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Revisiting option to display or hide out of stock products from CTGY and SRCH pages.

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    Revisiting option to display or hide out of stock products from CTGY and SRCH pages.

    I along with others have asked this question before more than once, but I need to find a solution or alternative options until a native solution becomes available.

    We have many of out of stock products and do not wish to delete them at this time. One reason being is that our product URI do not contain assigned category information, thus incoming traffic for out of stock products would be redirected to our storefront instead of its assigned category. Don't think changing all of our product URLs to include assigned category information at this time would not be advisable due to good SE index/placement.

    Consequently, we need a solution to either give visitor an option to display (hide default) out of stock products from product listing in CTGY and SRCH pages or or incorporate into existing RT stock sort options to push said items to end of listing.

    What are all of our options?
    Thank you, Bill Davis

    #2
    Custom basket field. Simple form post that populates it with 'Show/Hide" out of stock, then add that conditional to the out of stock conditional on CTGY /SRCH pages.
    Bruce Golub
    Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

    Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
    phosphormedia.com

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      #3
      Originally posted by Bruce - PhosphorMedia View Post
      Custom basket field. Simple form post that populates it with 'Show/Hide" out of stock, then add that conditional to the out of stock conditional on CTGY /SRCH pages.
      If that is the best the opotion short of a native solution, how complicated is that to do?
      Thank you, Bill Davis

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        #4
        For me? About 20/30 minutes. ;)
        Bruce Golub
        Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

        Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
        phosphormedia.com

        Comment


          #5
          Great! But after thinking on the matter further, several concerns have come up.
          1. We gave many paginated pages that have been indexed, if we set the default to "Hide Sold Out", how would those indexed pages with sold out products be affected (...sometimes we have a paginated page wherein all the products are sold out), and whether or not those pages index pagination pages really matter?
          2. Another issue we have is that some categories have far more sold out items than in stock, defaulting to "Hide Sold Out" could give visitors the initial erroneous perception that we don't carry many of these particular items versus they being in high demand. Thus leaving the CTGY and SRCH page quickly never realizing that "Sold Out" items were hidden. So an option for store owner to chose which category would default to "Hide Sold Out" may be necessary.
          3. Another idea that has been proposed in the past, is to always move all "Sold Out" products to the end of category/search product listing while retaining secondary sort option selected in admin for said category (e.g.: "Inventory LE 0 AND PROD_NAME", "Inventory LE 0 AND PROD_CODE", etc...). Ideally, visitors should have the ability to change the secondary sort option (e.g.: Newest, Lowest Price, Highest Price, Name Ascending, Name Descending and Best Selling) while always keeping "Sold Out" products to the end of said category product listing.
          I'm leaning towards to always move all "Sold Out" products to the end of category product listing while retaining secondary sort option selected in admin for said category. But I am interested in your opinion/suggestions and how difficult would it be to execute the third option?

          Finally, during my research on this issue I came across a third-party module that addresses this problem for another platform and thought you might find it interesting. Its an inventory management module called "Out‑of‑Stock Police".
          Thank you, Bill Davis

          Comment


            #6
            As you say, there's a problem with using conditionals in the page template to remove out-of-stock products. If a category has a lot of out-of-stock products, it can cause problems for the page display.

            I've written custom search modules that can selectively hide out-of-stock products, or move them to the end of the list. This can be controlled by checkboxes or buttons on the page, so the customer can choose what they see. If you're interested in this solution, you can drop me a line to discuss it.

            Thanks --
            Kent Multer
            Magic Metal Productions
            http://TheMagicM.com
            * Web developer/designer
            * E-commerce and Miva
            * Author, The Official Miva Web Scripting Book -- available on-line:
            http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/IS...icmetalproducA

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