Turn Out-of-Stock Products into Sales with NotifyWhenAvailable
Accurate stock level communication can help you bring back a lot of profit that you are losing from products that are temporarily unavailable. This post will explain how you can take advantage of out-of-stock products and keep selling using the NotifyWhenAvailable module.
Imagine that you have just found the winter boots that you have been interested in for more than a week. They are right in front of you and the price is right. You add them to your cart and hit “Confirm Order.” Next thing you see - an email saying that the boots are actually out of stock.
Horrible feeling, right? Most sites fail in the way they are displaying unavailable products. Don’t make your customers go through the same.
15% of customers abandon their carts due to products being out-of-stock.
How to prevent losing customers due to out-of-stock frustration
There are a few steps to take:
A clear indication that a product is not available.
As soon as a product has run out of stock, this should be indicated on your product page with a clear message (Currently Unavailable, Out-of-Stock, etc). The message should be in a visible place where it will notify visitors that the product is not available for purchase at the moment.
This is a better alternative to leaving the product page unchanged. From a user experience point of view, It will save time for your customer, instead of misleading them. Receiving an email that says the product you ordered is actually out of stock is almost never perceived with a positive emotion. In such cases, there is a bigger chance for the customer to leave your store and not plan on coming back.
Display similar or related products.
To compensate for the missing product, suggest items that are similar by category, brand, color, name or other. There is a good chance that another product with a slight difference might also be useful and purchased. Much better than not making a sale at all.
Do not remove the product or display a 404 error page.
Why remove the unavailable item or redirect the product page to a 404 page if you can still it? Some stores even create a link leading to the home page, which is not that useful. As an alternative, it’s better to use the existing page and direct to related products like we described above.
Customer experience improvement for out-of-stock products
NotifyWhenAvailable is one of these modules with simple usability, but a lot of functionality. It can help an OpenCart store owner with a number of user experience techniques.
Notify customers instead of losing them
If a user is interested in a product and wants to make a purchase that, it’s more likely for them to look for the item elsewhere if it’s not available at the time. However, if you replace the “Out-of-Stock” button with a “Notify Me!” button, you increase your chances that the user will actually choose to make the purchase and wait until the stock is replenished.
Another trick to boost your chances of conversion is adding an incentive for the customer to compensate for making them wait. Something like a small discount, free shipping or a gift to go with the product can make a lot of difference.
Custom pop up notifications and messages
Personalize the notifications that your customers receive and tweak the pop up message to make it more eye-catching. After enabling NotifyWhenAvailable, you will be able to configure the text on the pop up into whatever you see fit.
You can also change the email template into something that will suit you better. This field can also be used to include any special conditions such as a discount or free delivery.
Set up a pre-order option
The module can also be used to allow your users to pre-order out-of-stock items that they are interested in. This further helps retain your customers as it’s another way to encourage sales by adding some special offers such as exclusive content or items for pre-ordering the product.
Track customer loyalty with a waiting list
The waiting list lets you view the most wanted products and how many people are waiting for their availability. This type of data gives you an idea of the customer loyalty that your store is generating.
This is important because it indicates the level of satisfaction and positive emotions customers have with your store and products. Knowing this gives you a lot of new ground to cover and experiment with different methods of boosting customer loyalty.
Summary
All of these practices help improve the user experience and engagement that your Ecommerce website offers. NotifyWhenAvailable is a simple yet powerful integration that will give you a lot of functionality and data to work with. Let us know how helpful this module is for you in the comments section below!
