicks you get from influencer campaigns. The best way to do this, especially if you’re working with multiple influencers, is to create a unique link for each one, which they can then give to their audience. You’ll see how many sales you got through that influencer, and can gauge how well the partnership is working for you.
Links in emails
Similarly, when you’re running email campaigns, you want to track how many clicks you’re getting from each email, to monitor the effectiveness of your campaign. This is easy with a link shortening tool, especially when you have the ability to view all your links from various email campaigns in one dashboard.
ManyChat flows
You can also use your links in ManyChat sequences. Shortened links will result in more clicks from your customers, and allow you to track your flow’s performance. This is also a great way to use 2-Step URLs and Search Find Buy in your ManyChat sequence.
Summing Up – Amazon URL Shortener Tools & Best Practices
URL shortening, link management and vanity URLs are necessary tools in any Amazon seller’s external marketing toolkit.
If you’re serious about building a brand with name recognition, you want to take every opportunity to put your branding in front of your customers.
Share-friendly URLs, analytics and retargeting are just a few more golden reasons to start using an Amazon link shortener right now.
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