During the high-demand seasons, merchants often encounter a situation wherein customers keep asking for an out-of-stock item. Failing to fulfill their needs would drive customers away and damage your profit line. This article discusses the 5 best ways to facilitate back-in-stock notifications for BigCommerce merchants.
In Stock Reminder
In Stock Reminder’s core logic is to let customers register for an email list that will receive notifications when the item is back in stock. The app also allows for customizing the subscription button and pop-up window to maximize conversion. Furthermore, users can export data to CSV format for further analysis.
Above all, the tool is easy to set up and comes with great customer service. However, current customers feedback that that app works better if your products don’t contain a lot of variants with different SKU.
Price:
- Basic plan for $14.95/month
- Advanced plan for $24.95/month
- Unlimited plan for $34.95/month
2. InStockNotify
This is one of the most highly valued apps in the BigCommerce marketplace when it comes to in-stock notifications. Once an item is assigned to the app, a sign-up field will be added as soon as it goes out of stock. Then InStockNotify will trigger automatic email campaigns to alert customers of product fulfillment. You are free to customize the email template to match the look of your store.
The cheap price is another plus point to attract customers.
Price: $18/month
3. Back in Stock Product Alerts
Back In Stock Product Alerts is developed by Swym to support merchants in driving more sales from out-of-stock and pre-ordered items. The app allows shoppers to subscribe for sold-out items at a variant level. Then it will automatically send alert emails and follow-up notifications to accelerate conversion. One special feature is that customers don’t have to log in to fill up their information.
You can retrieve information to stimulate personalized campaigns targeted at alert users. Furthermore, the app can be integrated with your ESP (Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp, etc.), CRM (Hubspot, Zaius, Salesforce, etc.), social media, and automation platforms.
Price: $49.99/month
4. Klaviyo flow
Klaviyo is among the most popular email marketing platforms for e-commerce merchants. It is widely used for newsletters, promotion campaigns, shopping cart abandonment reminders, and many more. If you don’t want to use another third-party app, you can consider installing a back-in-stock flow in Klaviyo.
Basically, when this shopper browses an out-of-stock product, a “Notify Me When Available” button will appear instead of the “Sold Out” button. If they click on this button, a form will show up allowing them to fill in their information. At this point, a “Subscribed to Back In Stock” event will be added to their Klaviyo profile and they will be informed once the item is restocked.
This can be done by going to your BigCommerce admin, Storefront > Script Manager, and choose Create a script. Klaviyo developers recommend setting up the script as following:
- Name of the script: Klaviyo back in stock
- Location on page: Footer
- Select pages where the script will be added: Store Pages
- Script type: Script
Next, update the script with your Klaviyo Public API key, and paste the updated script into the script box. Save the script and you’re all set.
Note that this requires certain programming skills to install and fix. You might want to hire a technology expert instead of doing it yourself.
5. BackOrder
Unlike in-stock notifications apps, backorder allows visitors to place an order immediately instead of waiting for the inventory to arrive. This helps avoid the situation when customers are no longer interested in the item after waiting for a long time. The core logic of the app is to let them order and receive the product later.
Once an item is assigned to BackOrder, there will be a note stating the currently available stock and the available backorder number under the product description. Note that the buy button is still usable with this app. You can also identify the expected delivery date so that the customer knows when to look for the shipment.
The app also allows for attaching the backorder list in the invoice to make sure that consumers are fully aware of their order status.
Furthermore, you can find tracking of the total number of back-ordered amount and items over time to examine your business performance.
Final Note
There are many ways to enable back-in-stock notifications in your store, be it in-stock notification apps, email workflow, or BackOrder. We’re running on free forever with BackOrder. The app can also connect with Atom8 to centralize your management.
Take a look at your choice and decide on the most suitable option.
