Getting Started with Redirects

Introduction to redirects

This guide will provide you with the necessary information to enable you to use redirects in the Merchandising Studio. Any Merchandising Studio user (with the required studio privileges) can create, edit and delete redirects.

Prerequisites

• You have defined the triggers for the desired redirect in advance.
• You need to have permissions to create a redirect.

Overview

Redirects allow you to divert search queries, sending users to a fixed location instead of returning the results of the search query itself.

• User Location
• Keywords
• One of the above plus Date and Time

What is a trigger?

Triggers define, where, when or under what circumstances an action occurs in your Merchandising Studio. An action is something a customer does when they are looking for products or items in your catalogue. This could be a search on your site or navigating to a product listing page. Therefore, add a redirect that matches your strategy.

• Triggers are “conjunctive”, used when a trigger AND an action have been configured. When a user reaches searches for A AND show them X products/page.
• All trigger conditions must be satisfied to result in the action.

Triggers are selected from the dropdown (this list is taken from a demo site):

As mentioned above triggers are inherited from the parent scope, and applied automatically based on how they are set up in System > Management in your Merchandising Studio. You may want to use these triggers or add one or more triggers to specify a keyword or user location.

Multiple triggers can be created within one redirect. For example, you want to set up a redirect in advance of a sale or promotion which launches tomorrow and lasts for 2 weeks. Therefore tomorrow, when a shopper searches for a sale, they will be redirected to a specially merchandised sale page.

Here's how the trigger settings may be configured:

Note that inherited triggers can only be changed in System > Management in your Merchandising Studio.

Action

You will also need to add an action when creating your redirect, this is simply the redirect URL.

Scopes & priorities

You can view all the redirects from the homepage. When you have selected the scope, the redirects will be listed in priority order. This is the priority in which they will be applied when the trigger is met.

You can change the priority of a redirect by changing the number in the box, remember you will need to click on the dropdown in the top left hand to choose your scope first:

Scenarios

1. A shopper types 'help' into the search area of your site, you can redirect them to your customer service page within your website or to an alternative site completely. 
2. A shopper types 'men's sale' as a search term, and you will redirect them to a campaign page.
   1. You can add an additional trigger for date and time, i.e. if your sale runs for a specific period, this redirect will only take them to the campaign during the date and time specified in the trigger.
3. A shopper types 'shipping' into the search area of your site, you can redirect them to your delivery page within your website.

Best practices

• Regularly review and manage your redirects to ensure they are still fit for purpose.
• Ensure you have set up a redirect for common keywords (search terms) e.g. 'Delivery', 'Shipping' or 'Contact'.

Are you ready to create a redirect? View our step by step guide.