Vanity URLs: What they are, Guidelines and Requests
Please submit a support request to request a vanity URL. Select "Short URL" from the Digital Support request to route your ticket.
ER Communications + Marketing Partners: Submit in Workfront
All Other Web Users: Submit Support Request
What is a vanity URL?
- A custom short URL is meant to support offline to online marketing campaigns
- Example: uab.ca/ggday to support Green and Gold Day
- Aligns with institutional branding
- Needs to be tracked - External Relations Digital puts tracking in place to help measure usage and interaction
Guidelines
- The vanity URL supports a Call-To-Action (CTA) and is not by itself the CTA
- Short (5 or 6 characters) and to the point to maximize the potential for it being used
- It needs to be easy to use on a mobile device
- It does not include a year reference (eg. uab.ca/xyz2021)
- Should not be so generic that others could request the same
- examples: uab.ca/golf, uab.ca/course, uab.ca/tuition
- The destination page should be mobile and tablet friendly
- The destination page should be a campaign-specific page - not a site homepage
"Do and Don't" examples
REGARDING |
DO |
DON'T |
|---|---|---|
| Vanity URL |
uab.ca/awknd (event specific) uab.ca/ggday (campaign) uab.ca/mact (program) |
www.uab.ca/aw2015 (www & year) faculty.uab.ca (subdomain) http://uab.ca/mact (extraneous) uab.ca/ aw-wknd (hyphenation) www.uab.ca/ aw /wknd (nesting)
|
| Destination URL must be UAlberta |
/alumni/events |
edmontonjournal.com/... facebook.com/... |
| Destination Content | a webpage on www.ualberta.ca/... |
Google Forms Spreadsheets PDFs |
| Usage |
Print campaign Radio campaign |
Email links Web links Social media links Business cards |
| Google Analytics | Reports to UAlberta rollup account | Doesn't report to rollup account |
How to request a vanity URL
We're happy to help! Before submitting your request, please ensure that you have the following information ready:
- Any particular vanity URLs you have in mind (5-6 characters in length is ideal)
- The destination page's URL
- Destination page is published (even if not complete)
- The campaign timeline
- Campaign start
- Campaign end (if applicable)
- Campaign objectives
- Target audiences
- How it will be used (Print, radio, word of mouth, etc.)
- How it will support the CTA
NOTE: we do not create or grant vanity URL's for the following:
- Soft documents (eg. PDF's, DOC, XLS, Ggl Doc, GSheet, etc)
- Individuals (including business cards)
- Groups (e.g. student, faculty, staff, alumni)
- Websites using a URL structure other than www.ualberta.ca/
- Destination URL's that use acronyms (e.g. .../research/dirf)
- Wordpress sites or other non-Sitecore websites
- Forked versions of uab.ca (eg. name.uab.ca, uab.ca/name/zyx321)
Employees