How to hide Out-of-Stock products in Shopify

Keeping your Shopify store organised and up-to-date is crucial for customer experience. When you run out of a product You may want to hide the product from view in your collections, or at the very least mark the product as out of stock on the product page. This way, customers won’t get frustrated trying to buy things that aren’t available, or give up browsing collections when they feel like every product they come across is sold out. This guide will walk you through different ways to hide products that are out of stock in your Shopify store, from simple settings to more advanced tricks.

How to hide Out-of-Stock products in Shopify

Manual method

Step 1: Set up inventory tracking for products

To hide out-of-stock products, you first need to ensure that Shopify is tracking your inventory accurately.

• Products without variants:
  1. Navigate to the product you want to update.
  2. Scroll down to the Inventory section.
  3. Under Inventory Policy, select Shopify tracks this product’s inventory.
  4. Make sure that your inventory numbers are correct – you can make a manual adjustment if needed from this panel.
• Products with variants:
  1. Open the product with variants.
  2. Select the individual variant you want to track.
  3. Under Inventory, make sure Shopify tracks this variant’s inventory.
  4. Make sure that your inventory numbers are correct – you can make a manual adjustment if needed from this panel.

Click Save to update your settings.

Step 2: Set collection to hide Out-of-Stock items

You can set up collection conditions to automatically hide products with zero inventory:

1. Go to Products > Collections in your Shopify admin.
2. Select the collection you want to modify or create a new one.
3. Scroll down to the Conditions section.
4. Click Add Another Condition.
5. From the dropdown, select Inventory stock.
6. Choose is greater than 0.

This makes sure your shop only shows stuff you actually have.

If you sell something that comes in different types (like different sizes or colours), the main item will still show up as long as you’ve got at least one type in stock. So you don’t need to hide the whole thing if you’ve still got some options left.

Before you start hiding things, think about whether you want people to be able to buy stuff you’ve run out of. If you don’t, make sure you’ve unticked the box that says ‘Keep selling when out of stock’ in your stock settings.

Do it with apps 

If you’re after more powerful choices or ways to do things automatically, you can use extra bits of software that work with Shopify. Here are a few good ones to try:

• Stock Sync: This helps you keep track of what’s in your shop more easily.
• Out-of-Stock Police: It can help re-order collections automatically, so that our of stock items still appear but fall to the bottom of the list., 
• Wipeout: This app scans the store once a day and helps you quickly hide lots of things you’ve run out of all at once. This very convenient for anyone with a large catalog of products from third parties, for example from Dropshipping suppliers.

Suggest people get notifications for when the product is back in stock

You can also set up apps that will notify the customer when the product is back-in-stock. This can be a good way to increase sales and keep customers engaged with your marketing communications. There are many apps in the app-store which offer this functionality and most have a free-plan available.

Conclusion

It’s really important to hide stuff you’ve run out of on your Shopify shop. This keeps your customers happy because they only see what you actually have. You can do this easily using Shopify’s own tools or by adding extra bits of software. This way, you don’t have to do it all by hand, and your shop stays neat and tidy.