Hi @matt_hundredrec,
Josiah here. 👋🏻 There are a few ways you can approach this.
"Continue Selling When Out of Stock"
You can enable "Continue Selling When Out of Stock" in your products' settings, so when the stock number is zero your customers can still make a purchase. You can then add the pre-order info manually to your product descriptions to set their expectations.
You can also use some code to change the Add to Cart button to Preorder Now (there are some posts on this forum that can help you). Otherwise, you can also look into some themes out there that would have built-in pre-order functionalities.
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Using a pre-order app to take care of everything for you
If you're open to using an app to do everything above for you and more, we're an Aussie-founded pre-order/back-in-stock app (Early Bird). Free Plan available with no commission fees to help small businesses get started.
You can take the following approaches via our app:
- Capture pre-orders automatically when sold out; partial deposit option available
- Capture back-in-stock notification sign-ups when sold out
- Capture back orders when sold out
- Capture back orders OR back-in-stock notification sign-ups when sold out (Display both options to your customers)
- You can one-click bulk-send pre-order delayed emails to customers if your shipment is delayed.
Our Back order feature is essentially a simpler version of the pre-order campaign feature. Enable it across your entire catalog instead of setting up campaigns for advanced functionalities.
There are more features in our app, but just listing the ones that are relevant to your business.
Happy to jump on a video call or email you a step-by-step guide to walk through each of the above. 🙂
PS. Would love to hear how you're operating your shop & online store if you're up for a chat - we're helping Shopify gather merchant feedback on how to better support pre-orders and partial deposits at the moment. Can pass on your feedback!
Josiah
