Stagnant listings

Products presented to customers but impossible to order due to continuous out-of-stock are called “stagnant listings.” A high number of stagnant listings might spoil the impression and make the store look non-operational.

Identifying stagnant listings

The Stock Roll app shows such items in a “Stagnant listings” report right in the Shopify admin interface. It shows all the tracked out-of-stock inventory that has not seen sales in Shopify during the lookback window.

Handling stagnant listings

The first thing to decide is whether the shown inventory items are indeed stagnant. For example, a perfectly valid reason to ignore some items is when you sell them by the make-to-order or backorder model. In this case, such items can be hidden from Stock Roll reports by adjusting the “Tracked products” section on the app settings page. For example, you can gather all such products in a new “Backorder” collection and exclude them from Stock Roll tracking.

When a product is indeed stagnant, it is worth keeping its page, but to archive the item and provide customers with information about possible alternatives.