There are times when you need to add variables on-the-fly to links that are seen by people. In general, doing so makes them look like tracking links, which will reduce conversions. We have added a method to add variables in a way that makes it look more like a blog post, without the need of having ?, &, or = in the link.
The idea is to replace a link like this: yoursite.com/yourlink?searchphrase=butterfly
With a much more friendly looking: yoursite.com/yourlink/butterfly
This is particularly useful when connecting with another tracking service like Prosper202. (Nana from Prosper202 will be creating training for his clients, showing how to use Tracker.ly to do this. We'll link to this when he's done.)
To do this, go to the management page for the destination in Tracker.ly and click the "Variables" button:
And then select the third option on the left:
Initially, the default will be selected to not convert dashes or slashes. On the right, select one of the following options:
1) Convert just / to variables
This is what I showed in the example, and is usually the option you want. In the following example, everything after yoursite.com/keyword/ in a keyword link will be passed in the variable "searchphrase".
The first field is to optionally send the keywords that make up your initial redirect link as variables as well. Most times you will not use that field.
To get the result above, enter in each variable in the second field that you want to be converted, separated by a comma. Then in the link you publish, you separate the variable values with a slash. So, you give out yoursite.com/yourlink/butterfly and when people click on it, they will arrive at destinationlink.com?searchphrase=butterfly
2) Convert just - to variables
This works exactly the same as the previous example, except instead of using a slash to separate variables, you use a dash. Except, when you convert - to variables, in addition to sending the information to the destination, it will create a unique link for each variable value. If you're sending a lot of traffic, each with a different variable, then you'll get a lot of links if you select this option!
This is useful if you want to track each variable in Tracker.ly. For example, if you have clicks coming in with different keywords, you can use this technique to create a unique link for each traffic source this way and see a count for each keyword in Tracker.ly, and pass the keywords to the destination.
3) Convert both / and - to variables
This combines the two, so every / or - in the links you give out will create a new variable.