Custom Survey URL

Hi ​@MB_XPM ,

You’re on the right track with what you’ve found so far. A Qualtrics vanity URL on its own won’t fully meet this requirement.

A couple of things worth clarifying:

Even with a vanity URL set up, for example www.brandlistens.com, Qualtrics surveys still need to load using /jfe/form/SV_XXXXXX. That part of the URL can’t be removed or hidden while the respondent is taking the survey.

Because of this, the browser address bar will always show the actual hosted page, so it isn’t possible to keep it displaying only www.brandlistens.com throughout the survey experience.

Trying to mask the URL without a proper secure redirect usually results in errors, which sounds like what you’ve already run into.

In terms of approaches that do work:

Option 1
Have the client own a short, simple entry URL or QR code such as www.brandlistens.com. That URL can capture query string parameters like visit date or location and then securely redirect, using HTTPS, to the full Qualtrics survey URL. This is the most common and future proof approach, especially for printed receipts.

Option 2

Use a small redirect survey in Qualtrics whose only purpose is to accept parameters and immediately route respondents to the target survey.

If the client has configured a Qualtrics vanity URL using the same domain, this redirect survey can load under that vanity domain. However, the URL will still include the additional path details such as /jfe/form, which can’t be avoided.

For this reason, it’s usually better to use a branded subdomain rather than the main root domain, for example survey.brandlistens.com instead of brandlistens.com. This keeps the experience consistent and branded, while setting the right expectation that additional URL details will be visible once the survey loads.

This option helps with parameter handling and routing logic, but it will still result in a redirect and the Qualtrics survey path being visible in the address bar.

For reference, here’s the official Qualtrics documentation on vanity URLs:
https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/sp-administration/brand-customization-services/vanity-urls/#ImplementingaVanityURL

Hope this helps clarify the limitations and available options.

Arun

​@arunxmarchitect thank you for the information, very helpful!  As a follow up for option 2, I’m trying to understand this option a little bit better.  If we setup www.brandlistens.com as the vanity URL, but then used surveys.brandlistens.com as the actual survey invite URL, how would that URL actually point to the survey?  Would it be through some kind of redirect we have to setup? So someone types in survey.brandlistens.com, and then we redirect them to www.brandlistens.com/jfe/form/SV_XXXX?

This would then continue to show brandlistens.com in the address bar, but would require both a CNAME to be setup as well as a redirect from the subdomain.

Does that all sound correct?

My lack of understanding networking is showing :)

If you have control over the brandlistens.com and create pages there, the simplest option would be to create a new page, lets call it www.brandlistens.com/survey

1. Embedd your Qualtrics survey in this page as an iframe
2. Ask people to enter some identifier, like reciept id on the first page. Use a web service to pull the relevant data from your dataset.

This will ensure the domain stays www.brandlistens.com/survey and the survey is also customized to each respondent.