A recent study conducted on eMarketer talks about what Online store customers do when they shop and find items displayed that are out of stock. The survey was done in May this year and has some pretty interesting data worth taking a look at, especially if you are one of the eTailers who currently displays out of stock items for users to add to their cart.

Typically, I would recommend that you DO NOT make out of stock items visible to shoppers who are browsing your store, but after looking at this survey I have seriously considered changing my mind on that.

It appears that over half of the shoppers survey claimed they would move along to another site to look for the out of stock item. That’s pretty typical and is the exact reason why in the past I had recommended not including those items within the rest of the catalog until they become available for purchase again. The part that makes me reconsider is that around 56% of shoppers stated that they would return to the original site later to check for new stock or that they would simply sign up to be emailed once the item was available for purchase again.

Wow, that’s a huge percentage of users saving items and returning or signing up for an email notification (assuming you have a system like that in place). To me that means that if I have the item hidden in the first place, that my visitor might not know I usually stock it and may possibly never come back to check. I would a lot rather have my visitors know I have an item and it is not currently in stock just for the chance that they will bookmark my site for later review or provide me with their email address so I can add it to my email list.

Not only would I be missing out on a possible bookmark or new email address to add to my list, but the survey also stated that 15% of shoppers who found the original item they were looking for to be out of stock simply purchased an alternative product from the same store or merchant seller. 15% of shoppers also stated that if the merchant offered a brick-and-mortar retail location that they would attempt to make the purchase there.

Only 17% of shoppers said that they would not buy anything at that time and only 9% of shoppers surveyed stated that they would travel to a competitor brick-and-mortar location to find the item they were trying to buy.

The need to have a streamlined inventory management system is getting more important now than it has in past years. It’s good to see that 83% of eTailers currently use some sort of real-time inventory management and tracking system within their site or tied in with their brick-and-mortar retail location. Many online shoppers prefer to see whether items are in stock or not before adding them to their cart, however many merchants choose to notify their customers of out of stock items once the product is added to their cart for the first time.

Making sure your inventory Online matches your inventory Offline is important to the merchants business and the shoppers they hope will buy from their stores. Keep the stock levels in sync with one another and be sire you have accurate numbers in both areas. This has been very common among large Online sellers, but is becoming more important for merchants of all sizes to consider.

So from now on, be sure to have a solution in place to handle order inventory and out of stock products. You may be missing out on getting your visitors to check back for stock or even a chance to get their email address or a new newsletter subscription. It’s definitely better to show the out of stock items rather than hiding them from your visitors. This survey has shown me that and I have already made the adjustments to my site which now reflects my new found out of stock wisdom. Thanks for the report and great insights into inventory eMarketer!