Short Links & QR Codes

Category: Marketing  ·  Min plan: Free  ·  Slug: short-links

Short links turn a long store address into a compact link you can drop into an Instagram bio, a TikTok caption, a WhatsApp broadcast or a printed flyer — and every short link comes with a downloadable QR code. The add-on lives entirely in your dashboard at /dashboard/short-links: you pick which page of your store the link should open, DZBuild builds the short link for you, and the page shows how many clicks each one has collected.

Video tutorial

Features

• Short links to a product, landing page, category, all-products page, or your homepage
• Powered by your own short-link domain
• One-tap copy and a downloadable QR code for every link
• Click tracking for each short link
• Honors your store's custom domain

What it does

Activating the add-on adds a Short links entry to your dashboard sidebar and opens a page with two blocks: a Create a short link form at the top and Your short links below it.

You never paste a URL. You choose a destination from a dropdown, and DZBuild builds the address from your own store data:

Destination	Opens
Product	that product's page
Landing page	that landing page
Category	that category page
All products	your all-products page
Homepage	your store homepage

For Product, Landing page and Category a second dropdown appears listing your own active products, active landing pages and active categories. Only pages that belong to your store can be turned into a short link — which is also why the short link can never be pointed somewhere else by mistake.

You can add an optional title (up to 255 characters, e.g. summer campaign) so you can tell your links apart later. It is a label for you; it does not appear in the short link itself.

Each created link is stored as a card showing:

• a badge with the destination type,
• your optional title,
• the destination address (shortened for display, clickable),
• the short link itself with a Copy button,
• the Clicks count with a Refresh button,
• a QR code button and a Delete button.

The counter above the list shows how many links you have created out of the maximum for your store (1000).

Benefits

• One link that fits anywhere. Instagram and TikTok bios, ad captions and SMS are all short-form surfaces; a full product URL with a long slug often gets cut or looks untrustworthy.
• You learn which channel works. Create one link per destination, share it, then check the click count — you see how much traffic that page really pulled.
• Offline traffic becomes measurable. Download the QR code and put it on a flyer, a package insert or a shop window; scans land on the same tracked link.
• Nothing changes on your storefront. The add-on is dashboard-only: your store pages, checkout and order flow behave exactly as before, so activating it carries no risk to your sales.
• Your branding is preserved. If your store runs on a verified custom domain, the destination of the short link is that domain, not the default subdomain.

How to activate

1. Open Dashboard → Add-ons at /dashboard/addons.
2. Find Short Links & QR Codes under Marketing.
3. Click Activate (Free plan — available on every plan).
4. Unlike most add-ons, this one takes you straight to its management page at /dashboard/short-links, and a Short links entry appears in the sidebar.

If you open the page before activating, you get an "add-on is not active" screen with a button back to the Add-ons page. See the Add-ons catalog for the full list.

Using it

Create a link

1. Go to Dashboard → Short links.
2. Pick the destination type.
3. For a product, landing page or category, pick the exact item in the second dropdown.
4. Optionally type a title.
5. Click Create. The new link appears at the top of the list immediately.

tip

There is one short link per destination. If you create a link for a product that already has one, DZBuild returns the existing link and tells you a link already exists for that destination — you will not end up with two competing links for the same page.

Copy, QR code, clicks

• Copy — the copy button next to the short link puts it in your clipboard.
• QR code — the QR button opens a window with the QR code and the link underneath. Download saves it as a PNG image you can drop into a flyer, a story or a package insert.
• Clicks — each card shows the click count. It does not update by itself: press the refresh button on the card to fetch the latest number. Pressing it repeatedly within a few seconds simply returns the number that was just fetched.
• Delete — removes the link from your list after a confirmation.

warning

The destination is stored when the link is created. If you later connect a custom domain, or change a product's or category's slug, existing short links keep pointing at the old address. Delete those links and create them again so they follow the new address.

If the short-link service is being set up, a notice appears at the top of the page and the Create button is disabled. Existing links, their QR codes and their click counts are unaffected — try again later.

FAQ

Q: Can I shorten any URL, like a competitor's page or a Google Form? A: No. The destination is always one of your own store pages, chosen from the dropdowns. This is deliberate — it keeps your short-link domain trustworthy and stops it from being abused.

Q: Which plan do I need? A: The Free plan is enough. Every DZBuild plan can activate it.

Q: Do the click counts refresh on their own? A: No. Open the page and press the refresh button on a link to pull its current count. The number you see otherwise is the last one that was fetched.

Q: I deleted a link by mistake — is it gone forever? A: Create it again for the same destination and you get the same short link back, so anything you already printed or posted keeps working. Treat delete as tidying your list, not as a way to switch a shared link off.

Q: Where should I use these links? A: Anywhere a long URL is awkward — social bios, ad captions, SMS and WhatsApp messages, and printed material via the QR code. They pair well with landing pages for campaign traffic and with your pixels for measuring what those visitors do next.