Markting Urls

[robmob]

I have search the forum for the last 15 mins but not been able to find the answer to this question:

We are looking at producing a couple of leaflets with slight variations to test. On the leaflet we want to use a fairly short and different urls

i.e www.performancemotorcare.com/offer1
www.performancemotorcare.com/offer2

we do not want to use the long version with the /acatalog/ in the middle.

Is there a way of using the short urls above but re-directing to
www.performancemotorcare.com/acatalog/offer1 etc?

Many thanks

[Darren B]

set up a redirect in your htaccess file search for htaccess redirects (google that is)

[robmob]

Thanks Darren

I'll try a forum search on htaccess for further details on how to.

Your speedy response is much appreciated.

Kind regards

[Duncan Rounding]

Or perhaps use a forwarding link from TinyURL.com perhaps.
So this page:
http://www.performancemotorcare.com/...re_Cloths.html
would become this for example:
http://tinyurl.com/6zsbn8

[Duncan Rounding]

Here's an .htaccess example:

redirect 301 /offer1.html http://www.mydomain.co.uk/acatalog/offer1.html

[Duncan Rounding]

Another thought. It might be worth considering an affiliate system or similar so that you can track the responses and order conversions. I use my affiliate system primarily for that purpose. I create a new affiliate for each 'offer' and track related sales.

[Darren B]

oooh just an after thought, if you go down the htaccess root - cant be a windows server.

[robmob]

Thanks Duncan.

Again much appreciated. Also thanks for all the help and work you have done recently on the optimizing the images for our new site.

[robmob]

Duncan

I have been considering AllAfilliatePro but wanted it to run a recommend a friend scheme which it appears in won't handle too well without some additional programming (about £3ks worth!).

Will something like this be able to utilise the shorter urls, re-direct them and then also provide analytics?

[Duncan Rounding]

AAP will only use normal URLs but with TinyURL you can specify unique custom alias.
So for example can perhaps get a URL like this:
http:/ tinyurl. com/ PMC-Offer1 (purposely broken link)

AAP is really limited to affiliates that are already registered. Maybe there's something else someone knows of that will handle the recommend a friend system better.

[robmob]

Darren

I beleive we are hosted on a server that is: Linux (Centos 4)/Windows 2003

This doesn't mean much to me and I am not sure if this is an either/or.

[Mike Hughes]

Rob, your server is using Apache. i.e. it's on linux.

Mike

[Darren B]

OK, if your not to confident with this sort of thing and your control panel does not allow you to edit the htaccess through it, i mean that you have to manually edit it using and ftp progrm then dont delete stuff that is already in it, your need to add on to the end.

but make sure you test your site straight away, if it does not work then delete the stuff you have put in it.

[Mark H]

Unless I'm missing the point, why not just create two new HTML pages called:

i.e www.performancemotorcare.com/offer1
www.performancemotorcare.com/offer2

And put some marketing blurb on each page (opportunity for more testing!) and a big link on each to the appropriate product, or even the product details on each page and the appropriate add to cart (or "tell me more" button) on each page?

[robmob]

Mark

Unfortunately I am not that technically minded. I am creating all my non-product pages as Actinic Brochure pages which automatically assigns them after the /acatlog/ directory.

If what you are suggesting is simple to do within Actinic then I am more than happy to look at how to do this.

Thanks