History has proven you need accurate data to know the next steps you should take. That's why governments and companies do their best to gather as much information as they can. Because when you have information on what people want and need, you can effectively serve them— and you can anticipate their desires.
This is even more true today. With almost everything now online, it's much easier to gather data. But how do you get the most out of tracking clicks with URL shorteners? Here's what you can do with the information you get by knowing more about your audience.
How Your Audience Got to Your Website
One of the basic features any URL shortener and tracker can give is knowing how your audience got to your website. Are they accessing it from a computer browser, or are they using a smartphone to visit your page? Are they Android, iPhone, Mac, or Windows users?
When you have information like this, you can optimize your content for most of your user base. This data is particularly beneficial because it can allow you to focus your efforts on your most effective platform. It can also give you an insight into what devices your audience use, and to some extent, their purchasing power.
For example, if you discover that many of your users access your website through their iPhone, then maybe it's high time you develop an app for your business. Or, if the page of your Windows-only software gets a lot of visits from Apple users, then maybe you should consider making a Mac version of your product.
Countries, Cities, and Culture
Another essential piece of information you should know is the location of the majority of your website visitors. Because when you see where most of your clicks come from, you can anticipate their culture, preferences, and even their current situation.
Even if you market primarily in one country, you'll find that knowing which cities your visitors come from can let you optimize your marketing focus to that locale. For example, if you're a restaurant and you get a lot of orders from another city, you can use that data to justify opening a branch there.
Another example is a delivery service getting inquiries from a city that has just been devastated by a storm. Since you know that the town where the customer is coming from may have transportation issues, you can then send a warning to them that deliveries might be delayed, thus managing their expectations.
Your Website's Rush Hour
Knowing what time most of your clients visit your page is another essential piece of information to track. This data lets you know when is the best time to release information so that your posts gain the most traction as soon as possible.
You can even use these metrics to know which day of the week you have the most visitors. For example, if you want to have a free live webinar, you can set that to coincide with the day and time where many people naturally visit your page.
That way, you can maximize the exposure of your event, not just through ads or organic posts, but through the natural ebb and flow of clicks that lead to your website.
Finding the Trend
Aside from gathering information that will help you maximize your current audience, you can also use these data to anticipate trends. While it can be challenging to predict massive disruptions, you can use the info you gather from clicks to follow gradual technological changes.
For example, if you find that many of your photo storage app subscribers are now accessing your website through a Mac, then this could have been the effect of many of your userbase preferring the new Apple laptop models and switching their workflows over.
Or, if you see that you're getting more app downloads from smartwatches, then it might mean that you should start focusing on developing your wearables division. By keeping on top of trends like this, you can ensure that your brand and product stay relevant through changing times and tech.
Is Your Campaign Effective?
One more crucial purpose of tracking data from URL shorteners is to know if your campaign is effective. Because as many users become more conscious about their privacy, more and more people are disallowing tracking on their devices directly.
So instead of relying on built-in tracking data for some links, you can use custom short links instead. For example, you cannot track clicks from SMS, email, and messenger apps. If that's the case, you have no idea where the visitors come from and if your email marketing campaign has been effective.
But if you use custom short links, you can then create links custom-made for each campaign, even if they all land on the same page. By doing so, you can then use the insights from each short link to determine if the marketing campaign you launched has a favorable outcome.
Humans or Robots
A URL shortener and tracker should also know how to distinguish between human and non-human clicks. That's because if you keep track of bot or spider traffic, then it might skew your data. Besides, your website is for humans, not programs.
So to ensure that your click counter service only provides data from human beings, they should be able to remove all automated clicks from all your statistics. Because if most of your visitors come from Central Europe, but you get spammed from East Asia, and your tracker counts all clicks, you might be basing your decisions on flawed data.
Data is the Key to Success
Information will help you win the battle. That's why governments risk the lives of their spies and agents to find data, and corporations big and small spend billions of dollars to find out more about their market.
But if you're just starting out, you don't have to spend a fortune to gather information—because you can get all these features with Short.io for free. And if you need a bit more functionality, multiple affordable tiers ensure you don't have to spend more than you need to.
When you have information, you can convert that into knowledge to bring your business to the next level. After all, as a wise man once said, knowledge itself is power.
