Don’t Lose Customers To Sold Out Pages

When a customer is looking for something specific, they come across your store, and they see that the item they want is out of stock, what do you think their first action is going to be? If they’re on the hunt for that particular product, they may see this as an opportunity to venture away if merchants don’t find a way to keep them around. What you want for your store is to generate traffic and keep it there, and there are ways to go about this even if an item is sold out.

There are any number of reasons why a product may be sold out. If your store sells hand-crafted items, you may only have so many before more will need to be remade. Some products may be seasonal, and once they’re gone for the season they’re gone. In other circumstances, brands may discontinue certain items and they’re no longer available to re-order.

There are 3 main strategies merchants can use to pleasantly surprise customers and keep them interested despite a sold out disappointment. Customers are less likely to be disappointed for long if they feel they’re being accounted for, and they may even use this time to further peruse what you have to offer.

The first strategy is to offer an email signup. With this signup, customers provide their email to be notified when the item you’re sold out of is back in stock, so they can still get what they want, just not right now. The second strategy is best used when you’re not likely to get the item back, and that’s to provide a landing page with other suggestions similar to the product the customer was looking for. Lastly, merchants can offer a pre-order page that allows the customer to order the item now even if it will need to be shipped to them later when the pre-order comes in.