Search Driven Redirects: Another Detail Salesforce Commerce Cloud Got Right

So here’s an edge case that isn’t as edgy as it seems: let’s say a visitor to your ecommerce store searches your catalog, but instead of going to the normal search results page, you want to send him to a special page about that subject.

This case has endless uses. Well, almost endless. Here are some examples:

• Someone searches in the product search box for “Christmas trees” and you want to send them NOT just to all your products including Christmas trees (which would be listed first, of course) but to the super-duper cool page all about Christmas trees that you guys built… just in time for Christmas.
• Someone searches in the product search box for “discounts” and, well, that’s not quite a product so it would just come up blank. But you want to send them to the Featured Discounts page your team has put together.
• Someone searches for a product of yours, but you’re now testing out a special landing page just for that product, and you want people interested in that product to see that landing page and not just the normal results in the normal results list.

These are interesting cases for when you may want to send someone not to the standard search results page but another page. What makes them interesting is that it’s the sort of case you always think, “Oh, I wish I could do that…. But gosh darn it, software limitations!”

But guess what platform has the functionality to enable you to redirect certain product searches to pages you specify? You got it! Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

This is SFCC’s “Redirect Search” functionality. It’s one of the many hidden gems of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, details that taken together put it head and shoulders above any competitor.

Here’s how it works. You define a search phrase that, if searched for by a user in the product search, shouldn’t go to the normal search results, but instead you want it to go to a different page on the site.

Then, for that phrase, you can define a bunch of different parameters around it, including:

• The language of the site. (Perhaps someone searching for “Bardot” on your French site should be directed to the music products page, but on your American site should be directed to the bags page!)
• You don’t necessarily need to take them to a URL — you could take them to a particular product page, particular category page, or another section of the site.

There are various other options to configure as well: should it send the visitor to the secure, or insecure version of the page? (Although, in 2020, why would anyone want to send a visitor to an insecure version? In fact, why would anyone?)

This feature is another example of why Salesforce Commerce Cloud is good for the picky sort of client who wants every obscure edge case covered… but then would under-use them. And who doesn’t want to build them from scratch, but wants them ready-made. Sounds just like you, right? I thought so: we each do have a bit of the perfectionist inside of us. And the perfect is the enemy of the good, as Voltaire reminds us. Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

PS: UV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud development & strategy teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.