If you run a WooCommerce shop, you know that when an item shows as “out of stock,” you have two options. You may either leave the “out of stock” message to build up consumer interest or remove it to prevent customer disappointment and direct their attention to currently available products.
In actuality, there are a variety of situations in which you would want to highlight a product even if it is temporarily unavailable. When a product is temporarily out of stock but will soon be available for purchase again, for instance, you may indicate this by displaying an “out of stock” message.
However, choices are available if you want to handle out of stock products from your online store. Using a plugin is preferable to the restricted functionality of WooCommerce’s built-in choices.
How to Handle WooCommerce Out of Stock Products
Problems with product pages that are out of supply might be difficult to solve. You shouldn’t hide them entirely, but they shouldn’t be front and center. Since there’s no point in attracting customers interested in products you can’t presently provide, you shouldn’t advertise them.
Reusing these pages will keep your consumers engaged rather than sending them to a new location or displaying a notification about a broken link.
Here we’ll examine some approaches for handling product pages that are temporarily unavailable to keep the customer coming back. Aside from increasing the likelihood of a sale, this will also raise the customer’s lifetime value since they will be more likely to frequent your establishment. Following these guidelines will result in happier site visitors.
Show Related Products
If you know what your customers like and how they shop, you may tailor the product page to serve them better. Knowing the shopper’s preferences in advance allows you to better segment the store’s inventory and increase sales.
To achieve this, you may set up groupings of related products to display as replacements for out of stock products. These pre-set product categories will help you avoid losing sales and maintain customer engagement. This is called upselling a product.
Redirecting customers from a product page to the homepage is not recommended. The bounce rate rises because consumers are forced to complete extra steps they don’t need to. Keep your customers engaged by constantly presenting new products for them to pursue. You can easily use plugins like ProductX to do that, as they have such facilities and vast customization options.
Inform the Customer of the Product’s Restock
Products that are temporarily out of stock provide a perfect chance for your e-commerce platform to add the client to your email list. Instead of sending them to a different product page or suggesting alternatives, you may collect their email addresses and inform them when the out of stock item is available again.
This increases your chances of attracting new subscribers and selling more to your current customers. It’s a great way to get people to check out your site and return for more since you’re essentially leveraging their inbox as free advertising.
Hide WooCommerce Out of Stock Page Visibility
Suppose a product is temporarily out of stock. In that case, one solution is to move its listing to the end of relevant searches or the bottom of the page. Customers will be less likely to click on the listing and be dissatisfied if you reduce its exposure. The “out of sight, out of memory” principle is at work here.
It might be challenging to adjust automatically for stock levels. Retailers may anticipate product shortages using inventory monitoring and management software, which companies with several product lines often use.
This is a fantastic strategy if you have the resources to do so and advance notice that a product may soon go out of supply.
Filter WooCommerce Out of Stock Products
What if…? You can filter products based on their stock availability. Like, using product filters to showcase available or out of stock products? Not to mention, you can’t do it without a plugin; that’s why ProductX is here to make things easy. You can use the product filter feature of ProductX to filter out WooCommerce out of stock products easily.
Cheese your way through customer retention possibilities with amazing ways and gain opportunities to satisfy customers in a unique way. Your store will be totally out of the box, and customer satisfaction will boom!
Show the Availability Status Clearly
Avoid upsetting clients by clearly marking products out of stock on the category search pages. This prevents potential customers from visiting the page for the unavailable product (or from visiting merely to see if and when it will become available again, if at all).
Indicating a product’s upfront availability allows customers to avoid landing on a “no longer available” page and instead visit a page with a better chance of converting them into buyers.
There may be a delay in shipping if a certain product size or color is temporarily out of stock. In addition to specifying the product’s overall availability, you may also list certain sizes or color options available. ProductX has a stock progress bar to show your customers how many products are available.
Offer Backorders to Gain Customer Satisfaction
Even though a product is out of stock, you may still take backorders for it. Providing this service will offer your clientele something to anticipate. This method guarantees the sale even if the item is temporarily out of stock.
If you use a backorder system, provide your customers with as much information as possible so they may make a well-informed purchase.
While we mentioned ProductX earlier, they also have backorder options, with a lot of additional settings like availability quantity/date/message, which you can customize to show it however you like. Also, you can backorder variable products using this amazing plugin ProductX.
Why Should You Hide WooCommerce Out of Stock Products?
Some of the real products you provide via your online store will sell out. When this occurs, you have the option of:
- If a product is out of stock, don’t show its price or availability to Google users, but still direct them to the product page.
- Show the product without the price and include a “notify me” option so that customers may sign up for alerts when the item is back in stock.
- Please disable the “Add to basket” button to prevent potential buyers from purchasing the item.
- Ignore the fact that they are out of stock.
There are benefits and drawbacks to each of these choices. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to conceal out of stock products. Suppose an item is temporarily out of stock. In that case, WooCommerce will replace the traditional Buy or Add to Cart button on its Shop page with a Read more button. The product page will also remove the “Buy” button if the item is unavailable.
Some people may find this inconvenient, particularly if your products have a short shelf life or you often update your stock. So, temporarily concealing the unavailable products might be a smart option if you just want to show things that are available and ready to ship. Let’s have a look at the WooCommerce settings that enable this!
Why Avoid the “404” Error in Out of Stock Product Page?
A “404 Not Found” error signifies that the requested page does not exist or has been removed. Removing the page because an item is no longer available is not a good idea. If the page is deleted, restoring it will be more work when the item becomes available again.
Additionally, suppose you change a site into a 404 error. In that case, you will lose valuable backlinks that assist your site in search results. Any time a user encounters a 404 error, it has a negative effect on your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) ranking.
When a product is temporarily out of stock, rather than deleting the page altogether, you may utilize that time to provide alternatives or make other adjustments to the page to improve the customer experience. An item temporarily out of stock might nevertheless be used to direct the customer’s attention to other products.
A customer who finds your site through a search engine only to find a broken link is unlikely to return. Your Google Ads conversion rate and your site’s performance in organic search results will benefit from your efforts to keep these pages updated and relevant.
Conclusion
Not all sales or customer satisfaction may be lost when an item is temporarily out of stock. Don’t worry about how Google will react if you delete or update these pages. You might be harming your search engine optimization (SEO) if you don’t.
Changing the content on the product page may also help drive more purchases. Avoid exposing out of stock products to customers or inform them through email when you have more. Pre-orders and lengthy delivery times may discourage immediate purchases.
Consider using any of these strategies to increase sales from product pages that are currently out of stock. Best of Luck!
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