Research: URL Shortening Services

[nelsonic]

As noted in dwyl/app#284 we are building an internal link shortening service that allows us to retain privacy, stats and learning.

So we're going through the list: https://github.com/738/awesome-url-shortener
and collecting UI/UX and features for our list.

# Todo

• View each one of the services and capture the Landing Page - and any other relevant UI/UX
• Make notes of any features/ideas

[nelsonic]

First on the list is: https://t.ly
Great domain. Crappy landing page with lots of ads that cover the content:

Seriously, who does this?! 🤷‍♂️ massive banner ads on the home page of your service! 🤦‍♂️

Anyway, this is their upsell:

API docs: https://t.ly/docs/
Postman collection: https://t.ly/docs/collection.json

One Links: https://t.ly/products/one-links

A couple of "reviews" from "Laura" and "Jessica" ... 🙄

Mentions automatically copying the short link to clipboard.
Don't think we would do that, but putting a "copy" button next to the shortened link in the UI would be good. 📋

[nelsonic]

https://t2mio.com/

https://t2mio.com/pricing

[nelsonic]

https://pckd.me/manage/

Sample: https://pckd.me/73bpjcb

[nelsonic]

https://bitly.com one of the Original link shorteners from 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitly now owned by Private Equity ... 🙄

https://bit.ly/3AZGH2A

Pricing: https://bitly.com/pages/pricing

Basically, to run a link shortener as-a-service we would need to offer domain registration and fully automate the deployment of an instance for the customer.
But if you see their annual charge for the "Premium" it's pretty insane money ...

https://bitly.com/pages/why-bitly/integrations-api

https://bitly.com/pages/resources

[nelsonic]

One thing I've been reassured of while researching the UX of existing link shortening services is this: the URL doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does. The UI/UX for (a) creating the links, (b) managing the links is what matters and (c) monitoring the engagement with those links is what matters.