Product removal from online stores - What all you need to keep in mind

No matter how much huge and reputed your online business is, things can become worse if the online store is not managed carefully and in a planned manner. Though a lot of processes are involved, the very basic thing is addition and removal of products. However, it is something very important and overlooking it can invite trouble and brand value depletion.

When it comes to adding products into online store, there are a lot of advices from experts and several online blogs on which you can rely. Almost every entity indulged in the business of ecommerce back office support services is well acquainted with different steps as well as techniques to carry out for the procedures related to product additions effectively.

But what about product removal?

How much do you care?

As a simple click gets the product removed, the process may seem simple but there certain things you must do before permanently erasing products. Let see what they are.

You should notify the prospects

When you plan to delete any product, you should unfailing intimate the prospective buyers either or both via emails and notifications on the website. They must be aware well in advance that you are not going to sell the concerned product anymore. This will make them feel that you care for them and thus the customers will get more enamoured towards your brand and business.

Now in case if the product is not that favourite among customers or is seldom ordered, you need not notify intensively. Also, if the product is going to come back again to the store soon and the deletion is temporary, there is no need to inform.

Simply hide the Product Page

When a product is out of stock, you need not delete the product; simply hiding would be enough. For set-up redirects, product page URL will be needed. Also if you delete a product, carrying out the whole process for adding it again can be relatively more time-consuming.

Use the option of URL redirect without any delay

On hiding a product page, it is obvious that visitors can’t see it but search engines can. This means that there can be traffic to that page. So, never lose the traffic you get and try to make use of it as a sales opportunity. By setting up a URL redirect to other pages of similar products, benefits you may get can be immense.

Store all product page related data

It is always recommended to archive all the information of product page including dimensions, UPC no. etc. This can turn out to be useful in the future. You can create a Google sheet for the entire data.

Overwrite using New Part Number

Most of the ecommerce store deletes products from store, if the products discontinued. This is not good for SEO. Because Google and other search engines already crawl all url and deletion may cause errors in the store. Therefore always overwrite discontinued products using new products with the help of old product ID

For Example: If your products are vehicle products and your store is X-cart. Most of the vehicle products always change into new part number and old product may be discontinued by the vendor. So we can overwrite discontinued products by its new part number and update in product description as Replaced “Old Product Part Number” and update old part number in the Meta Keyword and Meta description of the new product. This way you can maintain SEO perfectly.

Proceed slowly rather than rushing.

Deleting of products is a process that you should carry out slowly and only after enough thought process. This will assure that you keep yourself safe from any sort of complications or troubles. Also, no products will be erased by mistake.

If the above steps are taken, product deletion becomes swifter, safe and hassle free.