Merchants often ask themselves what they should do if an item goes out of stock. If you don't know the answer to this question, then we've got you covered.
In this article, we'll show you what you can do if one of the products you're selling via MerchMixer runs out of stock and how to minimize its impact on your dropshipping business.
Before anything else, though, it's important to understand that out-of-stock problems are a natural part of eCommerce and can happen for many reasons. For example, the manufacturer may have ceased producing a specific product, or the supplier may not have enough items in stock. That's not unusual when you consider the hundreds (if not thousands) of merchants all promoting and dealing with the same products.
In any case, it's important to take action and mitigate the effects of out-of-stock issues. The last thing you want is for one of your customers to purchase a product that is no longer available from your Shopify store and get hit with a negative review. This brings us to the first recommendation.
Remove products that are out of stock (or close to being out of stock) from your Shopify Store
We recommend removing any out-of-stock products that you find that are still listed on your Shopify store. Doing so will help prevent out-of-stock orders from happening in the first place.
MerchMixer automatically archives imported listings that are no longer in stock, but this doesn't happen fast enough in some cases. Hence, it's a good idea to monitor your products and remove listings that are no longer in stock or close to running out.
Of course, this can be difficult when you're dealing with hundreds (if not thousands) of products. However, you can use Shopify's product sorting feature to help with this task:
1. First, click on "Products" on the left menu of your Shopify admin.
2. On the next page, click on the "Sort" button (on the right) and select "Low inventory".
At this point, you should see a list of products on your Shopify store arranged in such a way that the lowest inventory products are at the top of the list. You can now easily select all items with low inventory and archive them from your Shopify Store.
In the long term, MerchMixer may add more inventory to that SKU, and at that point, you can decide to re-publish or re-import the product. You can check your list of archived and the current stock available by going to "Products" and clicking on the "Archived" tab.
To re-publish an archived product, select the product(s) by putting a checkmark on it, click on "More Actions" and select "Set as Active".
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