Are there any themes that have an “in stock” in the filter options or is there an app or something i can add to my theme so that customers can choose to only see in stock items instead of having to trawl through all the products? I don’t want to only show in stock items as i want customers to see what we do have available
Hey there, @Claire-Drummy . Nice to meet you! Thanks for bringing this question to the Shopify Community! I hope you’re doing well!
I just have a few questions I’d like to ask you before diving into some next steps:
- Can you share with me what theme you’re using in your store currently?
- Can you let me know how many products you think you have?
- Can you share with me a URL to your shop?
Once I have that information, I should be able to dig into some next best steps for us here. I hope to hear from you soon!
Hi, i think we have Boost version 1.6.3
We also have around 800 products i think, could be more i’m not sure
Hey there, @Claire-Drummy . Thanks so much for getting back to me with the information you’ve outlined here. There are a few options here that you can look into to help improve the shopping experience of your customers so they don’t have to sift through so much sold-out product. The options I recommend will be outlined for you below! Take a look.
Search Filters - So, you originally mentioned using a filter to help customer search for only in-stock product. This is possible with any ‘Online Store 2.0’ Compatible theme. I have a resoure here that outlines loads on information on how to get this setup. The most important steps to check are as follows:
- Login to your store
- Navigate to Online Store > Navigation and Scroll Down to the ‘Collections and Search Filters’ section. Ensure that the ‘Availability’ option is enabled. This means that there will be a filter option on your collection pages customers can select to have only available products shown to them.
Products that are shown via this filter are determined based on the inventory levels of the products within your admin. Once a product comes back into stock, it will automatically be made visible again when using that filter.
I did some research and the ‘Boost’ theme is Online Store 2.0 Compatible - so this filter should work for you. The only way it wouldn’t would be if you’re using a version of the theme that hasn’t been updated for 2.0. You would be made aware of this by a message that says ‘The Current Theme doesn’t support filters.’ If turns out to be the case, you can reach out to our Live Support Team, as they will be able to get you in touch with the Boost Theme Developers, so you can get your theme updated.
Hide Sold Out Products Using a Collecton - Another option you can consider is to use a ‘master collection’ to control the products that are visible on your collection pages at any given time. This can be done for any automated collection, and could even be done for your ‘collections/all’ page, which usually acts as your main catalog page. I have a resource here that goes over the steps. The biggest factor here is ensuring that inventory tracking is enabled within your Shopify admin, and taking the time to editing the settings of your collections to satisy this step. As with the previous method, anytime inventory is updated for your sold-out product, they will automatically be made visible again. This skips the step of having a filter option, and instead hides them by default, saving the customer a click.
Hide your Sold Out Products using an App - Another option for you would be to use a third-party application to hide the sold-out products in your store. An application such as ‘Wipeout’ could be downloaded to your store and will automatically hide sold-out products, saving you the trouble of editing your collection settings, and saving your customers a click. Once again similar to the above options, the app will check daily to see if inventory has been updated, and if it has, it will make the products visible again as long as there is inventory to sell. If your case, Wipeout would be free to use since you have less than 1000 products in your store. Of course, there are different app options to look into, so you can explore the app store a bit more if you want to scout out some additional options. Or, you can follow up with me here, and we can do some more digging together.
Ultimately, you have a few ways you can go about achieving this functionality. I recommend giving the above options a read over. If you have any questions about them, feel free to follow up with me here and I’ll lend a hand!
I thought I’d try the first option you suggested but I when I go into navigation I don’t have a collections and search filters option, where do I go from here or do I have to do something else to get to it?
Hey there, @Claire-Drummy . Thanks for following up with me!
I’ve got a screenshot here of the section you’re looking for within your admin:
If you’re looking for the first option, this is the section you’re going to be looking for! If your theme isn’t compatible with these filter options, you’ll see a blue box at the top of this highlighted section.
Feel free to follow up with me once you’ve had a chance to take a look!
Yeah i don’t have that option at all so i don’t think i’m on 2.0.
i don’t want to hide out of stock products either as i want customers to know what we sell.
would updating to 2.0 change anything on our shop? if not i would like to do that please if you can help with that 
Hi again, @Claire-Drummy ! I have a lot of information for you in this post. I strongly recommend checking out the info regarding third party apps as they should do the trick for you here in terms of adding the type of filter you’re looing for.
Unfortunate that you don’t have those options in that section of your admin. That leads me to think that you’re not currently using a 2.0 theme, so we won’t be able to use the ‘Search Filter’ option we’ve been looking at. You could consider upgrading your theme to 2.0, but this would require doing one of three things:
- Using a new, Online Store 2.0 Theme on your website
- Downloading an upgraded version of your current theme manually
- Upgrading your theme yourself using JSON templates. This would require some coding knowledge.
Since your boost theme is third party, Shopify wouldn’t be able to directly support upgrading it. However, third-party themes are meant to have 2.0 Online Store versions available, so its likely you can download an upgraded version of ‘Boost’ from the Theme Store. I did check out the theme store and ‘Boost’ does describe itself as being 2.0 compatible.
When it comes to upgrading, or downloading a new version of your theme, most of the content will carry over. However, any customizations that had been done on your old theme would need to be re-added. This is often the one factor that prevents folks from moving to a new theme, especially if they’ve been using their current theme for a longer period of time.
Most folks I chat with about upgrading or using a new version of a theme usually decide against it due to existing customizations. And that’s totally fine. In fact, for situations like those, third-party applications can often do the trick and add desired functions to your store. I did some digging and I found three applications that you can add to your current theme that should allow you to offer your desired ‘in-stock’ filter option for your customers! I’ll link them here for you below:
- Product Search and Filter Pro (Free Option)
- Smart Product Filter and Search (Free Trial and Different Paid Plans)
- Product Filter and Search (Paid Option)
All of the above applications are very well reviewed, so you can likely find one that fits your needs perfectly, and allows you to achieve the filter option you’re looking for.
If I were you, I’d first look into these third party apps before looking into upgrading and changing my theme. You’ll likely find a solution within the apps, and that will be loads faster and less time consuming that spending the time downloading a new theme version and re-adding any customizations. Of course, the decision ultimately lays with you, but regardless of what you do here, you’ll end up being able to offer your customers the filter option you’re looking for!
If you have any further questions for me, please feel free to reach back out!
That’s great thank you for your help
I will probably go with the free app option rather than upgrading as our girl who would do that is going on maternity leave soon so i don’t want to risk ruining my site haha
thanks again for all your help
Hey again, @Claire-Drummy !
Happy to help! I hope that the free app does what you need it to do!
I’m going to mark my previous reply as the ‘Solution’ so that anybody else that visits this thread will see that information right away!
If you need any additional help, or have any additional questions, or even want feedback on your store, feel free to follow up with me here and I’ll take a look!
All the best!
If you use this app https://apps.shopify.com/ultimate-search-and-filter-1, you can hide all unavailable variants from showing on your storefront. There are 2 ways to do that in this app:
-
Enable Hide unavailable variants in App settings => Search index
-
Or use merchandising rules to hide unavailable variants.
Hello Imogen,
I have a question for you regarding Shopify’s integrated Search Filters options.
Is there a way that In Stock/Available option in the Availability Section of the Filters is Pre-selected? Something like a default yes?
So that the visitor sees only available Variants. (e.g Size).
I dont want to hide sold out variants (eg. Size S,M). I prefer to show up as sold when the visitor sees the product page.
On the other hand if the Visitor does not select Availability = yes, then the filters will also fetch sold out variants, and the visitor does not pay attention to section availability.
Hi @Dilinger
From my understanding, your goal is making sure only available variants (like sizes) are shown by default, but still keeping sold-out variants visible unless a user chooses to filter them out. The AI Search & Product Filter has the filter function to hide unavailable variants if a filter value is selected while still showing all out of stock and in stock on your collections. You can give it a try on an unpublished theme to see if it meets your needs.
Thank you, but this app is very expensive for our catalog. (1550 products). Plus we are already using Power Tools app and we wouldn’t want to complicate things.
Hi @Claire-Drummy ,
If you are still looking for an app, then you can check out https://apps.shopify.com/sparq-search , they have many plans as per the products you have, and see if this fits your budget.
Thanks
Neha