Get Your Out-of-Stock Pages Ready For Holidays

How to Make the Most of Your Out-of-Stock Pages for Holiday Sales

Out-of-stock pages are both a gift and a curse for e-commerce sites. On one hand, running out of stock means that your site is converting leads and selling merchandise. On the other hand, finding an out-of-stock message can be frustrating for consumers or worse — ultimately cost a sale and affect how likely a customer will be to return in the future, depending on their overall experience with your site. While selling out of merchandise can be inevitable, especially during a busy holiday shopping season, temporary and permanent out-of-stock pages offer e-commerce sites a unique opportunity to engage and convert consumers that are ready to buy.  

Beyond the Basic 404: How to Do More With Temporary and Permanent Out-of-Stock Pages for Your E-Commerce Site

To shop and sell online is to come across an out-of-stock page from time to time, commonly in the shape of a 404 error message or a redirect to another page on the site, sometimes with little to no explanation to the consumer (pro tip: Don't ignore a thoughtful and targeted redirect!). But like the rest of your site, a temporary or permanent out-of-stock page offers a unique opportunity to offer consumers useful content that can lead to more sales and engagement with your brand during the holidays and throughout the year.  

 Like every other page and piece of content on your site, out-of-stock pages affect your SEO rankings and overall user experience (UX). A temporary out-of-stock page can have an advantage over a page for merchandise that will not be restocked or has been permanently discontinued by the manufacturer, but even if a particular piece of merchandise is gone forever, the real estate it once occupied on your website can still affect your rankings and organic search results on Google.

Keep the Customer and User Experience in Mind

Because product pages are more specific and targeted than category pages or a general home page, visitors to product pages are more likely than not to come to your site ready to make a purchase. Generally speaking, there are two types of holiday shoppers on a product page:

• Shoppers looking for the specific product

• Shoppers who came across your product page through a promotion or general search from a broader category of merchandise

What happens next when both types of consumers land on an out-of-stock page comes down to the quality of the user experience. A 404 error page for permanently out-of-stock items, or a confusing page with little to no information on the future availability of the product or opportunities to continue shopping for temporarily unavailable merchandise, can frustrate customers and ultimately make them leave your site altogether without making a purchase.   A little personalization and good user experience and customer service can go a long way towards capitalizing on the holiday shopping season:  

Be Informative

Will the item be back in stock soon? If you have a date, let the customer know. If not, take the opportunity to ask for an email to keep them informed, or offer the opportunity to extend the delivery date if possible in order to capture the sale.  

Offer Incentives to Continue Shopping

Rather than redirecting to another page with little to no explanation, let the consumer know what the status of the product's availability will be, and capitalize on their attention (and open wallet) to suggest and redirect to other products. Simply redirecting to a category or homepage can turn customers off and waste an opportunity to sell more merchandise.  

Have Some Fun

A little humor can go a long way, provided that it's within context and used as an opportunity to guide customers towards alternative products and contributes to the overall user experience.  For more information on how to optimize your eCommerce website and design a frictionless shopping experience, download our design guide.