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Back in Stock Alert
Back in Stock Alert

Allow your visitors to subscribe to a Back in Stock alert on product pages that have out-of-stock items to automatically send a notification

Rojen avatar
Written by Rojen
Updated over a week ago

Back in Stock Alerts allow your shoppers to subscribe to stocked out products so that they can come back and shop for it when it's back in stock.

Clicking on the Flyout Widget (bell icon) on the product page will open the widget and will show a text link to allow your store visitors a widget to subscribe to the back in stock alert for this particular product or variant.

If your store visitor already opted-in to web push notifications (that means they clicked 'allow' on the native browser prompt), the will be automatically subscribed.
If your store visitor hasn't opted-in to web push notifications yet, clicking the text link ("Get Alert") will sow the native browser prompt where they have to click 'Allow'. Afterwards, they are automatically subscribed to the Back in Stock alert.

Back in Stock push notifications are automatically sent as soon as you add new inventory to the respective product in your Shopify Products admin

Once the product is back in stock, the subscriber will receive an automated notification:

Here's the workflow showing how you can send back-in-stock alerts to your subscribers:

1. Set up the Back in Stock automation on your dashboard.

2. A visitor opts in for back in stock alerts via flyout widget, custom button, or with an integrated app like Now Back in Stock or Back in Stock Alerts.

3. The subscribers are added to the back in stock ‘Waitlist’. This Waitlist can be viewed on the the ‘Back In Stock’ page.

4. When the inventory for the sold out product is increased to more than 0, PushOwl will automatically send out the back in stock alert to the subscribers who wanted to be notified.

Enabling Back in Stock Alerts

1. Select 'Automation' on your Dashboard and click on 'Back in Stock'

2. Click on the button/switch next to Back in Stock to enable it.

3. Click on the edit icon to customize the notification copy.

4. Click on ‘Save’ after you edit the notification to your liking.

Note: Do not change the parameter {{product_name}}  since this is a placeholder for the name of the product that the visitor subscribed to.

Note: If the checkout element is enabled on sold out products, the Back in Stock automation will not function.

Customizing the Back in Stock Widget

This widget allows visitors to subscribe to be alerted about a product's availability .

To customize this widget, 

1. Click on the 'Widgets' tab on the ‘Back in Stock’ page. 

2. Edit the following:

1. Message before subscribing: Visitors see this message on a product page when they expand the widget.

2. Button to subscribe: This button is a call-to-action to get the visitor to subscribe.
3. Message after subscribing: This is a confirmation message shown after subscribing.

Reports

On your Back in Stock page, you can view a report of subscribers who opted into your back in stock alerts. You can view this by clicking on the 'Reports' tab on the Back in Stock Page.

1. Wait List: View a list of products and the number of people waiting for the product to be back in stock.

2. Sent List: Shows all the impressions, and clicks from the back in stock notifications.

Opting Into Back in Stock Alerts

You can set up the option for visitors to subscribe to alerts in 3 ways:

1. Flyout Widget

This is the default method for visitors to subscribe to alerts. When someone visits a product page, and the item is sold out, they can see a bell icon on the bottom left corner of the screen. When it's clicked, a flyout widget appears, and visitors have the option to subscribe.

2. Now Back in Stock Integration

PushOwl has integrated with 2 back in stock apps to help you streamline your in-stock updates. This can also allow you to send alerts about back in stock products through different channels- emails, SMS, and push notifications- from a single platform.

3. Custom button

If you want to create a native design element which matches the theme of your online store, you can create a custom button for back in stock subscriptions. Read more here for information on how you can implement this.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. If someone opts in for back in stock alert, will they be able to receive other notifications as well?

Yes. When someone opts in for back in stock notifications, they automatically become a store subscriber. This means that they will receive other notifications (including campaigns, abandoned cart reminders, and other automated notifications) sent from your store.

2. Will a subscriber who has opted in to receive alerts about a product's availability receive a notification every time the product is back in stock?

No. Whenever someone subscribes to back in stock alerts to any product, they will receive the alert only the first time you restock the product after they've subscribed. Your subscribers will not get notifications about the same product. This is done to avoid too many push notifications if a product has a high stock fluctuation.

3. Can I send more than one Back In Stock notification per subscriber for a specific product?

No. Your subscribers will only get one alert per product back in stock. If you wanna do it for testing, you can reset your PushOwl data. You can read how to it following the steps on this article.

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