Branded endings — your link, your brand
Choosing the end of a short link is a small detail that matters more than it seems. I am showing why cutty.dev/your-brand works differently than random 8 characters.
Most shorteners spit out something like this: cutty.dev/k3n9X. Five characters, it works, you click, and it redirects. It's just that in an Instagram bio, this string looks like a password from a database leak. Branded links are a different story. You type in yourself what should come after the slash: cutty.dev/oferta, cutty.dev/cennik, cutty.dev/janowski-bike.
It sounds banal. Underneath, there are three things that are really worth understanding before you print this on fifty thousand flyers.
Link that reads like a name
cutty.dev/janek looks like someone's personal website. cutty.dev/k3n9X looks like a password generator that escaped someone. It is not just a matter of aesthetics, although that plays its part too.
People click on what looks familiar. A legible suffix immediately announces the content (cutty.dev/cennik tells you what to expect even before you click). It can be dictated over the phone: "cutty dot dev slash cennik". It can be typed manually from a paper flyer or a sticker on a car. And anti-spam filters are more lenient toward it, because random strings arouse suspicion, but a normal word does not.
Once yours, forever yours
Here is a detail that is easy to overlook, but can save a campaign. When you create cutty.dev/oferta, this suffix is assigned to this link. Permanently. Will you delete the link? The suffix still does not return to the pool. No one will take it over after you.
Imagine that your QR code with cutty.dev/oferta is on 50,000 flyers being distributed over the next three months. The last thing you want is for that same link to lead someone to someone else's page one morning. In cutty, this simply cannot happen: after deleting an address, it returns a 404 instead of a redirect to nowhere. Print with peace of mind.
A little bit of SEO, but no miracles
The URL address is one of the signals that Google takes into account. A short, descriptive slug with a keyword (cutty.dev/poradnik-marketingu instead of cutty.dev/x7k2m) provides a slight plus for links that are widely cited on the web.
Don't go overboard, though. One link won't shoot you into the top ten. But when a campaign generates hundreds of thousands of redirects to a single page, readable slugs send a signal to Google: "these are intentionally set, not spam". That's it. A small addition, not a lever.
Rules and pitfalls
Setting up takes a moment. You paste a long URL, expand Advanced options, and enter your suffix in the "Custom suffix" field. The rules are simple: 3 to 40 characters, letters, digits, underscore, and hyphen. No Polish diacritics (the system will clean them anyway) and no spaces (using a hyphen instead of a space is standard). If someone has already taken the chosen suffix, you will receive a message and be asked for another one.
And what not to do?
Don't aim for generics. You have a company "Janowski Bike" and you dream of cutty.dev/bike? Probably taken. Take something specific: cutty.dev/janowski-bike.
Don't overdo the length. cutty.dev/wyprzedaz-jesienna-2026-tylko-do-niedzieli is technically correct and completely misses the point of shortening. Stick to 8 to 20 characters.
Do not repeat the brand at the end. cutty.dev/cutty-promo is redundant, "cutty" is already in the domain. cutty.dev/promo is enough.
And watch out for addresses that smell like phishing. cutty.dev/zweryfikuj-konto-natychmiast can trigger the alertness of filters in email clients. Better something neutral, in the style of cutty.dev/sprawdz-promocje.
How it looks in practice
Shop: cutty.dev/oferta in bio, cutty.dev/sale-2026 for the seasonal campaign, cutty.dev/promo-vip for regular customers. Event: cutty.dev/konferencja-warszawa, cutty.dev/bilety-rabat-50 with UTMs to track the source. Print: cutty.dev/menu as a QR on the table, cutty.dev/instrukcja in the product packaging. Your person: cutty.dev/jan-kowalski on the business card, cutty.dev/portfolio with works.
The pattern is always the same. One word that tells where it leads. That is all.
Think for a second about what your company would name its link if it could choose any word in the world. Usually, that word is obvious. And that is exactly what you type after the slash.