Javascript Countdown Timer redirecting For Your Affiliate Links

A great way to scrub referrals (and help cloak affiliate links from Google) is by sending your users to a 'middleman' redirect page before handing them off to the Advertiser. With some offers though it'd be nice to be able to deliver one final 'parting' message or chance for up-sell before having them leave your site. For those situations I've found it handy to build out the 'middleman' pages using a javascript redirect timer that lets me delay the eventual redirect for however long I think is necessary for the visitor to read my farewell message or see that 'last-minute-offer.'

So that the user will know this is all part of the website experience, a simple countdown timer is shown letting them see how much time is left before the page changes. There's even a secondary option in the script that allows for a short one-liner to be displayed during the eventual redirect, though the transition is typically too quick for anyone to read (so it isn't mandatory, if left blank it will default to say "Redirecting... ").

/**
 * Copyright (C) 2006-2009, QuietAffiliate.com. All rights reserved.
 *
 * Script Name: Countdown Redirect
 *
 * THIS SOURCE CODE MAY BE USED FREELY PROVIDED THAT
 * YOU DO NOT REMOVE THIS MESSAGE.
 *
 * You can obtain this script at http://www.QuietAffiliate.com
 */
 
/*
     This script downloaded from www.JavaScriptBank.com
     Come to view and download over 2000+ free javascript at www.JavaScriptBank.com
*/
 
function countdownRedirect(url, msg)
{
   var TARG_ID = "COUNTDOWN_REDIRECT";
   var DEF_MSG = "Redirecting...";
 
   if( ! msg )
   {
      msg = DEF_MSG;
   }
 
   if( ! url )
   {
      throw new Error('You didn\'t include the "url" parameter');
   }
 
 
   var e = document.getElementById(TARG_ID);
 
   if( ! e )
   {
      throw new Error('"COUNTDOWN_REDIRECT" element id not found');
   }
 
   var cTicks = parseInt(e.innerHTML);
 
   var timer = setInterval(function()
   {
      if( cTicks )
      {
         e.innerHTML = --cTicks;
      }
      else
      {
         clearInterval(timer);
         document.body.innerHTML = msg;
         location = url;	  
      }
 
   }, 1000);
}

To use just upload the countdownRedirect.js script to your webserver and add the following code to the header on your 'middleman' page:

<script src="countdownRedirect.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

In order to have the countdown start automatically once the page is loaded, you're going to want to then add the 'onload' attribute to the main 'body' tag. This is also where you'll tell the script what page to eventually redirect the user to as well as what (if any) redirect message to display:

in this example the eventual redirect will be to http://www.QuietAffiliate.com with no secondary redirect message

<body onload='countdownRedirect("http://www.QuietAffiliate.com")'>

If I wanted to change the default redirect message, "Redirecting... ", to something different (i.e. "Thank You For Visiting"), then I would use:

<body onload='countdownRedirect("http://www.JavaScriptBank.com", "Thank You For Visiting")'>

Now build-out your page as desired. The only thing missing is to tell the script how long the countdown is for and then display the timer on the page. We do that by adding the following code in with our content:

in this example I have the countdown timer set to 10 seconds, you can adjust accordingly

<span class="counter" id="COUNTDOWN_REDIRECT">10</span>

There you go! You can change how the countdown timer looks via CSS. This is the most basic example of how you can use this script but hopefully it saves you some time/gives you some ideas.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
 
<html>
<head>
<title>QuietAffiliate.com Javascript Countdown Redirect Demo</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
 
<style type="text/css">
body {
   color: black;
   background: white;
   font: bold 18pt Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
   text-align: center;
}
 
span.counter {
   color: red;
   cursor: default;
   font-size: larger;
}
 
div.info {
   margin: 0 auto;
   text-align: left;
   font-size: smaller;
   width: 80%;
   margin-top: 2em;
}
</style>
 
<script src="countdownRedirect.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
 
<body onload='countdownRedirect("http://www.JavaScriptBank.com", "Thanks For Visiting")'>
 
<div>QuietAffiliate.com - countdownRedirect.js Demo Page</div>
 
<div class="info">This is a demo page of the redirect script in action, code and instructions can be found at <strong>QuietAffiliate.com</strong><br /><br /><center>You will automatically be redirected in <span class="counter" id="COUNTDOWN_REDIRECT">10</span> seconds.</center>
</div>
</body>
</html>