As an e-commerce business owner, one of the challenges you may face is managing your inventory effectively. When products go out of stock, it's essential to consider how you handle these situations on your Shopify store. Out-of-stock products can cause huge headaches for online stores. Low inventory can make customers dissatisfied by not providing the products they want, or it can even lead to frustrations due to long wait times and backorders.

Hiding out of stock products on Shopify store might seem like a convenient option, but it can have both positive and negative effects on your business. In this article, we'll explore the key idea behind hiding out of stock items, how to do it, and the benefits of implementing back-in-stock alerts in order to maximize customer engagement.

How hiding out of stock products can affect your Shopify store?

Deciding whether to hide out of stock products shopify store is an important consideration for e-commerce businesses. While hiding these items may seem like a straightforward solution, it is essential to weigh the pros and cons before implementing this strategy.

Pros

Enhanced User Experience

By hiding out of stock products on Shopify store, you can create a more seamless and positive shopping experience for your customers. When visitors browse your store, they won't be confronted with items that they can't purchase, avoiding frustration and disappointment. This can contribute to improved customer satisfaction and potentially higher conversion rates.

Improved Conversion Rates

Removing out-of-stock products from view can help boost your conversion rates. When customers see only in-stock items, they are more likely to make a purchase without the frustration of finding their desired product unavailable.

Efficient Inventory Management

Hiding out of stock products on Shopify allows you to focus on managing available inventory effectively. You can allocate your resources towards restocking popular products or identifying alternatives, ensuring a smoother operation.

Cons

Lower Transparency

Hiding out of stock items may lead to reduced transparency and trust with your customers. If shoppers expect a specific product to be available based on previous browsing or recommendations, they might feel deceived or misled when they find it hidden or unavailable during the purchase process. Striking a balance between showcasing available items and indicating temporarily out-of-stock items can help maintain transparency and foster trust with your audience.

Missed Sales Opportunities

When you hide out of stock products on your Shopify store, you might miss out on potential sales from customers who are willing to wait or pre-order. Some buyers are patient and willing to wait for restocked items, so by not displaying the out-of-stock products, you risk missing potential sales and losing customer loyalty.

Potential SEO Impact

Hiding out of stock items can have negative impacts on search engine optimization (SEO) and indexing of your store. If you remove or hide product pages temporarily, it can generate broken URLs, and search engines may not index them, affecting your search visibility and ranking. Consider utilizing SEO-friendly strategies such as displaying the out-of-stock status and estimated replenishment dates or implementing alternative solutions, like displaying pre-order options, to maintain visibility and minimize potential SEO drawbacks.

How to hide out of stock products on Shopify

Hiding out of stock inventory on your Shopify store can be quite difficult, especially if you do it manually. However, there are several ways to make it happen that we’ll discuss here:

Archive sold-out products 

One of the easiest ways to hide out of stock products on your Shopify store is to archive the products. This way, you can hide them from your sales channels and Shopify admin. You will find them using the status filter in your product list.

To do this, simply log into your Shopify account, and go to Products > All Products. Select the product you want to archive. On the pop-up menu, you can see more actions to archive the item.

You can also archive the products in bulk by selecting them and clicking the “bulk edit” to make them unpublished from your store.

Set Product Status to Draft

Another way to hide out of stock products on Shopify is to set the product status to “draft”. This will keep the product unpublished from your store. To do this, simply go to the same section as before, but this time select “Set as draft”. 

Like archiving option, you can draft your products in bulk.

Set Automatic Collection Rules

You can also create collection rules to automatically sort (or exclude) certain products in specific collections, or hide them from general search results. 

To do this, go to Products > Collections. Here you can create custom collections based on the inventory type. Simply create a new “Sold Out” collection and use it to link out-of-stock products. 

Next, in the conditions section, click “Add another condition”. If you don’t see any Conditions section, your collection is not automatic, and you can’t continue with this method.

Then, from the drop-down, select Inventory stock is greater than 0. Your product is no longer visible on your collections page.

These are the three common ways to hide your out of stock products on your Shopify store. Let’s see why you’d better not hide your inventory and what you should do instead.

Better Call: Back-in-Stock Notifications 

Instead of hiding your out of stock products on Shopify, you can set up back-in-stock alerts. Back-in-stock alert allows shoppers to subscribe to products they are interested in and receive notifications when the product is available again, persuading them to go back to your store to complete a purchase.

This feature can maximize customer engagement and ensure that customers can find what they are looking for. And it is also a great way to gather insights on customer purchasing behavior, as you can track what products customers are interested in and when they are most likely to purchase.

To enable Back in Stock, log in to your Shopify store and install Notify Me! Back in Stock Alerts app. You can set up the widget for your out-of-stock product in less than 5 minutes. Here you will find the basic instructions.

Need to know more? Watch this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPQrCr98VLc

Final Word

Out-of-stock products can be a huge issue for online stores, and the best solution is to ensure that customers are presented with accurate inventory information. As such, hiding out-of-stock products on Shopify can sometimes be advised as a way to maintain customer satisfaction and keep the flow of orders uninterrupted. However, it can result in potential missed sales opportunities, transparency concerns, and SEO problems!

So it is important to know when to hide out of stock products on Shopify and what to do instead, such as implementing back-in-stock alert features. By doing this, you can ensure that customers have an easy way to be informed when a product is available again, and you can also maximize customer engagement in the process.