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Smart links (Smart Flow)

What it is: A smart link is a single short URL (onlynk.me/<slug>) backed by a visual flow. Instead of always sending people to one place, the flow inspects each visitor and routes them to the right destination — a redirect, one of your link pages, a deeplink, or a block.

What it is

Section titled “What it is”

A regular link page always shows the same thing. A smart link evaluates a small decision graph — the Smart Flow — at the moment of the visit and chooses an outcome based on who’s visiting.

You build the flow in a drag-and-drop editor: drop condition nodes (geo, device, referrer, schedule, A/B split…), connect their branches to action nodes (redirect, landing page, deeplink, 404, block), and OnLynk follows the flow from top to bottom on every visit.

Typical uses:

  • Send US visitors to your .com store and EU visitors to your .eu store
  • Route iOS taps to the App Store and Android taps to Google Play
  • Run an A/B test that splits traffic 50/50 between two destinations
  • Open a campaign only during a launch window, and fall back to a waitlist outside it
  • Escape Instagram’s in-app browser before redirecting (see deeplink)

How it works

Section titled “How it works”

A smart link lives at onlynk.me/<slug> — the same address space as your link pages, so a slug can be used by a page or a smart link, never both. For every visit to that URL:

  1. OnLynk builds a visitor context from the request — country, referrer, device/OS/browser, language, in-app browser, and how many prior visits this visitor has made.
  2. Evaluation starts at the Entry node and checks each condition in turn, following the matching branch.
  3. The first action node it reaches is the outcome, which is applied immediately.
  4. If the flow is missing, invalid, or ends without an action (a dead end), the link falls back to its Fallback URL.

Smart links are cookieless — nothing is written to the visitor’s device, so there is no cookie banner. Each saved version of a flow is tracked, so analytics always reflect the version that produced a given visit.

Conditions

Section titled “Conditions”

Drop any of these into the flow. A condition splits traffic into branches; connect each branch to the next step.

ConditionRoutes byBranches
GeoVisitor country (allow / block lists)true / false
DeviceOS (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux), device type (mobile, desktop, tablet), browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge)true / false
ReferrerReferring host, with contains, starts with, or equals matchingtrue / false
LanguagePrimary browser language (e.g. fr, en)true / false
In-app browserSpecific in-app webviews (Instagram, TikTok…) or anytrue / false
ScheduleWeekdays, a daily time window, and/or a date range — in a chosen timezonetrue / false
Visit countHow many times this visitor has hit the link (==, >=, <=, >, <)true / false
A/B splitRandom weighted split — define variants whose percentages sum to 100one branch per variant

A/B splits are deterministic per visitor: the same visitor is consistently assigned to the same variant, so refreshes don’t bounce them between destinations.

Actions

Section titled “Actions”

An action is a terminal node — reaching it ends evaluation.

ActionWhat it does
RedirectSends the visitor to a URL with a 301 (permanent) or 302 (temporary) status
Landing pageShows one of your existing OnLynk link pages
DeeplinkOpens the destination in the system browser, escaping in-app webviews (see Deeplink)
404Returns a styled “not found” page
BlockReturns a styled restricted/blocked page

If the flow reaches a dead end (a branch with no action), the link’s Fallback URL is used instead — so a smart link always resolves to something.

Analytics

Section titled “Analytics”

Every visit writes one row to a dedicated, cookieless analytics store, capturing the path of nodes the visitor traversed plus their country, device, OS, browser, and referrer. Because the full path is recorded, the smart-link analytics view (Dashboard → Smart links → your link → Analytics) can break results down by:

  • Final action — how many visitors ended in each redirect / landing / block
  • Per-condition branch — true vs. false split at each condition
  • A/B variant — traffic share and landing-page conversion per variant
  • Country, device, OS, browser, referrer breakdowns

Smart-link analytics are separate from page analytics — they measure flow routing, not page interactions.

Section titled “Create a smart link”
  1. In the dashboard, open Links (the unified pages + smart-links dashboard) and choose New → Smart link
  2. Give it a title and pick a slug — the public path becomes onlynk.me/<slug>. Slugs are validated against reserved words and must be free across both your link pages and smart links.
  3. Set a Fallback URL — where visitors go if the flow can’t resolve
  4. Open the flow editor and drag in conditions and actions, connecting branches from Entry down to your actions
  5. Save — the flow is versioned automatically
  6. Toggle Enabled when you’re ready to serve traffic

Smart links live inside your active workspace (personal or organization) and can be filed into folders and groups alongside your link pages.

Plan & limits: Smart links share the same links budget as your link pages — each smart link counts toward your plan’s total link allowance.

Custom domains & shared reports

Section titled “Custom domains & shared reports”

Smart links aren’t limited to the default OnLynk host:

  • Custom domains — attach a smart link to a custom domain you own so it serves under your own hostname, and optionally make it the domain’s home (shown at the root URL). A domain’s home can be a page or a smart link, but not both.
  • Shared reports — on agency plans, smart links can be bundled into a shared analytics report alongside your pages, where they contribute a visits count.
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