Menu

Integrating Links in Retail Signage

The Problem with Retail Signage

Let’s talk about using BL.INK for retail and in-store signage. If you’ve ever walked into a store and seen somebody who’s printed a really long URL with multiple characters, multiple sections, lots of slashes, tracking variables and so forth–there can be dozens, if not hundreds of characters!

Does someone expect you to type all of that?!

Nobody’s ever going to type that in. And if they do, the problem is: they’re likely to have a letter wrong, or some characters are going to be in the wrong place. They’re going to get an error message. I’ve even typed in these URLs, taken that time and effort, only to find out that the page itself is no longer there; that it’s moved, it was changed. On top of that, I don’t have access to the content. It can be really frustrating and create a really bad impression and user experience. Not only for your customer, but also for your brand, ultimately killing that time and effort you took to create that campaign and program.

Enter the Solution for Simplifying Links on Retail Signage

By using a branded short link in this process, it makes the experience much better for the consumer…and much better for you as the vendor. To be able to engage with that consumer, to be able to track that information, to be able to get analytics around their actions and make the whole experience so much smoother and easier than it often is.

So today we’re going to walk through what that might look like.

Building a Branded Link

So to start out with, we’re going to come in here to your BL.INK accounts,

Begin with selecting your domain. We’re going to create a new branded link, and I’ve got an example URL here.

1 1324342231 (1)

I’m just going to put in a link to one of our blog posts as an example. You can see there’s quite a few characters here.

1 1324342231 (2)

When I type this in, by default, it has a randomized keyword. We’re going to go ahead and put in a call to action here. So we’re going to call this “holiday” as an example. So I’ve got my blink.news/holiday. So very short, very simple, very easy to see, very easy to type, is a keyword that’s recognized.

 

Inside of BL.INK, our keywords are not case sensitive. So whether I type in a capital H or a lowercase ‘h,’ it makes no difference to our platform. So if somebody happens to have their caps-lock on, on their phone, that’s fine. If they don’t, that’s fine too. However you want to structure, that works out great.

1 1324342231 (3)

So here in our description, I’m going to say, this is our holiday blog post.

1 1324342231 (4)

And then over here on the right hand side, I can choose to share this with my groups.

1 1324342231 (5)

I can tag this based on a campaign or based on a particular event.

1 1324342231 (6)

I can make it to get notified when somebody actually clicks on this. A lot of times we have links that are created well in advance. So you might create this link days, weeks, or months in advance of when it’s actually going to be printed and placed in-store. And so I’m able to get notified when somebody actually clicks on that. So I know that my campaign is live and it’s out there in the wild. So if I turn on notifications, I’ll get an email for the first 10 clicks to come to this link.

1 1324342231 (7)

My redirect type, here.

1 1324342231 (8)

Then our actions: maybe this action only is valid [during a certain time frame]. This link will expire on January 1st. So I want to automatically choose to archive this link, based on that date, I can do that as well. So a lot of different options of how we create that link. I would just click on the save button, and now my short link is going to be ready.

Where Can I Display My New Branded Link?

You can use your newly branded link for:

  • Print information
  • Retail in-store
  • Any kind of signs

When I’m looking at this in large print– super easy; on billboards. I can see this on a flier. I can put it on signage. I could put any of the products. I could put it on a receipt or at the register. It’s easy to see, easy to remember, and easy to engage with for anyone who wants to engage in that particular campaign.


Brief, Impactful Encounters

You really only have that one brief moment to engage with that audience member, successfully and easily. Anything you can do to make their life better, they’re definitely gonna appreciate it. You ultimately are going to get more value out of that campaign and return on your investment.

Get in Touch