SEO & Customer Experience: Temp Out of Stock, Seasonal and Discontinued Products

[kwright]

Greetings,

Currently, we set out of stock items to 0 qty show they show with a sold out button and can't be added to cart. We set our seasonal and discontinued products to status=0 so they don't show. Sometimes we delete the discontinued products.

However, I don't think this is the best practice for SEO or Customer experience!

What would be the suggested best practice when dealing with temporarily out of stock products, seasonally available products and discontinued products from an SEO and customer experience point of view?

Thanks!

[PatClay]

I think that seasonal & discontinued products should not be visible.

It is very annoying when I am looking for product X to come across a site which has them 'on display' (the search results look like they are available) only to find that they are not available to purchase when you go there. Maybe for some items which are strictly seasonal, but you can preorder with a clear delivery date "Bluff Oysters, season opens 15 April, order now". If there is no ability to order, or at the least an indication when I can order, it was a waste of my time as a customer.

The question for me with simple out of stock is how long before I would get my product. For me, with some items that might be a few days, others a month or more. The uncertainty is too much so I don't show the product. If I knew it was a couple of days, I would probably leave the product with a 'delayed delivery' note.

I try to focus on what is good for the customer, SEO techniques change rapidly & what was good can rapidly become a negative. What is good customer service is slower to change, and word of mouth (& it's modern equivalents) is more lasting IMHO.

Interested in hearing other peoples opinions though.

[kwright]

I think that seasonal & discontinued products should not be visible.

It is very annoying when I am looking for product X to come across a site which has them 'on display' (the search results look like they are available) only to find that they are not available to purchase when you go there. Maybe for some items which are strictly seasonal, but you can preorder with a clear delivery date "Bluff Oysters, season opens 15 April, order now". If there is no ability to order, or at the least an indication when I can order, it was a waste of my time as a customer.

The question for me with simple out of stock is how long before I would get my product. For me, with some items that might be a few days, others a month or more. The uncertainty is too much so I don't show the product. If I knew it was a couple of days, I would probably leave the product with a 'delayed delivery' note.

I try to focus on what is good for the customer, SEO techniques change rapidly & what was good can rapidly become a negative. What is good customer service is slower to change, and word of mouth (& it's modern equivalents) is more lasting IMHO.

Interested in hearing other peoples opinions though.

Good input PatClay!

I'm thinking it would be good for both customer and SEO to not remove the seasonal or discontinued products, but hide them from all site listings and searches, but keep the direct link active for backlink purposes.

For discontinued products, you could add the unavailable_after Google meta tag to remove it from future indexing. If you did delete or disable, I guess you could modify the ZC 404 page or make a custom 301 landing page with a "View Similar Products" link.

For the seasonal products, maybe change the "Sold Out" text to "Out of Season" until it is in season.

Again, the only way to view disabled products is if you have the direct link such as a bookmark, advert with link or other backlinks. I know ZC will do this if a category is disabled, but the products are not. Don't think ZC has the option to do this at the product level.

Thoughts?

[PatClay]

Discontinued products don't worry me too much, on the cost of changes v benefits from optimising they rank pretty low to me.

I just checked how my site works if I plug an out of stock product in to the URL & it shows "product not found". I like your idea of showing the product page with "out of stock", but don't know how you would do it.

The idea of marking each product with a different type of "out of stock" marker sounds like a lot of work though. For my stock (no seasonals) I would want to mark them with "contact us to see when it is back in stock"

A question for you - why do you have products you don't sell in x season? I can understand in a bricks & mortar store, where you are constrained by your space, but online you are probably not. Why not just sell the products all year? Sales of fans will be down in winter, but there will probably be someone.

I think the URL showing out of stock items is a good idea - any clue on how to make it happen?

[kwright]

Discontinued products don't worry me too much, on the cost of changes v benefits from optimising they rank pretty low to me.

I just checked how my site works if I plug an out of stock product in to the URL & it shows "product not found". I like your idea of showing the product page with "out of stock", but don't know how you would do it.

We're using the Winchester Responsive template with the following stock settings since we track inventory off-line:

Check stock level = false
Subtract stock = false
Allow Checkout = false
Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to = 1
Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart = 1

This essentially will show a "Sold Out" button when qty = 0.

The idea of marking each product with a different type of "out of stock" marker sounds like a lot of work though. For my stock (no seasonals) I would want to mark them with "contact us to see when it is back in stock"

I have actually done this a few years ago on a different site. The add-to-cart buttons would change color and wording depending on stock levels. We even had a pre-order button for soon to be released products. The stock levels were synchronized twice a day with our CRM/ERP system. A lot of work, but worked very nicely for our product line and customer base.

A question for you - why do you have products you don't sell in x season? I can understand in a bricks & mortar store, where you are constrained by your space, but online you are probably not. Why not just sell the products all year? Sales of fans will be down in winter, but there will probably be someone.

Since our product has a limited shelf life, we don't like to make a batch that we know will have very little sales during the off season!

I think the URL showing out of stock items is a good idea - any clue on how to make it happen?

Not sure I understand your question? Are you referring to showing only out of stock item?

Adding an additional button isn't that bad if it is simply using the status and qty fields. I may add code to do the following for our seasonal products:

If status=0 && qty<=0, then allow direct linking and show "Out of Season" button.

This should maintain any backlinks and will not show up under the product listing or site search. Once it's in season, just set status=1, add a +qty and you're good to go!

If a product is truly something that will never be offered again and there is no similar product, then deleting it would be fine and let the 404 page do the rest. If it is similar to an existing product, then I would argue to keep it and have a reference to a replacement or similar product.

[PatClay]

I use ZC to track inventory, so some of your settings don't apply.

My settings are:
Check stock level true
Subtract stock true
Allow Checkout false
Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to 0
Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart 1

Batch production and limited shelf life would be a good reason for not stocking items out of season Not something I have to deal with

Your comments have prompted me to think about what is the 'right' way to deal with this, and it turns out we are not the first people to think of this issue .
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....bling-product/
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....91#post1245791

I think the best solution is not to have ZC disable a product when it runs out of stock, but modify the search page so it does not show products which are out of stock (per the threads above), or perhaps just last (which at the moment I am tending towards):
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....ock-items-last

Then add the back in stock plugin:
https://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=773

That way disabled products would only be products which are not coming back. The URL for them could show a box with the top sellers or new products in that category without too much effort (I think).

[kwright]

I use ZC to track inventory, so some of your settings don't apply.

My settings are:
Check stock level true
Subtract stock true
Allow Checkout false
Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to 0
Show Sold Out Image in place of Add to Cart 1

Batch production and limited shelf life would be a good reason for not stocking items out of season Not something I have to deal with

Your comments have prompted me to think about what is the 'right' way to deal with this, and it turns out we are not the first people to think of this issue .
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....bling-product/
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....91#post1245791

I think the best solution is not to have ZC disable a product when it runs out of stock, but modify the search page so it does not show products which are out of stock (per the threads above), or perhaps just last (which at the moment I am tending towards):
https://www.zen-cart.com/showthread....ock-items-last

Then add the back in stock plugin:
https://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=773

That way disabled products would only be products which are not coming back. The URL for them could show a box with the top sellers or new products in that category without too much effort (I think).

Excellent research PatClay,

I would agree with your observations and thanks for the links above. It will give me a starting point to code some options.

What I am taking away from our conversation is that there are many different ways to handle discontinued products. The method chosen is really depended on how often, how many and type of products.

Auto parts for example, are always being superseded by similar parts, should be left available with a reference to the new part. One off or custom products could use what you suggested, show a box with the top sellers or new products in that category.

For me, I will probable leave discontinued products active, but hidden with a note that it has been discontinued for the customers who have it bookmarked or other backlinks and submit a new sitemap without discontinued products for SEO purposes. I would still need to code ZC similar to the links you provided, but add the status=0 qualifier in addition to the qty<=0 to the sql queries. For seasonal products, just code as suggested in the links.

Fun, fun, fun! I'll see how far I get with this and if it seems like something useful, I'll post it back here!

[PatClay]

Let me know what you end up with.

I am going to change how I am dealing with out of stock items, keep them active, but add the 'out of stock last' tweak and the email when back in stock plugin.

I learned a few things & had a good think about whether I am doing things the best way (I don't think I was), thanks.