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Set up smart routing

With smart routing, a single short link sends your visitors to a different destination depending on country, language, operating system or device. So you share just one link, and everyone lands where it fits them.

Typical examples

App links: iPhones go to the App Store, Android phones to Google Play, everyone else to your website.
Country shops: Visitors from Austria land in the .at shop, from Germany in the .de shop, from Switzerland in the .ch shop.
Language versions: Anyone whose browser is set to English gets the English page, everyone else the German one.
Mobile landing page: Phones see a slim mobile page, desktop visitors the detailed version.

How to create rules

Open the link. In the dashboard, go to "Edit" for the short link you want. This also works when creating a new link.
Add a rule. In the "Smart routing" section, click "Add rule".
Enter destination and conditions. Enter the destination URL and choose at least one condition: countries (e.g. AT, DE, CH), languages (e.g. de, en), operating system (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux) or device (phone, tablet, desktop). A name such as "iPhone" is optional and helps you in the statistics.
Check the order. Use the arrows to move rules up or down.
Save. From now on the short link forwards according to your rules. If no rule matches, your normal link destination applies.

The first matching rule wins

ShortBoost checks the rules from top to bottom on every click. As soon as a rule matches, the visitor is sent there and the rules below no longer matter. So put the more specific rules at the top: "Austria and iPhone" belongs above "iPhone".

Within a rule:

AND between conditions: Country AT and device phone only matches phones from Austria.
OR between several values: Countries AT, DE, CH match visitors from any of these three countries.
An empty field means "any": If you choose only "iOS", the country doesn't matter.

Example: Rule 1 "Country AT, device phone" → mobile .at page. Rule 2 "Country AT" → .at shop. A phone from Austria lands on the mobile page, a laptop from Austria in the shop, a visitor from Italy on the normal destination.

How it works with other features

On every click, ShortBoost decides in this order:

Countdown: If a countdown is running, the visitor always goes to the countdown's promotion destination.
Click limit: As long as the quota is not used up, the first clicks go to the click limit's promotion destination.
Time limit: If the click falls outside your time windows, the default URL of the time limit applies.
Smart routing: the first matching rule.
A/B test: only for visitors to whom no rule applied.
Normal link destination: if the link is broken according to link health, the fallback URL instead.

UTM parameters and retargeting pixels apply to every destination, including the destinations of your rules.

Statistics per rule

In the link statistics, the "Smart routing" card shows how many clicks in the selected period went through which rule, each with its share in percent. "No rule (normal destination)" are the visitors to whom no rule applied. If you delete a rule, its previous clicks appear as "Deleted rule".

Good to know

Country: is determined from the IP address. Anyone using a VPN appears in the country of the VPN server.
Language: is the preferred language in the visitor's browser, not the country.
Operating system and device: come from the user agent. Newer iPads often report as a Mac in Safari and then count as macOS and desktop. So iPads cannot always be reliably told apart from Macs.
At most 10 rules per link.

Plan: Smart routing is included in the Pro and Lifetime plans. Through the API the field is called smart_routing, details in the API documentation.

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