New tool - how to enable this?

route9

Hi guys,
Hoping to get some feedback on a new idea for a web tool I have. The concept involves allowing people to create a custom URL for a link to a webpage. They visit the website and copy a link to another page into the tool, to generate a custom URL they can share anywhere. It's just like Bit.ly I guess.

This is how it would work:

-User visits website (let's call the website www.mynewurl.com)

-User copies link to the target webpage into a URL field on the page. Let's say the URL is www.nike.com/companyinfo

-The tool generates the following URL: www.mynewurl.com/nike (pulling from the root domain - i.e. the part immediately before the .com). The user can copy and paste the URL and share on social media, over email, etc.

-When someone clicks on www.mynewurl.com/nike, they get automatically redirected to www.nike.com/about

Hope that's clear, basically I am asking if this is easy to implement, or if it even feasible? Would it require some major work or is it fairly straightforward?

I do have a specific use case in mind for the tool, in case this seems random

Thanks

grogi

route9 wrote: »

Hi guys,
Hoping to get some feedback on a new idea for a web tool I have. The concept involves allowing people to create a custom URL for a link to a webpage. They visit the website and copy a link to another page into the tool, to generate a custom URL they can share anywhere. It's just like Bit.ly I guess.
This is how it would work:
-User visits website (let's call the website www.mynewurl.com).
-User copies link to the target webpage into a URL field on the page. Let's say the URL is www.nike.com/companyinfo
-The tool generates the following URL: www.mynewurl.com/nike (pulling from the root domain - i.e. the part immediately before the .com)
-When someone clicks on www.mynewurl.com/nike, they get automatically redirected to www.nike.com/about
Hope that's clear, basically I am asking if this is easy to implement, or if it even feasible? Would it require some major work or is it fairly straightforward?
I do have a specific use case in mind for the tool, in case this seems random
Thanks

What for?!

Nevertheless, think what happens if someone generated URL to my.link.com/about, and someone else it trying to generate to my.link.com/best-offer-ever?

Steve

Bit of php or asp and a database should do it easily.

Bigger question would be why?

Bit.ly links and their ilk tend not to last long before adblockers and chrome etc blacklist them. You're never gonna compete with GA in terms of marketable stats either..

route9

grogi wrote: »

What for?!

Nevertheless, think what happens if someone generated URL to my.link.com/about, and someone else it trying to generate to my.link.com/best-offer-ever?

Good point although that's unlikely to happen since the person generating the URL is going to want to link only to my.link.com/about, for reasons that should become clear below..

Steve wrote: »

Bit of php or asp and a database should do it easily.

Bigger question would be why?

Bit.ly links and their ilk tend not to last long before adblockers and chrome etc blacklist them. You're never gonna compete with GA in terms of marketable stats either..

Well I never said I wanted to compete with them

This is probably the simplest way of explaining the idea. Let's say you work at a hotel and you can get a referral commission for every booking that is made through your custom link. The hotel also benefits because they aren't paying commissions to the big booking websites, and are more than happy to pay you a modest referral fee instead, as well as getting the customer info directly.

So you take the URL for your hotel's reservations page, and pop it into the tool. ValleyHotel.com/book becomes BookDirect.com/ValleyHotel

Sure, someone could just link to their hotel's booking page across whatever channel, but people tend not to think that way and it wouldn't get across the 'book direct' point in the same way, and wouldn't highlight why the user is showcasing that particular URL. The brandable URL increases awareness of booking hotels directly, supporting local businesses, etc.

For the area I am looking at, I already have a brandable URL that would work perfectly, and this seems like the simplest way of testing the concept. Ideally I could also track the number of instances of URL generation on the site, i.e. how many people have created custom URLs.

counterpointaud

route9 wrote: »

Would it require some major work or is it fairly straightforward?
Thanks

Very straightforward to implement. I am still bit unclear about who is the customer, and how it makes money. But yeah, what you describe is pretty quick and easy to build.

Talisman

It's very simple to build. I've implemented such a system that handles millions of hits a day.

It takes a parameter which is used to query the database and issues a 301 redirect with the result.

Performance improvements are to filter the url to prevent a denial of service attack by flooding the database with queries. Implementing a cache in front of the database also helps.

It's very easy to integrate with Google Analytics for tracking purposes.

devildriver

This maybe a good place to start:

https://yourls.org/

route9

Thanks for all the input guys. No harm telling you the idea - it's a way for employees to highlight job opportunities at their place of work to increase the chances of referring in a candidate.

So, it helps highlight the fact that you can refer someone in to your company. I once missed out on one such opportunity when someone I worked with forgot I worked at the company and applied through an agency instead! This meant I missed out and the agency got an unnecessary hefty commission - much more than what the company would have paid me.

In practice each company would have a fixed* given brandable URL for their jobs page. For example refermein.com/Nike. The employee would then highlight this URL across their social channels, in their email sig and so on.

*On reflection the URL would have to be a designated one created specifically for the company, to avoid cases where someone would link to the wrong place etc.

route9

Any further thoughts guys?

Talisman

route9 wrote: »

Any further thoughts guys?

Short of designing and building the system for you, what are you looking for?

route9

Talisman wrote: »

Short of designing and building the system for you, what are you looking for?

Sorry should have clarified - I was typing quickly on my phone. I mean in relation to the business merits of the idea, based on what I was saying in my last post. Obviously phase 1 would be a pretty basic iteration.

bpmurray

I'm just thinking of motivation here...

If the idea is that individual employees could send the URL to their friends to get them to join, you'll have to have some unique value associated with each individual, and that value will have to be associated with the applicant, requiring a bit of work on the HR web site.

If it's just a generic link, you'll still be in the same position as if the person applies independently since there's no way to associate the applicant with whoever sent the URL, so that the company just doesn't have to pay out either the referral bonus or the agency fees.

route9

bpmurray wrote: »

I'm just thinking of motivation here...

If the idea is that individual employees could send the URL to their friends to get them to join, you'll have to have some unique value associated with each individual, and that value will have to be associated with the applicant, requiring a bit of work on the HR web site.

If it's just a generic link, you'll still be in the same position as if the person applies independently since there's no way to associate the applicant with whoever sent the URL, so that the company just doesn't have to pay out either the referral bonus or the agency fees.

Actually it's interesting you mention that, as the original intention I had was that each employee would create their own job listing page on the site and copy and paste the jobs from their employer's job site on there. So you would go to the site, create your page at refermein.com/bpmurray, and copy the job links onto your page.

However, I figured that that could sound like a lot of work to the employee and that just linking to the actual employer's job site would have the same result - and would obviously show all jobs, not just the ones the employee would copy over.

On associating the URL with the employee, I don't think that's an issue since the very idea of a referral is that the applicant contacts the employee to get referred in, usually with a recommendation from the employee. Or just that the employee refers in the applicants CV, and there is often a process around that in each company.

So if the applicant sees the employees URL and their call to action to let them know if they are interested in any of the jobs, the applicant will just contact the employee if they want a referral. The 'refermein' link is simply just a way to highlight the fact that the employee is ready and willing to refer the applicant in.

Given that this is next to no work on the employees part, it would seem like a no-brainer that they would showcase the link in various places, considering they could be a few grand up if someone contacts them and they refer in a successful application?

devildriver

From a technical point of view something like this can be done. However the problem I see is more of a business/usage one.

There is no upside at all for the employer. You are asking them to manage all of the incoming links and pay any finders fee to the employee whose link was used for the chosen candidate. It's a lot of work for little benefit to the employer so I can't see why they would want to participate.

Please correct me if I've misunderstood your proposition.

route9

devildriver wrote: »

From a technical point of view something like this can be done. However the problem I see is more of a business/usage one.

There is no upside at all for the employer. You are asking them to manage all of the incoming links and pay any finders fee to the employee whose link was used for the chosen candidate. It's a lot of work for little benefit to the employer so I can't see why they would want to participate.

Please correct me if I've misunderstood your proposition.

Hey there, thanks for the input. Hmm no, maybe there are some cross wires here - the employer would not actually have to do anything additional at all. It would all be on the employee and applicant side. There would be a given URL redirecting to the company jobs site, and the employee would simply highlight the URL to prospective applicants.

Then, if someone wanted to apply for a role they would do so in the usual way, by having the employee refer in their CV through whatever existing process the company has in place.

I am still debating how to present the solution though - my original idea was that the employee would create their own page.

And I am also wondering if it is something that is actually worth building, since how often do people really seek a referral or look for a new job...but at the same time if it worked it should work well for all parties.