When a bestselling product goes out of stock, your PrestaShop store may lose more than immediate sales. Customers might leave for competitors, delay their purchases, or lose interest if they cannot find out when the product will return.
With the right approach, you can keep customers engaged and turn stockouts into opportunities. Let’s explore how to manage unavailable bestsellers without losing potential sales.
Decide First: Is This A Short Gap, A Long Wait, or The End of the Line?
Before you touch a single setting under Catalog > Products, work out which of three situations you are actually in.
| Scenario | Typical timeframe | PrestaShop out-of-stock setting | What the shopper sees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short gap | Days, restock confirmed | Allow backorder | Order now, ships shortly |
| Medium wait | Weeks, no firm date | Deny backorder plus a back-in-stock alert | Notify me when available |
| Permanent | Discontinued or replaced | Disabled, with a 301 redirect to a successor | Redirected to a relevant product |
Short gaps are the easy case: a confirmed delivery date from your supplier means backorder keeps the sale. Medium waits are where trust is won or lost, because a shopper who sees no date will often leave. The permanent case is the one store owners rush. Disabling a product with no redirect tells search engines the page is gone, and any links or rankings pointing at it are lost.
Setting Out-of-stock Behaviour in PrestaShop: Deny, Allow, or Use Default
PrestaShop puts the decision for each product in one place: go to Catalog > Products, open the product, and find the Stock tab. Under "When out of stock", you get three options that change both what the shopper sees and whether they can order.
| Option | What the Shopper Sees | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Deny Backorder | An "out of stock" availability label; the Add to cart button is blocked | A short gap where you expect a restock soon but cannot take orders yet |
| Allow Backorder | Purchasing stays open; the order is accepted with the restock as a promise | A confirmed restock date and a customer base willing to wait |
| Use Default | Inherits the behaviour set in Shop Parameters > Product Settings | Long-tail SKUs you rarely think about |
If your Shop Parameters > Product Settings default says "Deny backorder," every product left on "Use default" quietly follows it, and your bestseller is no exception. Check that default before you touch individual products, or you may set one page correctly and leave the rest behaving the opposite way.
When backorder is denied, PrestaShop shows a "product unavailable" style message rather than the order form, which does nothing to keep the visit alive. A module such as PrestaShop out-of-stock notification from FME Modules lets shoppers register their interest and be told when the item returns, instead of bouncing to a competitor. Match the availability label to the real situation: if a restock is weeks away, an honest label plus a waitlist beats a blocked page.
Before You Change Anything: What PrestaShop and Google See When A Product Hits Zero
A product page that hits zero is a live URL with backlinks, rankings and a history. Two systems are watching: PrestaShop's own configuration, and Google's crawler reading the page and structured data.
The dangerous move is deleting the product. Delete it, and PrestaShop serves a 404 for a URL that may still rank, still earn links from blogs and buying guides, and still sit in a customer's bookmark. Instead, disable the product or leave it visible in a controlled state so the URL keeps resolving.
Google also reads your stock messaging. The availability value in the page's structured data should match what the shopper sees. A mismatch, or a page that claims availability when stock is zero, invites a Merchant Center disapproval and can cost you the free product listing you had for that item.
Check the store defaults before you touch the product. In the PrestaShop back office, go to Preferences > Products > Product settings and review how out-of-stock items and labels are handled by default, so a single edit does not accidentally flip every other product in the catalogue.
Deleting a sold-out bestseller throws away rankings you paid for; disabling it keeps them warm for the day stock returns.
Store owners who want finer control over how sold-out pages present themselves often turn to a PrestaShop module from a partner such as FME Modules, an official PrestaShop Partner, rather than hard-coding template changes. Whatever route you take, confirm the change in a browser and check the page source for the availability flag.
Allow Backorder or Hide the Button? The 24-hour Rule for A Top Seller
Give yourself a 24-hour deadline to decide, not to act. Within one working day of stock hitting zero, you should know whether you have a confirmed restock within days or an open-ended wait. That answer picks the setting for you.
If your supplier has given you a firm delivery date and the item is due back inside the week, switching that product's out-of-stock behaviour to Allow backorders keeps the sale. The customer orders now, you fulfil when the pallet lands, and the page keeps converting. The catch is honesty: backorders only work when the page states a realistic dispatch date, and you can hold that promise. Break it once, and the review that follows spreads further than the lost sale would have.
For anything longer or vaguer, hide the order button and offer an email alert instead. A "Notify me when back in stock" signup captures the shopper at the moment of intent and builds a list of warm buyers to email the day it returns. A Lucidworks consumer survey found that 76 percent of shoppers say they'll "sometimes or always" buy a substitute item, so pair the alert with a link to a close alternative and you keep the basket alive either way. FME Modules builds PrestaShop modules that handle exactly this kind of customer communication.
How Do You Turn A Sold-out Product Page into A Cross-sell Instead of A Dead End?
A customer lands on your bestseller from a search result or an old campaign link, sees "out of stock", and leaves within seconds. Keep the same URL live and swap the hero of the page from the product itself to something they can actually buy. Because the page stays at its original address, the ranking and backlinks it earned keep working.
Options for the temporary hero
- Related products block. PrestaShop already supports a related products block on the product page. Point it at genuinely comparable items, not filler from the same category.
- "Customers also bought" data. If you use a module that tracks real purchase pairs, let it surface what shoppers actually paired with this item. Real behaviour beats your guess about substitutes.
- A curated alternative. Pick one specific product and write a short line explaining why it is the closest match: same size, same finish, next model up.
- A bundle or kit. If the sold-out item is one component, offer the bundle that includes its in-stock sibling.
Keep the original product in the related products block, flagged as awaiting stock. A shopper who sees "not available yet, here is what else" learns the item still exists and may come back. A shopper who sees a bare "out of stock" page assumes you have dropped it.
Substitution is not a hard sell. The Lucidworks survey found most shoppers will sometimes or always buy a substitute item. The page just has to make the substitute obvious before they hit back. PrestaShop's default product page is not built to promote a replacement hero, so a module that controls the related products block, adds a custom banner above the product, and shows a "similar items in stock" area does the job without editing theme files. FME Modules builds PrestaShop modules for exactly this kind of product page control.
If It Is Gone for Good: Retiring The Page Without Losing Its Rankings
Deleting a discontinued product removes the product ID, so any inbound link, bookmark or old ad pointing at that URL lands on a 404 and search engines gradually forget the page existed. The safer path keeps the URL alive and hands its authority to a close relative. PrestaShop's Disable toggle is the pivot: it takes the product out of the storefront and out of sale without wiping its record, its images, its combinations or its history.
- Disable, Do Not Delete. Open the product in the PrestaShop back office and switch its status from Enabled to Disabled. The page stops appearing in the catalogue, search and category listings, but the data survives, so you can revive it later if the line returns.
- Redirect the Old URL. Go to the SEO & URLs area of the back office and use the URL redirect tool (PrestaShop's 301 redirect feature). Point the retired product's friendly URL at the most relevant successor: the category it belonged to, or a newer product that replaces it. A 301 tells search engines the page has moved permanently, so the ranking signals follow the redirect instead of dying with the page.
- Prune it from Feeds, Sitemaps and Internal Links. Disabling hides the product on site, but third-party shopping feeds and any cached sitemap can still list the old URL. Refresh or regenerate those exports, then sweep your internal links (blog posts, category descriptions, cross-sells) and update any that still point to the dead product.
Redirect to the nearest equivalent, not the homepage. Sending shoppers to a generic landing page frustrates them and tells search engines the move is arbitrary.
The First Two Days: What to Change the Moment Your Bestseller Sells Out
Work through this list in order, because each item depends on the product page being in the right state first.
- Set the Product Page State. In the PrestaShop Back Office, open the product's Quantities tab and confirm that When out of stock matches your decision: Deny backorder, Allow backorder, or Use default. Save before touching anything else.
- Fix the Availability Label. PrestaShop shows a default "Out-of-stock" label on the product page. Rewrite it in the Options tab to say what happens next ("Back in stock soon" or "Join the waitlist") rather than leaving a bare negative.
- Turn on Back-in-stock Alerts. A customer who lands on a sold-out page with no way to be notified is a lost sale. If you use a PrestaShop module for stock notifications, enable it on this product now, while the page still has traffic.
- Repoint Homepage and Menu Links. Any hero banner, "Shop bestsellers" block or category menu slot pointing at the sold-out item should now lead to the closest in-stock alternative or the waitlist page.
- Pause Paid Ads for that Product. Sending paid clicks to a page that cannot convert burns budget and drags your quality signals down. Switch the ad group to the substitute product instead.
- Check the Google Merchant Center feed. Once PrestaShop has regenerated the feed, confirm the item is marked out of stock rather than still "in stock". A mismatched feed risks disapproved products and wasted Shopping clicks.
- Audit internal links pointing at the page. Blog posts, buying guides and category descriptions that link to the bestseller should now point to the alternative or carry a short note. Keep the links intact if the product is coming back.
Do the page state and the feed in the same hour, because a stale feed is the fastest way to lose visibility on a product you still intend to sell. The rest can follow within two days.
Preventing The Next Sell-out Panic: Stock Alerts & Demand Signals
A sold-out bestseller is only a crisis the first time. After that, the goal is to see the next gap coming before a customer does, and to treat every back-in-stock signup as a demand signal rather than just a queue of impatient buyers.
Start with reorder points on your fastest movers. PrestaShop's product quantity settings let you flag low stock, so set a threshold per bestseller that reflects how long your supplier actually takes to restock. A line that sells quickly and takes two weeks to resupply needs a very different trigger from one that trickles out over a month.
Back-in-stock signups tell you something a reorder point cannot: the size of the crowd you left waiting. If a steady stream of people joins the waitlist in a week for a product you stock in small batches, that is a demand curve, not a shortage. Feed that number back into your buying, and you start ordering the right quantity instead of the familiar one.
Read the waitlist as a buying brief, not a queue, and a sold-out bestseller becomes the cheapest market research you will ever run.
Running these alerts at scale is easier with a dedicated PrestaShop module than with manual stock checks, and the data it collects pays for itself the first time it stops you short on a top seller.
Why A Sold-out Bestseller Deserves its Own Plan
A bestseller showing "out of stock" is a traffic and trust event: the page still ranks in search, customers still land on it, and every day it carries a bare "Out of stock" label costs you conversions you had already worked to earn. A bestseller is usually the page that absorbs paid traffic, earns the most internal links, and pulls in the most long-tail search visits, so a stockout there is a visible gap in your funnel. Shoppers rarely abandon the mission when the exact item is gone, either: the Lucidworks survey found most will sometimes or always buy a substitute. Your job is to make the substitute obvious before the customer bounces to a competitor.
Treat every sold-out bestseller as a landing page that still deserves a job, not as a broken catalogue entry. Deciding fast, and per product, is what separates a recovered sale from a lost one.
Option 1: Keep the Bestseller Purchasable with Backorder
Backorder is the right call when the stockout is short and predictable, and when the customer would rather wait than shop elsewhere. In PrestaShop, this is controlled on the product's Quantities tab, where you set the out-of-stock behaviour to allow orders beyond zero stock, and in Shop Parameters > Product Settings, where the global default lives.
The commercial risk is not backorder itself; it is surprise. A customer who orders without realising there is a wait will raise a chargeback or a refund request. Use the product description, a short delivery note, and the cart to state the delay in plain words.
Backorder turns a stockout into a pre-order, but only if the customer knows the wait before checkout, not after.
Option 2: Turn The Sold-out Page Into A Waitlist & Alternative Hero
When the wait is long, or the restock date is unknown, keep the page live and change its job. The URL keeps its rankings, the customer gets a reason to stay, and you capture demand you would otherwise lose. A practical setup: disable ordering on the product, add a clear back-in-stock sign-up above the fold, and feature two or three related products underneath.
Build the Waitlist & Back-in-stock Notification
A plain "Out of stock" label tells the customer nothing. A back-in-stock sign-up captures an email so you can notify them the moment stock returns, and it gives you a demand signal for reordering. Some PrestaShop modules and email marketing platforms support this directly; if your stack does not, a simple form plus a product tag is a workable start. Notify subscribers as soon as the product is restocked, before general launch emails go out. A waitlist that never converts into a message damages trust faster than a stockout ever did.
Promote Alternatives Without Cannibalising the Bestseller
Choose alternatives that genuinely overlap with the bestseller: same use case, similar price bracket, and something a customer would happily accept. Avoid pushing an entirely different category just to fill the space. If you have a module that handles related products or cross-sells, use it here to keep the recommendation consistent on mobile and desktop.
Final Verdict
Every sold-out bestseller falls into one of the three buckets above, and the job on day one is to name the bucket correctly. A confirmed quick restock earns backorder. An open-ended wait earns a waitlist with a strong alternative hero. A discontinued line earns a disable plus a 301 to its successor. What none of them earns is a deleted product or a page that sits there saying nothing.
The recurring theme across all three routes is the URL. It holds the rankings, the links and the customer bookmarks, so your default should always be to keep it live and change what it does, not remove it. Get the out-of-stock behaviour, the availability label, the feed and the internal links aligned within the first two days and the stockout costs you a few orders at most. Leave them misaligned, and it costs you visibility you spent months building.
If you would rather not rebuild this by hand for every product, the PrestaShop out-of-stock notification module from FME Modules handles the waitlist and restock alerts on the page you are keeping live, so the next bestseller to run dry is a two-minute setting change rather than a scramble.
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