Since the dawn of ProveSource, we’ve let our users use URL matching to let you decide what URLs to track (form submissions and page views) and where to display those tracked events.
Until recently, you could only use Absolute URLs, i.e. every URL was considered unique to our system, even if it was the same page.
This caused a lot of confusion, since many users aren’t aware of the different versions they have for their website, e.g:
- https://www.mywebsite.com
- http://www.mywebsite.com
- http://mywebsite.com
- https://mywebsite.com?utm_source=email
Each of the above would be considered by ProveSource to be a unique and different URL even though they all lead to the same page.
We tried to make it simpler by introducing URL match types like contains and regex, so users can have broader/”catch all” rule for their website.
The above was still too complex and not flexible enough – leading to low engagement rates and complex notification setup.
To make it all simpler, we’ve thought of a new approach – “Clean URLs”.
Clean URLs transforms your URLs for you by cleaning the protocol (http / https), the www subdomain and any query parameters (utm_source, etc), for example:
https://www.mywebsite.com/blog?utm_source=email&postId=123
becomes
mywebsite.com/blog
Now you don’t have to worry about URL with http or https, www or without, UTM params.
- Want to display social proof on the home page, regardless of the traffic source? No problem.
- Want to track your checkout form, even when the URL has tons of parameters? No problem.
We’ve added this option to both the “Track” and “Display” steps, just leave the toggle OFF to use Clean URLs:
You’re a pro and you like doing things the old way? Flip it ON, but be careful:
Final conclusion:
If you’re building solutions that use URL tracking and matching, we strongly suggest you start off with “Clean URLs” and add an “advanced” option later. This makes it far easier for your users – higher engagement, better product usage, only good things!
