What do you all do?

[feistygal]

I'm really interested to know what everyone does with regard to selling items that are out of stock.

If you have something that is out of stock do you still have it displayed on your site and allow the customer to checkout and pay for it? Do you display it on your site but have your settings configured so that they can't actually purchase it or do you only display and allow the purchase of in stock items?

[chris]

When an item is out of stock, I remove it from my website until such time it is back in stock.
My exception is Russian dolls when I know they are 'on their way' from Russia and I display them with a 'due date'.

It drives me mad when I purchase something and then told it is out of stock and will be sent in 3 weeks... as if it is perfectly acceptable (suppliers are bad at this as well).
If I know beforehand there is going to be a delay, that is fine and my decison but to be told after I have paid annoys me!!
Sorry must be a PMT week!

[Mary Poppins]

My site will only allow you to purchase physical stock. It will still show the item but says out of stock underneath.

[Milliebeth]

I am the same as Mary Poppins.

[buppybean]

Mine dissapears from my shop automatically when its sold out but stays in my control panel so I can make more and re-list without having to faf about with new pictures.

[Chell]

I take it off the site, otherwise they don't know it is out of stock till they try to checkout. That would annoy the hesck out of me if I was the customer.

If something is on its way then I put them in stock and have a note to say that they are on their way and what delivery time will be.

[friendlybaby]

A few things that I sell I don't actually keep in stock, but I always state on the site a 'usually dispatched within' time. For anything in stock, it says 24 hours. If I have ran out of stock of something that is normally instantly available, I have a 'stock due on' message, and everything else is either 'Usually dispatched within 5 days' or '2-3 weeks' dependent upon the supplier. Occasionally I get orders from people that haven't read that it will take 5 days or whatever and they do decide to cancel, but it is rare. I'd rather offer a complete range, including the less popular items, even if it isn't possible to stock every combination of every thing at this point.

[Tanya]

oh dear I'm a seller that keeps it on my site if it's out of stock!

if I know that it is something that I will never stock again then I will remove it but if I know if it is coming back into stock soon then I leave it on the site and mark it in the description 'out of stock' and the sizing drop down box will be marked out of stock too.

I used to remove them but then google and other search engines drop it and when you eventually put it back on the site it needs indexing by the search engines again and my rank drops a page or two (sometimes more!)

[bloomingfelt]

oh dear I'm a seller that keeps it on my site if it's out of stock!

if I know that it is something that I will never stock again then I will remove it but if I know if it is coming back into stock soon then I leave it on the site and mark it in the description 'out of stock' and the sizing drop down box will be marked out of stock too.

I used to remove them but then google and other search engines drop it and when you eventually put it back on the site it needs indexing by the search engines again and my rank drops a page or two (sometimes more!)

That's a good point Tanya - I'll keep that in mind when my new site goes live next week !

[buppybean]

Sarah thanks for the felt balls they are really cute.
Just got to find time to do something with them now :)
luv jen

[babybiz]

I use stock control and try to keep that up to date, I do occassionally sell things that are out of stock by accident but normally I only ever sell what I have.

I keep any products out of stock but current still on the site so customers can call if they want to know when it's back and I'll email/call when the item is back in.

[bloomingfelt]

Sarah thanks for the felt balls they are really cute.
Just got to find time to do something with them now :)
luv jen

You're very welcome ! Glad you like them :happy72:

[Arianna]

I keep it on the site, but it's marked as Out of Stock and can't be purchased. I keep it on the site for search engine purposes and I only keep it on the site if I'm going to get it in stock again.

Arianna

[Lemon]

I keep the item on the site if it is out of stock ONLY if I know I am getting some more of the same thing in.

Anything that sells out, I remove from the site.

[willowcat]

I'm with Tanya on this one ! Keep it up there so doesn't lose it's SERPS especially if well ranked product

[Tanya]

I'm with Tanya on this one ! Keep it up there so doesn't lose it's SERPS especially if well ranked product

:happy72:gd12

[Tess]

Mine dissapears from my shop automatically when its sold out but stays in my control panel so I can make more and re-list without having to faf about with new pictures.

mine too

[littlesheep]

mine too

and mine!

[ann0024]

I mark my out of stock items "inactive" in the control panel until new stock arrives. Once stock arrives I can then change to "active" and put in quantity. But I have been known to sell something at an event then forget to update the webiste then a customer comes along to buy it on the site and I don't have it in stock.

[Chell]

I mark my out of stock items "inactive" in the control panel until new stock arrives. Once stock arrives I can then change to "active" and put in quantity. But I have been known to sell something at an event then forget to update the webiste then a customer comes along to buy it on the site and I don't have it in stock.

I do the same, as far as I know they are still spidered when they are like this so it doesn't affect serps.

[willowcat]

I do the same, as far as I know they are still spidered when they are like this so it doesn't affect serps.

Some new stuff I read said G only spidering now what a human eye can see or find on a website. Getting back to that subject much talked about .. making website human friendly as opposed to SEO friendly .It's only what i do as i know for a fact if I have a well ranked product on page one and I switch it off it slips off that page .

[Miranda]

The vast majority (over 99%) of our stock we get back in stock just as it runs out. This is by a combination of sussing what volumes we order, and combining that with a knowledge of our suppliers stock/manufacturing lead times allowing us to order as we get to certain levels of stock. We're fortunate in that our key suppliers generally have stock to send to us in a couple of days, so all to often we get an order in the morning for something that's just run out and we're sweating on the delivery arriving before 2pm so it can go out same day - we have been known to make the courier delivering wait while we open boxes, pack stock into parcels so he can to take our parcels away! We order from our key suppliers (about 7 or so) at least once a week - we keep order levels down and order frequently as it helps cash flow, but always try to ensure we meet minimum order requirements and take advantage of any order volume deals or free shipping over xx amount. We offer a drop ship service and currently supply in excess of 40 different companies in this way - this of course helps us turnover more regualr stock items from our main suppliers more frequently.

When we have sale stock or discontinue a line, or it's from certain manufacturers where we carry one-offs eg Bright Bots clothing or tights, or Happy Heinys prints then all the stock is counted and the website will adjust the quantity each time we upload stock changes. The only downside is we can set a maximum order level eg if we have 5 in stock we set max that can be ordered to 5, but if two people order 4 at the same time it'll allow both to go through - doesn't happen too often but can do. Once we've sold out, SORRY SOLD OUT appears automatically in red, or if there's a combination of coulors sizes and fastenign s then it will say sorry it's not available please chose an alternative. I monitor the sale stock regularly and remove sold out items and lines as frequently as I can.
Our biggest problem is forum whims - someone will say on a forum 'Oooh I got xyz bargain on Twinkle's sale section [link]' - and 5 people will try to buy at once, or alternatively one person says 'ohhh have you seen this in this print' and we can get thoroughly thrown on predicted stock levels.
We always advise by phone if we can of the situation, offering alternatives, and we always part ship at our expense even if we're getting the stock in any longer ahead than 2 or 3 working days
Just occasionally a manufacturer cannot supply for more than 10 days or so - currently out of over 2500 lines I think we have only 2 or 3 products in that category I can think of two anyway: 12-18m Cut 4 Cloth long sleeve body and Green People Spearment and Aloe Vera Toothpaste. Where this happens we do try to offer an alternative but we do part ship the rest of the order and keep that item on back order and try to remember to let the customers know what is happening before they remind us!

When I started out I obviously had longer lead times on products because I needed to make up a minimum order value, this meant a lot of the time we had higher stock levels of our main products than we have now. I think so long as the customer is informed than you're fine, what I dislike is one manufacturer NEVER tells us an item is OOS till we get the delivery!

[lajlaj]

I don't take them out of stock unless I am not replacing them. For me though we carry standard lines in about 8 different sizes so I may have one size that goes out of stock but 99 times out of a hundred I know that size or line is getting short so it will be on order getting made or in transit to me anyway. If I know that I am not replenishing stock of a certain size I will take the size off the site until the last size in that style has been sold and then I knock it off the site in total. If a size is out of stock and a customer orders it and pays for priority delivery we ring up and ask them if they would either like to swap for another style or wait until it is in stock (never more than 10 days away anyway).

I very very very rarely run out of wristbands as we keep thousands in stock here anyway so it doesn't really apply there.

[Chiggs]

I only sell 5 different products, and I have (literally!) thousands in stock, so it's not a problem i've been faced with (but I didn't want to be left out of an interesting thread :cheesy:)

[babybiz]

I only sell 5 different products, and I have (literally!) thousands in stock, so it's not a problem i've been faced with (but I didn't want to be left out of an interesting thread :cheesy:)

:hysterica

[baby-bean]

Because I'm not dealing in big enough volume to do what Miranda describes ^^^ I recently stopped selling cloth nappies completely. :( Managing all the size/colour/print/fabric/fastening combinations was just too much of a headache, and I ended up making no profit because I was always having to part-ship orders and so pay postage twice, or pay someone else (thanks M) to dropship.
If something is coming back into stock within 2-3 days I'll leave it on the site and allow orders through, if it's longer I'll put a note on the product listing of an estimated delivery date, and if it's more than 10 days I'll mark it out of stock completely.

[Preso]

I do both :-) Cards that I know I can make up (in have the stock here to do so) then I still have listed on my website but the "one off" type of cards then I only list what I have made up.

Personally, I hate waiting for anything so if it was a general kind of item and I ordered I would expect the stock to be there ... does that make sense?