Redirects by term

Taking whoever types certain words straight to the right page, instead of to a list of products that doesn't answer.

Not everything typed into a search box is answered with products. Whoever types "shipping" wants the shipping page. Whoever types "where is my order" wants the tracking. Whoever types the name of the campaign they saw on Instagram wants its landing page.

A redirect rule takes the visitor straight to a URL, without going through results.

Creating one

It's a type of rule like the others, in Search → Merchandising: the condition, the destination URL, the dates and the position. The conditions that make sense here are nearly always exact search and search contains.

It's worth starting with the exact ones. A redirect on "contains: order" catches "order a dress" and sends someone who was buying to the tracking page, which is the opposite of what you wanted.

The cases that are worth it

• Service: shipping, returns, order tracking, contacts, opening hours of the physical shops.
• Campaigns: the campaign name or the promo code lead to the landing page. With dates, it comes and goes on its own.
• Brands with a page of their own: if you have a page built for a brand, it answers better than a list of its products.
• Terms that return zero because they aren't products: instead of a dead end, a page that answers. See searches with no results.

The ones that aren't

• Categories. A search for "dresses" wants to see dresses, with filters and sorting, and not a fixed category page that doesn't let you filter anything.
• A specific product. The product card already takes you there, and the visitor keeps the context to go back and compare.

The question that separates the two cases: does the visitor want to choose, or to know? Whoever wants to choose needs the results; whoever wants to know needs the page.

Rehearsing

In the playground, a redirect rule that fires shows the destination but isn't followed. That's on purpose: in a rehearsal, what matters is confirming that it fires and where to, not leaving the panel halfway through the job.

It's the way to catch a "contains" that's too broad before it goes out to the shop.