Redirect by Product Category

Category redirects let you redirect customers based on the product category of what they bought, without needing to set up a rule for every individual product. This is ideal for stores with large catalogues where products are already organised into meaningful categories.

How It Works

When a customer completes checkout, ThankRedirect checks the categories of every product in their order. If any product belongs to a category that has a redirect rule, the customer is sent to the corresponding destination.

Category redirects are checked after product redirects, so if an order matches both a product rule and a category rule, the product rule wins. See How Redirect Priority Works for the full order.

Setting Up a Category Redirect

1. Go to ThankRedirect in your WordPress admin
2. Find the Category Redirects section
3. Click Add New to create a new category redirect rule

Selecting Categories

Start typing a category name in the selector field. All your WooCommerce product categories will appear in the dropdown. You can select multiple categories in a single rule if they should all go to the same destination.

Choosing the Destination

Choose either a WordPress Page from the dropdown or enter a Custom URL.

Multiple Category Rules

You can create as many category redirect rules as you need. Each rule is evaluated separately. Rules are checked in the order you created them, and the first match wins.

Example setup:

• Category “Digital Products” → redirect to /downloads/
• Category “Online Courses” → redirect to /course-portal/
• Category “Physical Gifts” → use global redirect

When Category Redirects Are Especially Useful

• Large catalogues: You have dozens or hundreds of products but only a handful of categories. Setting one rule per category is far more manageable than one rule per product.
• Consistent post-purchase experience by product type: All digital products go to one page, all physical products go to another.
• New products automatically covered: When you add a new product and assign it to an existing category, it’s automatically covered by that category’s redirect rule. No extra setup needed.

Subcategories

Category redirects match on exact category assignment. If a product is assigned to a subcategory (e.g., “Laptops” under “Electronics”), you should add a redirect rule for the subcategory specifically. The parent category rule will not automatically apply to subcategory products.

Pro tip: Category redirects are a great way to future-proof your setup. Assign products to well-named categories and set redirect rules at the category level, then any new product you add inherits the correct redirect automatically.