A New Back In Stock Wizard Is Here for BigCommerce and Shopify

An out-of-stock product doesn’t necessarily mean a lost sale, but if a shopper lands on a product they want and the only option is to leave and check back later, there’s a pretty good chance you’re never going to see them again.

That’s the whole reason we created Back In Stock Wizard. Instead of turning an out-of-stock product page into a dead end, shoppers can sign up to be notified when the item becomes available again. Once inventory returns, Back In Stock Wizard automatically reaches out and gives them a reason to come back while their interest in the product is still there.

Now we’ve rebuilt the app with a new interface, better reporting, more control over your storefront signup forms and emails, and a much clearer picture of what products your customers are actually waiting for.

The new version of Back In Stock Wizard is now available for BigCommerce, and the same new version is also available for Shopify.

A Completely Redesigned Dashboard

The first thing you’ll notice is a completely redesigned dashboard that gives you a much better overview of what’s happening with your back-in-stock program.

Instead of simply keeping a list of people waiting for products, the new dashboard gives you useful information about subscribers, products being watched, notifications sent, engagement, and recent activity.

You can quickly see how many shoppers are currently waiting for products to come back, how many products have active subscriptions, and what’s been happening recently without digging through multiple reports.

More importantly, that information can tell you something about your inventory that sales reports alone can’t: what customers wanted to buy but couldn’t.

If 75 people are waiting for one particular SKU to come back while another sold-out product has two subscribers, that’s useful information when you’re deciding what deserves attention from your purchasing or inventory team.

See Which Products Shoppers Are Waiting For

One of the most useful parts of Back In Stock Wizard has always been the demand data it collects, and the new version makes that information much easier to use.

The Products area shows which out-of-stock products currently have shoppers waiting for them along with the number of active subscriptions for each product.

That turns a simple notification app into another source of merchandising and purchasing information.

After all, a sold-out product with dozens of people waiting for it is telling you something very different from a sold-out product nobody has asked about.

You can also view activity by product to see which items are generating the most subscriptions and engagement with the restock emails that have already been sent.

Better Subscriber and Activity Tracking

The new Back In Stock Wizard gives you a much more complete view of subscriber activity as well.

You can see who is currently waiting for a product, which products they’re subscribed to, and the history of subscriptions that have already been fulfilled, expired, or unsubscribed.

Email activity is tracked too, giving you visibility into notifications that have been sent along with opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes.

That makes it easier to understand what happens after inventory comes back instead of simply knowing that an email went out.

A Better “Notify Me” Experience on Your Store

Back In Stock Wizard automatically gives shoppers a way to request a notification when they encounter an out-of-stock product, but that signup experience shouldn’t look like something that was bolted onto your store as an afterthought.

The new version gives you much more control over the appearance and messaging of the subscription form.

You can customize the heading, supporting text, email field, button text, colors, confirmation message, fonts, and other design elements so the form fits naturally into your storefront.

For stores that want even more control, custom CSS and JavaScript are also available.

The goal is simple: when someone reaches a product they can’t buy right now, make signing up for a notification feel like a natural next step rather than the end of their shopping session.

More Control Over Back-In-Stock Emails

The email a shopper receives when inventory returns is just as important as the signup form.

They already told you they wanted the product. When it becomes available again, you want to make getting back to that product as simple as possible.

The redesigned email tools give you control over your branding, messaging, product details, buttons, colors, and other elements of the notification.

Depending on how you configure the message, shoppers can be taken directly back to the product page or given a quick path toward adding the item to their cart.

You can preview your changes while editing and send test emails before anything goes out to customers.

Back In Stock Wizard also supports sending notifications from your own authenticated domain, helping the messages look consistent with the rest of your store’s communication.

Multi-Storefront Support for BigCommerce

For BigCommerce merchants using Multi-Storefront, the new Back In Stock Wizard can be controlled separately across your storefronts.

That means you aren’t forced into an all-or-nothing setup. You can enable back-in-stock notifications where you want them and manage the experience appropriately for the storefronts you operate.

Bring Existing Subscribers With You

If you’re moving to Back In Stock Wizard from another notification app, you don’t necessarily have to start over with an empty subscriber list.

Back In Stock Wizard supports importing existing subscription data from CSV, provided your current solution allows you to export the necessary customer and product information.

You can also export your Back In Stock Wizard subscriber data whenever you need it for reporting or use elsewhere.

Optional Daily Reports

You shouldn’t have to log into an app every morning just to find out whether anything important happened yesterday.

Back In Stock Wizard can send optional daily activity reports to the recipients you choose, giving you a convenient summary of what’s happening with your out-of-stock products and subscriber activity.

For a store with a lot of inventory movement, that can be an easy way to spot products where customer demand is starting to build.

Now Available for Shopify, Too

While Back In Stock Wizard has been a familiar name to many of our BigCommerce customers, the new version isn’t limited to BigCommerce.

Back In Stock Wizard is also available for Shopify, bringing the same basic idea to Shopify stores: give shoppers a way to subscribe when something they want is unavailable, then automatically bring them back when inventory returns.

Whether you’re running BigCommerce or Shopify, the objective is the same. A temporary inventory problem shouldn’t automatically mean giving up on the shopper who was ready to buy.

Don’t Let “Out of Stock” Be the End of the Conversation

Inventory shortages happen. Products sell faster than expected, shipments get delayed, seasonal items disappear, and popular sizes or variants can sell through long before the next delivery arrives.

You can’t prevent every stockout, but you can control what happens when a shopper encounters one.

Giving that shopper a simple way to raise their hand and say, “I still want this” creates another opportunity to make the sale when inventory returns. At the same time, all of those requests give you valuable information about where unmet demand exists in your catalog.

That’s what the new Back In Stock Wizard is designed to do, with a much better interface and substantially more insight into the products and shoppers behind those notifications.