What will happen when your customers visit your store and find that it is out of stock of the item they want to buy? If you do nothing, of course, they will immediately leave your store and visit another one to buy their favorite thing.
So what should you do? You don’t have any items to sell at that moment, but it is essential to let them know when those items are restocked. If not, you surely will lose customers to your competitors.
The article today will introduce you to how to create WooCommerce back in stock notifications that help collect customers’ information and notify them when out of stock products come back.
Now keep reading to deeply understand this interesting WooCommerce feature!
Table of Contents
What are Back in Stock Notifications in WooCommerce?
When your WooCommerce store uses back in stock notifications, it will inform your customers that out of stock items they previously showed enjoyment in are available again. After receiving the notifications, if customers are still interested in the items, they will come back to your store and continue the purchasing process.
We have shown you what WooCommerce back in stock notifications are. You also may want to know how they will work in your store. Let’s see.
On the out of stock product pages, you will create a form that allows potential customers to fill in. The information required to cover often includes name and email, or something else, depending on your setup. Once customers provide you with their information, the system on your store will automatically save it. Then, when these sold-out products return, they will receive back in stock notifications.
Why Back in Stock Notifications help WooCommerce stores secure sales
This feature is essential for every online store no matter which type of product you are selling. It will bring a lot of benefits to your business, including:
1. Recover lost sales
For those who fill in your back in stock form, we can say for sure that they’re so excited to know the state of the out of stock items. Therefore, if your notifications come soon after their subscriptions, it is perfectly possible that they will visit the product page and complete the purchase. The sooner your products are restocked, the higher the possibility of sales recovery is.
Although recent research has shown that 21-41% of customers will buy a similar product from your competitor right after they know it is out of stock. But it is indicated that a good back in stock notification will gain a 15% conversion rate. Anyway, this result is not bad, right?
2. Collect customer data
As we said in the previous part, by displaying WooCommerce back in stock notifications form on the out of stock product page, you can collect contact information from potential customers. So, even if back in stock notifications cannot help increase conversion rates, it helps build an email list that many other businesses out there have to spend lots of effort to achieve. An email list targeting the right people will be so useful for implementing any marketing campaigns for your store in the future.
3. Build customer relationships
WooCommerce back in stock notifications are also used as an effective tool for improving customer satisfaction. Imagine that a potential customer is excited to buy something, then he/she visits your store in the hope of taking it at the time, but after that, an out of stock product page comes unexpectedly. If you were her/him, how would you feel? A bit disappointed, right?
As a store owner, you can’t ignore this case. Finding a method to appease your customers will be a must. Leaving a back in stock form notifying them of the return of the product is a good solution here. You should do that even when you surely know that customers won’t come back for a purchase.
4. Get a deep insight into your inventory
In other words, back in stock notifications can be used to measure demand for out-of-stock products; from there, you can make the right decision on operating your store.
With the number of emails saved in the system, you can see how many people show interest in your out of stock products. For the items that receive the most registers, you should consider restocking them as soon as possible.
How to set up Back in Stock Notifications in WooCommerce (using Callback addon)
By default, WooCommerce doesn’t have any option for back in stock notifications. It only allows displaying the out of stock status or hiding out of stock products.
To create a WooCommerce back in stock notification form, you will need a plugin/addon to set it up. In this article, we will review a back in stock add-on that can help you complete this task more easily. The add-on is named Callback.
Our video guide on how to set up recent sales notification
To make it easy for users to use the add-on, we produced a video instructing how to create WooCommerce back in stock notifications with Woostify Callback addon.
Callback is an advanced feature offered by the Woostify theme pro version. With this add-on, you can set up WooCommerce back in stock notifications in several simple steps. Callback also offers numerous customizations on the frontend form, messages, style, product source, and mail. We will say about this setup process in detail in the next part of Callback settings. After setup is done, you will have a back in stock form display as the image below.
When visitors go to an out of stock product page, the back in stock form will appear in the way you set it up. Then, it’s time for Callback to help you collect customer information. The subscription form will require a name, email address, and phone number (optional).
Once any customer subscribes to the form, Callback will immediately update their information. And you will have a waiting list with full contact information saved in your system.
Callback only supports sending notifications via email. Once your product comes back to your store, the add-on will send automated emails to your customers. Or you can send them manually if you don’t want to notify the whole waitlist.
An outstanding point of Callback is that its form can be applied to not only out of stock products but also all products or specific product categories. With more options, you can use this feature for any product type you want. More conveniently, Callback supports both simple and variable products. We will instruct you on how to apply back in stock notification form to product variations in the next part.
Callback Settings
In the add-on settings, there are 5 sections to cover, including:
1. Frontend form
What you set in this section will decide how the notification box displays. Cover the list below to create your own frontend form.
The text in the image is set as default. You can change them if you want.
As the image shows, there are five boxes to tick for the display option. It is applied for:
- Enable I Agree in Subscribe Form
- Hide Name
- Show Phone
- Phone field optional
- Enable reCAPTCHA
It is noted that the add-on only supports sending automated emails. The option for sending SMS is not available. Therefore, you may not need to collect customers’ phone numbers.
There are 6 boxes requiring to be filled with text, including:
- Text for I Agree
- Title for Subscribe Form
- Placeholder for Name Field
- Placeholder for Email Field
- Placeholder for Phone Field
- Button Label
If you select the box for “Enable reCAPTCHA”, two additional boxes “Your Site Key” and “Your Secret Key” will display. You will have to access Link create site key and secret key reCAPTCHA to create reCAPTCHA.
For “Subscribe Form Display Type,” the dropdown arrow shows the two options, “Inline Subscribe Form” and “Pop-up Subscribe Form”. You can consider selecting the one that works better for your WooCommerce store.
2. Messages
The messages you set here will display when customers have specific actions on the box for WooCommerce back in stock notifications.
There will be 9 parts to cover this section:
- I Agree Error Message: display when customers miss the box to agree to your terms and policy
- Messages validate field name: display when customers miss the name box
- Messages validate field email: display when customers miss the mailbox
- Messages validate is not email: display when customers enter the invalid email
- Messages validate already subscribed: display when customers enter the email already subscribed to the product
- Messages validate field phone: display when customers miss the phone box
- Messages success: display when customers successfully register the form
- Messages reCAPTCHA: display when customers don’t enter the reCAPTCHA code
- Messages Validate reCAPTCHA: display when customers enter an invalid reCAPTCHA code
3. Style
This section helps modify the style of the back in stock box in this section which is divided into four parts:
- Form: here you can set the Border Radius, and Border Color
- Form Title: here you can customize the title by selecting the Color, Background Color, Font Size, and Font Weight you like
- Form Button Submit and Button Popup Form: here you can change the Color, Color Hover, Background Color, Background Color Hover, Width, and Height of the submit button. You will set for “Button Popup Form” if you select “Pop-up Subscribe Form” in the Frontend Form section. When “Inline Subscribe Form” is your option, you don’t need to customize anything in this part.
4. Products
Now, select the product type you want this feature to work on.
The dropdown arrow shows three options: “All products”, “Out of stock products”, and “Select Categories”.
The “out of stock products” option is set as default because most store owners will apply this function for their sold-out items. That being said, apart from this one, the add-on provides you with other two options, “All products” and “Select Categories”. In case you want to use WooCommerce back in stock notifications for other purposes, you can select either of them.
For example, your store has some defective items of a particular category, so you need time to check all of them. “Select Categories” is the best choice in this case. Once you select this option, an additional box will appear. Here you enter the name of the product categories you want to set the form.
When you choose “All products,” the notifications will display on all the product pages. But this option is rarely used.
5. Mail
You will create the content for the emails you want to send to customers here.
This section allows setting up two emails, including a subscription email and a back in stock notification email.
- Subscription Mail Send: this is used for subscription email. You will set content for the “Subscription Mail Subject” and “Subscription Mail Message”.
- Instock Mail Send: this is used for back in stock email. You will set content for the “Instock Mail Subject” and “Instock Mail Message”
- Tick box: there are two tick boxes here. If you tick the “Subscription Mail Send” box, the system automatically sends the email to customers right after they subscribe to the form. Similarly, tick the “Instock Mail Send” box to automatically send the email when products are back in stock.
- All Shortcodes: the add-on offers a list of shortcodes. You will include them to write content for emails.
It is important to take notice of the content for Instock Mail because it will decide on the return of customers. You need to pay attention to several tips here.
Callback subscription email management
After completing the steps in the Callback settings, you will have a back in stock form displayed on your out of stock product page. So after collecting customer information, how does the add-on manage this email list?
In the WooCommerce dashboard, you go to Woostify options > Callback >Settings > View Subscribers.
We get some emails to register the form and have the list as below in the Callback add-on.
As mentioned throughout the article, Callback will store subscription emails and send them to customers as you set in the Settings part.
What’s more, it allows importing and exporting emails.
This function is so helpful for online businesses. Before installing the add-on, you may store the subscriber list somewhere out there. And now, just select “Choose File” and “Subscribe Import CSV”, Callback will help store all in only one place. With the list stored, you can export and use it in other email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or other alternatives.
How Callback works for variable products?
We set the back in stock notification displayed for all out of stock products as an example.
Actually, on the variable products page, the notification will display in the same way as it does on simple products. But, while setting it up for variable products, you need to take notice of some points.
When a variable product is set out of stock, each variation of that product can’t yet display the back in stock box. To display the box for each of them, you have to go to the Variations section to check the “Stock quantity” box. Only when you set “0” for this part, the box can display.
The second case is for in stock variable products. Some variable products are set in stock while one (or more than one) variation of them is out of stock. For this case, the back in stock notifications will display on the specific variation that has “Stock status” set out of stock.
Pros and Cons of Callback
With the guide above, you may already understand the functions, features, and usage of the Callback addon. In this part, let’s see some pros and cons of Callback to decide if this add-on is suitable for you.
Pros
- Quick and easy setup
- Full control of customizations
- Support all product types
- Available technical support (if the addon has any problem)
Cons
- Only support sending emails
- Only compatible with the Woostify theme
It’s time to create WooCommerce back in stock notifications!
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