Effective inventory management is critical for eCommerce businesses. Understanding customer demand, particularly for out-of-stock products, allows merchants to optimize their inventory levels, ensuring they capitalize on every sales opportunity. This report provides an in-depth analysis of back-in-stock requests generated through the Notify Me! app, offering valuable insights to help you make data-driven decisions.
1. Distribution of Requests by Day and Hour
The timing of customer engagement is crucial for inventory management. Analyzing when customers are most likely to request notifications for out-of-stock items helps you strategically anticipate demand and restock products.
Key Insights:
- Peak Hours: Requests significantly increase after 8 AM, with the highest concentration between 8 PM and 9 PM, indicating that users are most active during the day. This trend suggests that it's essential to have your stock and notifications ready early in the morning to capture these requests effectively.
- Peak Days: The highest number of requests occurs from Sunday to Thursday. This suggests that customers are most active in checking for product availability during the evenings on weekdays, possibly after work hours
Key Takeaway:
It is recommended that you restock products after 8 AM as the requests pile up. It is also important for stores to realize that even though they may not be at the store at night, there is a huge demand during that period, especially between 8 and 10 PM which needs to be restocked to get better results.
2. Distribution of Requests by Month
Understanding seasonal demand patterns is essential for effective inventory planning. This section analyzes the distribution of back-in-stock requests throughout the year, helping you prepare for fluctuations in customer demand.
Key Insights:
- Peak Months:
- November and January lead with 8.9% of the total requests each. These peaks are likely due to the holiday shopping season in November and the post-holiday shopping surge in January as the stores run out of stock during the holiday season.
- March and April also see a high volume of requests, each accounting for 8.8%, possibly driven by spring sales and the introduction of new seasonal products.
- May follows closely with 8.7% of requests, maintaining strong demand as spring shopping continues.
- Steady Months: The period from June to October and December shows a stable trend, with each month consistently receiving around 8% of the total requests. This stability indicates a baseline demand that persists throughout the year, outside of major shopping seasons.
Key Takeaway:
Begin increasing stock levels and preparing for potential back-in-stock notifications as early as October to meet the anticipated demand in the upcoming holiday season. Coordinate with suppliers to ensure timely restocking during this critical period. Meanwhile, maintaining a consistent stock level for the rest of the year will help you meet the steady demand without overstocking.
3. Request Growth After Installation
The age of Notify Me! installation has a direct correlation with the number of back-in-stock requests a merchant receives. This section explores how the number of requests grows over time, indicating the long-term value that Notify Me! brings to merchants.
Key Insights:
- Steady Growth Over Time: Merchants typically see a substantial increase in back-in-stock requests as they continue using Notify Me! Within the first six months, you can expect to receive around 650 requests. As the installation age extends to between one and three years, this number grows significantly, with an average of 2,300 total requests.
Key Takeaway:
As can be seen from the chart, the longer the app is in use, the more valuable it becomes for merchants, as customer engagement increases over time. This suggests a compounding effect where continuous use of the app leads to higher customer interaction and potentially more sales.
4. Request Distribution per Customer by Industry
The candlestick chart offers a detailed look at the number of back-in-stock requests per customer across different industries:
- Main Body (Real Subscription Rates): This part represents the middle range (25% to 75%) of the distribution of data. For example, in the Arts & Entertainment category, the 50% median subscription rate per customer is 1.3, with the main body ranging from 1.1 to 1.5 subscriptions.
- Low and Top Shadows (Extreme Values): Low shadow represents the lower 25% of customers, starting from at least 1 subscription, and top shadow shows the top 25% of customers. In this example, the maximum subscription rate per customer is 2.2, with 75% of customers subscribing at a rate below 1.6 and 25% below 1.1.
Key Takeaway:
Understanding these thresholds allows businesses to benchmark their performance against industry standards, helping them to set realistic goals and optimize their inventory strategies accordingly.
Conclusion
This report offers valuable insights into customer behavior concerning back-in-stock requests. By understanding when customers are most likely to request restocks, how seasonality affects demand, and how these patterns evolve over time and across industries, you can better anticipate demand, optimize inventory levels, and enhance their overall sales performance.
Notify Me! provides merchants with a powerful tool for capturing potential sales that might otherwise be lost due to stock shortages. By aligning your inventory strategy with the insights from this report, you can ensure that your store is always ready to meet customer demand, no matter when or where it occurs.
