What’s worse than FOMO for online shoppers?

POMO. The Pain of Missing Out

When highly coveted products are out of stock, the POMO is real.

Not just for shoppers but for you as the merchant, it’s also the pain of a disappointed customer who may leave without buying anything.

So how are clever merchants mitigating POMO with creative UX?

1. Use visual search to suggest alternatives

Visual search uses computer vision to surf your catalog and surface “more like this” items. Vendors like Constructor.io, Nosto, Doofinder, Syte.ai and Bloomreach can provide this solution.

🧘🏾 Alo includes a “See similar items” link with its stock notifier widget that jumps to the Similar Items carousel below (with a similar pattern on mobile):

👑 Princess Polly embeds visually similar products inside its notifier widget Vendor: Nosto

(Only products with the selected color/size variant in stock will display in the widget)

2. Show a recommendations drawer

Boots proactively slides a “more like this” drawer when you land on an out-of-stock PDP

3. Provide an estimated arrival date for restocks

There are always cases where nothing else will do, and customers will wait with baited breath for your restock. Just providing an “email me when back in stock” does little to ease POMO.

👗 Lulus provides an estimated arrival date for restocks when presenting the stock notifier modal:

4. Try a live help CTA

Sometimes a little human intervention can help save a sale. But’s important that you consider if this tactic is appropriate for your business: ❓Are your customer service reps trained on styling and product knowledge?

❓Is your catalog deep enough to have likely substitutes?

❓Is your typical customer best served through consultative selling?

👗 Aritzia suggests calling the Concierge number to find something similar:

Alternately, you could certainly try a chatbot here or proactive live chat instead of this type of component when a customer selects an OOS variant.

5. Use “find similar” for OOS wish list saves

Wish lists are forever — and that means saves are gonna go out of stock, especially for fashion and apparel brands.

👗 ASOS uses visual search (from Syte.ai) to merchandise their Saved Items feature. Clicking “See similar” takes you to a “Similar items” page

See it in action (if this GIF takes too long to load, keep scrollin’!):

6. Promote “almost gone” items in wishlist

Wish lists don’t get enough feature-love, in my opinion. 💄 But I love how Sephora treats its wishlist like a key page, investing in innovative and helpful features like boosting low-stock SKUs above recently added faves:

Sadly, this is only on desktop (for now) although the bump would display just fine in a mobile wishlist.

7. Use “try another [variant]” for OOS cart items

If you can configure the logic to determine if another size variant is in stock in another color (or other variant-option combo for non-apparel products), this kinda feature is golden.

🧘🏾  Lululemon does this brilliantly:

8. Show visually similar cart cross-sells

I don’t have a live example for this! But if you use a visual search solution, use the same PDP technique in the cart. This is my artist’s rendition of what such a solution could look like on Wayfair 😄

Existing:

With a Shop Similar CTA:

With a similar items widget:

9. Send “almost gone” emails for low-stock items in cart

You’re already sending cart recovery emails, right? When technically feasible, follow up with an “almost gone” email when stock gets flaky.

👠 Nine West does a nice job pulling visually similar items into their “almost gone” email with a “check availability” button in case you open your message too late…

If you have SMS permissions, a text nudge is a great tactic too.

10. Always provide variant fallbacks

Make sure your default “landing” variant has a fallback rule to display the next in-stock variant if the primary variant is sold out. Otherwise you get a disabled button like this that confuses customers!

11. Prevent POMO with low-stock flags

Prevention is the best cure. Warning browsers that stock is low may help boost conversion and prevent disappointment on a returning visit. Make sure to make your stock messages obvious! If you use black text and place it out of context with variant chips they are easy to miss:

Opt for colored text or bold badges instead:

🧘🏽‍♀️ Alo Yoga shows an ‘Almost Gone’ flag when you select a color variant that’s low stock in a product list (keep in mind this doesn’t take size variants into account, and works on desktop only):

Have you seen another tip missing from this list? Drop me a line!