Out of Stock Products, BigCommerce

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At a glance

Number of active products currently with zero or negative inventory. Every out-of-stock product is a missed sale, an SEO impression with no payoff, and an ad click that pays the merchant nothing. The card surfaces the OOS pool size at any moment so the merchant can prioritise reordering, supplier escalation, or pulling ad spend off the affected SKUs. OOS on a long-tail product is recoverable; OOS on a bestseller during a peak window is unrecoverable revenue lost permanently.

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Calculation

out_of_stock_count = COUNT(products WHERE
                       inventory_level <= 0
                       AND status = 'active'
                       AND inventory_tracking != 'none')

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Worked example

1. The headline 10,000 OOS is a function of a very large catalogue. A 552K catalogue with 10K OOS is a 1.8% OOS rate, which is operationally typical. The percentage matters less than the revenue concentration: if the 12 bestseller OOS items represent £100K of monthly revenue, that’s the urgent fix.
2. Triage by revenue, not by count.
   • Tier A (top 100 by 90D revenue, 12 OOS): urgent. Each day OOS is £700 lost on average per item (£8,400/day across the cohort). Reorder same-day; if supplier lead time exceeds 7 days, pull ad spend off these PDPs immediately.
   • Tier B (top 1,000, additional ~80 OOS): high priority. Reorder this week; consider substitute-product cross-sell on the OOS PDP.
   • Tier C (long tail, 9,900+ OOS): low priority. Auto-restock from supplier feed if integration exists; otherwise schedule for monthly review.
3. The ad-spend waste angle. Of the 12 bestseller OOS items, 7 likely have active Google Shopping or Meta ads pointing at them. Each click on an ad to an OOS PDP costs the merchant the CPC and earns nothing. Auto-pause logic for OOS PDPs (via Vortex Mind actions or manually via Google Ads inventory feed sync) saves £1,200/week in ad spend at this scale.
4. The SEO angle. Google demotes product pages that show “out of stock” repeatedly; ranking recovery after restock takes 1-3 weeks. Long-OOS products lose organic position permanently unless explicitly canonicalised to a parent or alternative. For products OOS more than 30 days, consider hiding from the catalogue or 301-redirecting to an alternative.
5. Recommended response, in priority order:
   • Hour 1: Identify Tier A OOS list. Pause ads on those PDPs.
   • Day 1: Reorder Tier A from suppliers; escalate if lead time is unusable.
   • Day 1-2: Add “notify-me” capture forms on Tier A PDPs to retain demand.
   • Day 3-7: Add substitute-product cross-sell on Tier A PDPs.
   • Week 2: Audit Tier B; reorder.
   • Week 4: Long-tail review; consider hiding products OOS > 30 days.
   • Result: Tier A bestsellers restocked; bestseller OOS count drops from 12 to 0-2; weekly revenue at risk drops below £1K.
6. Cross-reference cards:
   • bc_low_stock, products at risk of going OOS in the next 7-14 days. Use as the leading indicator.
   • bc_revenue_by_category, confirms which OOS categories are revenue-critical.
   • bc_xc_ads_on_oos, explicitly identifies ad spend going to OOS PDPs.
   • gads_wasted_spend, broader ad waste view.

1. Read OOS count. Triage by revenue tier, not by count.
2. Identify Tier A bestseller OOS. Pause ads, reorder same-day.
3. Add notify-me + substitute cross-sell on Tier A PDPs.
4. Audit and reorder Tier B next week.
5. Review long-tail monthly; hide or redirect products OOS > 30 days.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre