As an e-commerce store, you are no stranger to customers who have the habit of adding products to a cart and forgetting about it. Come on; we’re all guilty of doing the same and being annoyingly indecisive when it comes to buying things online.

(what can we do? - the heart 💚 wants to buy it, the mind 🤯 tell you to look at your empty wallet)

The problem 😣

‍Products stay in the customer’s cart for an indefinite amount of time, even if the product is no longer in stock. One fine day the customer returns to the cart and clicks on Rent Now! There is no validation check on the checkout page, and the customers are normally progressing through the checkout to the payment process with the “out of stock” products.

Implication 🙈

‍“Out of stock” orders go through, resulting in confusion for the customer and you. Additional communication is required to convey to the customer that the order is out of stock resulting in a negative customer experience.

#awkwardsituation

Email Subject: Umm! We can’t send you your order because we don’t have it.

Dear customer,

We know that you are eagerly waiting for your order, but the thing is that the product is not really in our stock anymore. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to you, and we will refund your money as soon as possible.

We will inform you when the product is in stock again.

‍

(Unsaid inner thoughts)

To be honest, you had it in your cart for a long time, and technically it’s your fault that you took so long to decide!

‍

Yours sincerely

The best bike shop ever!

Solution 🥳

Stock Validation at the checkout page makes sure that the customer doesn’t proceed to payment on the checkout page if there is a product in the cart that is out of stock at the moment of checkout. The product overview will display an out of stock notification, and even if the customer ignores it and continues to add their details in the checkout field, the payment will not go through. An error message will be displayed saying that the product is out of stock.

The stock validation feature lets your customers know when a product is out of stock by displaying an "out of stock" message in the shopping cart 🛒 and the checkout page, stopping them 🚦from proceeding to the payment page; hence saving you from the trouble of sending out #awkwardemails and #refunds.