Quick Summary: Every e-commerce seller’s nightmare is an empty stock room. If prospective customers cannot find what they were looking for easily, there is a great chance that they will abandon the sale, and the chances of them returning are very slim. But what if you could convert those lost sales into sales? This complete guide explores how Magento 2 Out of Stock Notification systems will transform your eCommerce business. We will cover the 5 best advantages of using these systems, as well as practical tips on how to implement details about the Out of Stock Notification down the road, as well as address frequently asked questions about stock alert extensions.
Starting an eCommerce store online comes with its own headaches, one of which is tracking inventory. When products go out of stock, this takes a toll on customers and results in abandoned carts and lost sales. A recent 2023 Adobe report stated that stockouts represent about $1 trillion in lost revenue for worldwide e-commerce when they abandon their carts. This is what we recommend using Magento 2 Out-of-Stock Notifications for your Magento 2 store. Out-of-stock notifications enable your customers to subscribe to product availability and ensure they will come back to your store for your products once they are back in stock.
Key Takeaways
- Out-of-stock notifications can recover up to 25% of lost sales opportunities
- 70% of customers prefer to wait for restocked items rather than buy alternatives
- Magento 2 stock alert extensions can increase customer retention by 40%
- Automated back-in-stock alerts reduce manual workload by 80%
- Proper inventory notifications improve customer satisfaction scores by 35%
This blog will explain why I think Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications has the five best advantages with real-world content and examples. You could be using the core Magento features, or you could be using a third-party Out of Stock Notification Extension for Magento 2, but either way, this feature can change the game when it comes to managing your inventory and communicating with your customers.
How It Works: Understanding Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications
Before we go over the benefits, let’s first understand how Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications work. When an inventory item is sold out, a button or form that reads “Notify Me When Available” will appear on the product page. Customers can submit their email address or even their phone number (if supported by the extensions) and receive a notification when the product is back in stock. From the merchant’s perspective, this allows visibility of demand for a specific item, as well as inventory management.
Setting Up Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications
It’s super simple to turn on Back in Stock Notifications in Magento 2, since it’s a built-in Magento feature. Here is a useful overview of how to enable back-in-stock notifications in Magento 2:
- Log in to the Admin Panel: Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Inventory.
- Enable Display Out of Stock: Under Stock Options, set “Display Out of Stock Products” to Yes.
- Set Product Alerts: Go to Catalog > Product Alerts and set “Allow Alert When Product Comes Back in Stock” to Yes.
- Set Email Notifications: Under the Product Alerts Run Settings section, choose the email frequency, e.g., daily, and the start time of your email notification.
- Customize Email Templates: Choose or customize any email template for the stock alert. Choose the email sender.
- Save Config: Save your changes to enable.
If you’re looking for additional features, including SMS alerts and enabling stock notifications to “guests,” you may want to consider using a stock alert extension for Magento 2 from Setubridge, Mageplaza, or Webkul. You will find additional custom options and the ability to set up analytics to build your Back in Stock Notification system.
Features of Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications
The Magento 2 out-of-stock notification system, whether native or through extensions, is a great system, with lots of features to benefit the customer and the store owner. The following are some of the features shown:
- Customer Notifications from Subscription: Customers can subscribe to get notified on the availability of Magento 2 products for out-of-stocks, ie, a relationship with a simple, configurable, grouped, or bundle product.
- Guest Subscriber Usage: Many of the out-of-stock inventory alert extensions for Magento 2 will let the guest user subscribe to the alert without creating an account. This means you, as the store owner, could get leads from over sixty percent of consumers to influence your decision (according to Baymard Institute, 2024) who are not willing to register.
- Multi-Channel Notifications: more advanced extensions can provide notifications through multiple channels, be it email, SMS, or even WhatsApp notifications. Providing multiple channels will improve your potential ability to achieve higher open/engagement rates.
- So, let’s talk about the analytics dashboard. Extensions such as Setubridge’s Out of Stock Notification Extension for Magento 2 provide analytics and reports around the number of subscriptions and sharing most wanted products, sales when notified of those products, etc..
- Branding transformation templates. Owners can customize their notification message to match the store brand, as well as market that there are promotions or upsell opportunities.
- Low Stock Alerts: Admins can define trigger points for when they want to be alerted and take action with inventory. For example, the admin can notify when 5 stock items are left, when they actually want to be notified before out of stock.
With all of those models, the Magento 2 Back in Stock Notifications provides a flexible solution for e-commerce businesses to keep their competitive advantage and take advantage of.
Benefits of Using Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications
Now we can dive a little deeper into the top five benefits of Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications and how they fix some e-commerce failings.
1. Recover Lost Sales
Out-of-stocks are a serious issue for online sellers. Statista research shows 43% of shoppers are less likely to return to the store after seeing something they want to buy is out of stock. Magento 2 Back in Stock alerts help recover these sales losses by automating the process of notifying customers about out-of-stock items that are back in stock, giving them the chance to see it’s available again and purchase it, rather than not returning due to a negative shopping experience. Setubridge’s 2024 research states retailers can recover 20% of sales they would have lost by implementing out of stock back in stock notices.
Let’s consider the following example. A customer is interested in a jacket they want. The jacket is sold out. The customer subscribes to a Magento 2 customer stock subscription and, when the jacket is back in stock, they receive an email alert or SMS alert. This alert reignites the customer journey to complete the purchase, which also minimizes cart abandonment through a result-driven notification rather than a failure to notify the customer.
2. Enhance Customer Experience
Customers have a right to be frustrated with out-of-stock items. If they don’t know if an item is in stock, they aren’t having a good shopping experience, and they will probably blame your website. Magento 2 allows me to notify customers on an infinite) The number of features for the availability of products. This way, they know they don’t need to check back continually because you’ll let them know. Communication like this shows customers they are important, and many will give you trust and loyalty.
Extensions like Mageplaza’s Product Alerts take it a step further. Customers can be notified automatically with a personalized message, making it a seamless and professional process.
3. Gain Valuable Demand Insights
Stock alert extensions usually have analytic dashboards available where you can track subscriber behavior and see what items are hot. The Setubridge Stock Alert extension displays the “most wanted” product in your store, along with the subscription counts on each of those products.
By having this data available, store owners can make educated decisions on inventory. You’ll now not only have insight into what pending products need your attention in your store, but this data will help you avoid stock-outs on hot products for the future, and improve your entire supply chain, too.
4. Improve Inventory Management
Low inventory notifications are one of the options built into many Magento 2 inventory alert extensions, which notify administrators when product inventory dips below the established level (like 5). Low stock alerts provide a proactive means of avoiding stockouts by enabling you to initiate a reorder promptly. Mageplaza states that low stock alerts reduce the purchasing processes while reducing the risk of over-and under-stocking, which, in turn, saves organizations lots of money.
5. Boost Customer Loyalty and Engagement
Magento 2 product availability notifications are a great way to show customers you care. Many of the features, such as customizable email templates and notifications across multiple channels (SMS, WhatsApp), allow you to create a personalized experience for what may be an impersonal and confusing ordering process.
Some extensions, such as Webkul’s, allow admin users (or shop owners) to run promotions on products when informing a customer of a restock. This can help with repeat purchases, Bodek purchases, and retention and loyalty by turning a negative into a positive engagement opportunity.
How to Choose the Best Magento 2 Back in Stock Notification Extension
While the built-in out-of-stock notification feature in Magento 2 does offer good functionality, there are third-party extensions that are vastly better. Below is a summary of some of the best options for Magento 2 back-in-stock notification extensions:
- Setubridge Out of Stock Notification: Stellar level of analytics and support for the Hyva theme. Good for stores that focus on customization.
- Mageplaza Product Alerts: Supports all product types, price change alerts, and rich, detailed reports. Good for flexibility.
- Webkul Stock Notification: MSI supported and manual, and automatic notifications. Good for a multi-store type layout.
- Magecomp Out of Stock Notification: Supports categories, pages, subscriptions, and custom popups. Best for user focus.
- Amasty Back in Stock: Has analytics dashboards, guest accounts, and even SMS alerts. Ideal for a data-driven store.
As you evaluate extensions, you should take into consideration the needs of your store and what you will potentially want from the subscription interface, whether you want multi-channels or analytics available for you to view, and whether the extension you are considering supports your version of Magento.
Conclusion: Turn Stockouts into Opportunities
Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications is a tool that does much more than just act as a way to inform your customers; it’s a customer retention strategy, a way to recapture lost sales, and a way to control inventory! By using things like guest subscriptions, multi-channel notifications, and analytics, store owners are able to turn a negative out-of-stock experience into a positive customer loyalty tool and help to drive sales. With 43% of shoppers being much less likely to return after being out of stock (Statista), activating and operationalizing Magento 2 Back in Stock Notifications will help to hold your customers’ interest in your store and returning again and again.
It doesn’t matter if you use Magento’s native notification system or a third-party Magento 2 extension for product back in stock alerts; the advantages are many: minimize sales losses, improve customer satisfaction, generate valuable demand information, improve stock management and product sourcing, improve customer loyalty, and more! Activate your Magento 2 out-of-stock notifications today and see how it can help to take your e-commerce store to the next level.
FAQs
What are Magento 2 Out of Stock Notifications?
It’s just alerts sent to users by email or sms about an item being back in stock, so they will come back to buy. Merchants can send themselves low stock alerts so they can stay on top of their inventory levels too.
How do I enable out-of-stock notifications in Magento 2?
Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Product Alerts in the admin panel, enable the “Allow Alert When Product Comes Back in Stock” option, set the email template and frequency, and save the settings.
Can guest users subscribe to Magento 2 stock alerts?
Yes, guest users can subscribe to Back in Stock Alerts Magento 2, with 3rd party extensions such as Setubridge or Mageplaza, without creating an account.
What are the benefits of using a third-party Magento 2 stock alert extension?
There are a lot of advanced features that 3rd party extensions offer, such as alert via SMS notifications, analytics dashboards, guest users, etc. 3rd party extensions can improve the default capabilities of Magento.
How can out-of-stock notifications reduce lost sales?
Magento 2 Out of Stock Alerts notify customers when products they previously purchased or considered purchasing are back in stock and encourage them to return to the store to complete their purchases, recapturing 20% of their lost potential sales (Setubridge, 2024).
Are there multi-channel notification options?
Most Magento 2 inventory alert extensions will have email, SMS messaging, and WhatsApp notifications to create better engagement and reach.
