PURLs – How They Work and How to Get Started

Personalized URLs, or PURLs, are exactly what they sound like. Rather than randomly-generated strings of characters, your clients or staff might log in to a page such as “yourcompany.com/JohnSmith” or “JohnSmith.yourcompany.com”. User John Smith will see a personalized message, which makes him feel valued no matter what role he plays to your company or website. This helps your company because people respond when others user their names. It’s why cashiers will look at a credit or store card and thank a customer by name as they’re leaving the checkout. Personalized URLs are also beneficial because they’re easy to remember.

The foundation of a personalized URL is to redirect to an existing website and serve visitors with customized images depicting their name or other personalizations based on the user’s demographic and data that you’ve already collected. With PURLs and personalized content, you’re more likely to snag that customer because you can appeal to their interests.

PURLs work well with print marketing because you can print a customer’s URL on a postcard and flyer and invite them to your website. Depending upon your platform, you can also use PURLs to track a specific user’s path on your website and use this to create the perfect follow-up plan. To retain greater control over that path, implement a call to action on that landing page.

A simple method might use a 301 redirect for the URL, but you’ll need a more complex system if you want to provide PURLs to many users. To save money and time, you might not implement a user-specific landing page. Many companies hire developers to create PURLs and the surrounding pages so that the systems will remain responsive and robust even as the company grows and add more personalized URLs to the system.