One of the most exhilarating things an e-commerce entrepreneur can ever experience is getting their products sold out for the first time. This point often marks the success of the company’s marketing strategies and may feel like the culmination of the effort and time you’ve poured into sourcing or producing that item.
But upon reeling yourself back in, you’ll discover that a new challenge awaits you: that of how to maximize your current momentum. Many businesses like yours make the mistake of riding too long on that high and thus fail to plan for what happens after their first big hit.
Selling out a product for the first time affords you the opportunity to analyze your sales data, figure out what you’ve done right, and engage with your customers to understand their preferences and strategize for future demand. If steps like these aren’t met, and if you’re not able to capitalize on the high bar you’ve set for yourself, it could lead to customer frustration and losses down the line.
How you respond to sold-out situations can either pave the way for increased customer retention and strengthened sales or result in missed opportunities and mistrust. Any entrepreneur would want the former outcome for their business, so here are some tips to help you achieve that:
Indicate Your Sold-out Stats on the Product Page
If you’ve discovered that a product of yours has sold out, double-check your site to see if the product’s availability status is reflected correctly on the web page. Customers may visit your store and see that the product is available even when it’s not, so it’s best to be upfront about the stock status to avoid conflicts or misunderstandings. This practice will show transparency on your end and encourage customers to explore your other products or return to the website once the product is back in stock.
Suggest Alternative Products to Meet Customer Needs
You can also prevent customers from exiting your page upon discovering that the initial product they wanted is sold out by guiding them to similar items or alternatives. This strategy helps you retain customers and make the most out of your revenue potential. To effectively implement this, ensure that your recommendations are relevant and are aligned with the customers’ initial interests. You can utilize data analytics on your website to get a good grasp of your customers’ general preferences and adjust the suggestions based on this information.
For example, if a new t-shirt design was sold out, you can offer customers personalised embroidered shirts so that they could make up their designs and therefore complete a purchase.
In addition, to decrease bounce rates after having sold out a product in your store, you can integrate a Shopify payment gateway to make the checkout process for alternative products quick and easy. An advanced payment gateway, like that of the Philippines’ Maya Plugin for Shopify, will allow for a smoother transaction experience and ease the checkout issues that often lead to cart abandonment.
Implement a Waitlist or Back-in-Stock Notification Feature
Imagine your customers’ excitement when they receive a notification that a sold-out product has been restocked. To keep the momentum going for a best-selling item, encourage your customers to subscribe to your waitlist or to back-in-stock alerts from your store to inform them about when their desired product is available again. This feature will help forecast demand for popular items, as you can observe the subscription rates and make calculated decisions about your restocking schedule and amounts.
Accept Pre-Orders for High-Demand Products
For products that sell out quickly due to high demand, consider offering your customers a pre-order option, too. Opening pre-orders for a product can help you gauge your customers’ interest and ensure you meet their demands during the next restock.
Pre-orders can also generate early revenue and provide crucial information regarding the product’s popularity. This allows you to make more accurate predictions about future stocking needs.
Be Transparent about Your Restocking Schedule
Many businesses fail to update their consumers about restocking schedules, which often leads to customers becoming frustrated and simply taking their business elsewhere. Hence, you’ll want to make an effort to show transparency about when your products will be back in stock if you want to maintain positive customer relationships and keep your current customers coming back to your store.
Provide estimated restock dates to help manage customer expectations and reduce uncertainty, and update your customers about your restocking progress through your website or social media accounts. They’ll appreciate the updates, which in turn will increase their chances of returning to your store once the item has become available again.
Improve Your Inventory Management
Effective inventory management helps prevent frequent stockouts and ensures that popular products are always available for your customers. When one of your products sells out, take the opportunity to improve your inventory management processes and keep the restocking and sales cycle going.
Utilize your sales data and analyze your customer behavior trends to predict consumer demand more accurately and to adjust your inventory levels accordingly. You should also be able to identify patterns related to which products sell out quickly to improve upon your purchasing decisions and help you maintain the right stock level. Ultimately, this will decrease the costs associated with holding too much stock, such as storage and insurance, while minimizing lost sales due to out-of-stock items.
Seize the Moment Every Time You Sell Out
The next time you sell out items in your shop, always remember how crucial the after part is. Your goal should be to keep customers knowledgeable about the status of the product and excited about when they can get it again for themselves, turning any initial disappointment about your sold-out status into a positive experience that enables long-term loyalty and trust.
Again, don’t stop after you’ve made one big hit; clear the path for even higher sales, and an even greater number of happy customers served by your e-commerce business.
Suggest Alternative Products to Meet Customer Needs
You can also prevent customers from exiting your page upon discovering that the initial product they wanted is sold out by guiding them to similar items or alternatives. This strategy helps you retain customers and make the most out of your revenue potential. To effectively implement this, ensure that your recommendations are relevant and are aligned with the customers’ initial interests. You can utilize data analytics on your website to get a good grasp of your customers’ general preferences and adjust the suggestions based on this information.
For example, if a new t-shirt design was sold out, you can offer customers personalised embroidered shirts so that they could make up their designs and therefore complete a purchase.
In addition, to decrease bounce rates after having sold out a product in your store, you can integrate a Shopify payment gateway to make the checkout process for alternative products quick and easy. An advanced payment gateway, like that of the Philippines’ Maya Plugin for Shopify, will allow for a smoother transaction experience and ease the checkout issues that often lead to cart abandonment.
Chris Masanto, the CEO and co-founder of PetLab Co., said, “When one of our most popular joint care supplements for senior dogs sold out unexpectedly, we knew our customers—many of whom rely on this product to support their pets’ mobility—couldn’t afford to wait. The challenge was how to maintain trust without the product they depended on. Instead of leaving them frustrated, we quickly pivoted and suggested an alternative from our joint care chews offering similar benefits. By personalizing our recommendations based on each pet’s health history and needs, we helped customers find immediate solutions and introduced them to products they might not have considered before. This approach kept customer loyalty intact and deepened our relationship with them, showing we were committed to their pets’ long-term well-being.”
