To learn more about unique links, check out our support article on unique links, or our documentation on using custom links to pass information into forms.
Oftentimes, a respondent is more likely to recognize a URL from your own website than a SurveyCTO URL link. Luckily, there are a number of ways to brand your URLs so a link from your own website redirects to the SurveyCTO form, while still keeping the unique identifiers. You can even use some of these services to track which links have been clicked on! That way, you can see how many respondents have opened the link to the form, even if they have not yet completed the form.
| Many mail merge services also offer link tracking services. To learn more, check out our guide to sharing web form links via email. |
Link shortening services
With a link shortening service, you can make the URL shorter by giving it a custom URL. Some, such as Bitly, also offer premium link management services, where you can also track which links have been opened and how many times. Here are a couple examples:
Link branding services
There are also more advanced link redirection services, such as being able to brand a link with your own website domain. Keep in mind that this may involve changing DNS and other website settings, so you may need to work with your webmaster. Something else great about these services is that even if you use their website domains instead of your own, you can set them up to carry over the ?caseid= part of the URL (called a "query parameter" or "query string"), so you do not need a new URL for each unique link.
Control panel redirect
Most website hosting services offer an easy, built-in way to redirect URLs. Here are the steps with cPanel, a popular hosting control panel used by many web hosts. (Steps last updated April 2020.) If you do not use cPanel, the steps may still be similar.
- Login to cPanel.
- Under DOMAINS, go to Redirects.
- For the dropdown menu under https?://(www.)?, select the name of your domain.
- Right beneath that, to the left of the slash /, enter the path (what comes after the slash after the domain) you would like to redirect to the survey.
- Beneath that, Redirects to, enter the URL of the form before the question mark
?. - Click the Add button.
For example, if you would like http://example.com/survey to redirect to https://example.surveycto.com/collect/example_form, for the dropdown menu you would select example.com, after the slash you would enter survey, and for Redirects to, you would enter https://example.surveycto.com/collect/example_form.
Control panel redirect will also carry over the ?caseid= part, so there is no need to set up a redirect for each unique link. So, if http://example.com/survey is set to redirect to https://example.surveycto.com/collect/example_form, then http://example.com/survey?caseid=123abc will redirect to https://example.surveycto.com/collect/example_form?caseid=123abc.
Caution
Make sure the custom URLs are not something that would seem suspicious to a spam filter. For example, while verifying your email address for a Rebrandly account, you may get this alert when clicking the link:
Even though we know it is safe because we know the source, respondents may be hesitant when receiving these kinds of links, so make sure URLs are written to be less suspicious.
Further reading
To learn how to quickly email these links to many respondents, check out our guide to sharing web form links via email.
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