If you’ve ever wanted to offer products in your store that aren’t in stock yet, offering a pre-order option to your customers is a good way to achieve it. For this, you will need a WooCommerce preorder plugin. Your clients will then be able to purchase those items which will be shipped when they become available.
It’s a good way to increase revenue and draw more consumers to your website. It’s better than not selling them at all! Pre-orders are almost guaranteed sales. You’re allowing clients to reserve products that may not be in your inventory for several weeks or months. Some of these items may not have even been created yet.
Once you have an estimated time of arrival for these products, you can start selling them in advance to your customers. You will be able to more accurately predict consumer demand for these items if you have a pre-order option on your site. You can also determine how many sales you can expect when the product is live based on pre-orders.
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What Are The Advantages Of Preorders?
Pre-orders have some distinct advantages. The benefits will vary depending on the items offered and your individual business. Here are some of the common benefits that pre-orders provide.
1. Gives you an idea on the market
Pre-orders give you a good idea of what to expect and predict the demand for certain products, even for items that have yet to be offered. You can see how interested people are in certain items before they’re available.
Apple and other well-known big businesses use this tactic to understand their markets better. Smaller companies can use this information to plan their purchases and inventory decisions.
2. Helps you promote the product better
Many companies develop marketing strategies just for pre-order items. They help to increase awareness and interest in particular products while simultaneously helping companies interpret consumer demand for those items.
This is also good for search engine optimization. By the time the product is available to the general public, it should have already been indexed in the major search engines to help bring more potential and existing customers to your site.
3. Gives you some assured sales
Most companies are initially concerned about how a new product will perform when it’s introduced to the market. Pre-orders can make you feel more at ease because you’ll have confirmed sales for those products in a given period.
Be Careful With Offering Preorders
To have a successful pre-order product, you’ll need an efficient distribution system. Sometimes your success can depend on your product sources. Relying on a supplier that experiences delays may force you to adjust your plans accordingly.
If a pre-order item is delayed for any reason, it can cause concern or a loss of trust from your customers. Any issues that negatively impact such products can eliminate the advantages that offering pre-orders create.
What Are Best WooCommerce Preorder Plugins?
Here are some of the best paid and free WooCommerce backorder plugins:
WooCommerce Pre-Orders
Using the WooCommerce Pre-Orders plugin makes offering pre-orders simple. You can use it to let your clients reserve pre-order items on your website before they’re available. The plugin allows you to complete those orders successfully once those items can be shipped. You can decide whether you want this process to be handled manually or automatically.
You can use the WooCommerce Pre orders plugin to set up your pre-order strategy for items. You can accept payment for products in advance or wait until they are sent to customers. If you choose to process payments once the items have shipped, you can configure the system so that credit cards or other payment methods are charged at that time.
Here are some of the most popular features that this plugin has to offer:
1. You can customize your pre-order page.
Your pre-order product pages should be different from your normal product pages. You can use the plugin to include messages or use in-built button texts for these items. You can display a customized message about the period that the particular pre-order product can be reserved.
You can even place a countdown timer for the item on the product page. All you need is to do is to set up a shortcode for this function.
2. You can control your online orders.
The plugin offers a lot of freedom in terms of how pre-orders are managed. You can dedicate a page just for these items that will be controlled by administrators. Orders on this page can be delayed or completed as needed.
You can also use supported WooCommerce payment gateways to delay payments if necessary. All of these actions can be performed in bulk or on order by order basis, depending on what you want the plugin to do.
3. You have more flexible payment options.
Payment choices are one of the plugin’s key features. You get to choose whether you’ll require that orders are paid in full when orders are placed or if customers can defer payment until you complete the order. You can use Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, or other payment gateways if you’re going to accept deferred payments.
The plugin will let you process payments manually if the automatic payment isn’t an option. In this situation, you can email your clients to inform them when pre-order items are available. They can then pay for the items and complete their orders on your site.
It’s an effective way to manage payments and ensure that nothing gets missed, even though this method doesn’t really capitalize on the automatic payment strategy.
YITH Pre-order for WooCommerce
YITH Pre-order for WooCommerce is an effective plugin for existing and new products that are only available for a limited time. Setting up pre-orders for new items can be an excellent way to generate interest and attract more people to your site.
It’s also a good resource for retaining existing customers who are interested in items that are currently unavailable. You can use this WooCommerce backorder plugin to email clients about pre-order items and promote them on your website.
You can also offer discounts to clients who ordered items during their pre-order phase. You can stay in contact with those interested parties and encourage them to return to your site and finish their purchases. The plugin can be used in connection with the YITH WooCommerce Stripe plugin so that you can process credit card payments for any items that were pre-ordered.
Here’s a quick summary of some of the more important features of this plugin:
1. You can make price adjustments whenever you’d like.
Price adjustments can be made for pre-order items when they are available to ship. You can either apply a markup to the original retail price, or you can add a discount to the product. All you need to do is to select the method that meets your business needs.
2. The WooCommerce order page can be used to control pre-orders.
All pre-orders made via the plugin can be viewed from your WooCommerce Orders page. You can use this information to stay on top of both your regular orders and pre-orders.
3. Control items that are currently out of stock.
The plugin can assist when inventory is depleted for some of your most popular products. It lets you decide if you want to convert items that are currently out of stock into products that can be pre-ordered. It’s an effective way to manage inventory. Just make sure that items that are no longer being manufactured or are discontinued aren’t listed as pre-order items.
4. Simple user interface for customers.
Your clients can log into their My Account page to see their orders. They’ll have access to the same information that you can see from your WooCommerce Orders page. Product prices expected delivery dates and other important information will be displayed.
5. Pre-ordered items are separated from regular products.
This WooCommerce pre order plugin ensures that regular products won’t be mixed with pre-order items. A warning will be shown in consumers’ online shopping carts when they try to order pre-order products and items that are currently in stock at the same time.
6. Notices for pre-order items are sent automatically.
Another nice feature of YITH Pre-order for WooCommerce is that it allows you to email notifications to your clients about the items that they’ve pre-ordered. Store admins will receive notifications as the pre-order release date gets closer. Customers are issued notifications when the pre-order product is in stock.
WordPress WooCommerce Pre Order Plugin
WordPress WooCommerce Pre Order plugin can be used for a variety of business strategies. You can use it to collect payments for pre-order products. It can assist with pre-order items and popular products that you tend to run out of from time to time.
You can show pre-order item statuses and delivery dates. Clients can select to pay a partial payment or pay for the pre-order items in full. You can determine the amount that customers need to pay for each pre-order product that you offer.
The plugin guarantees that clients will receive email notifications when pre-ordered items are available and when their orders are initially placed.
Features:
- Admins can activate or deactivate notifications that are sent out to customers whenever a new item is available for pre-order.
- Your clients can still order items that are currently out of stock.
- It works with downloadable, grouped, simple, variable, and virtual product types.
- Admins can also assign availability dates and preorder statuses.
- Admins can establish custom amounts for pre-ordered items that are supposed to be paid.
- Customers can select full or partial payment.
- All registered clients can be sent email notifications about new items that can be pre-ordered.
- Customers can also be emailed when particular pre-order products are in stock.
SUMO WooCommerce Pre-Orders
SUMO WooCommerce is a complete WooCommerce backorder plugin. You can use it to let your clients pre-order items before they can be purchased in the WooCommerce shop. Payments can be accepted through Pay in Front or Pay on Release.
Pay in Front pre-orders require customers to make their payment through one of the traditional payment gateways when purchasing. Pay on Release pre-orders can only be paid using the SUMO Pre-Orders payment gateway. This will be the sole payment option for these orders at checkout.
Customers will receive an email notification when the particular pre-ordered item is available. The email will include the payment gateway choices that they can use. Clients must pay for their pre-orders within a specified period. Their orders will be canceled if they fail to submit payment during that time.
Bright Plugins Preorders for WooCommerce
Bright Plugins Preorders for WooCommerce can assist you with pre-order billing. You can choose to bill your clients for pre-orders when the items are available, or you can charge them when their orders are placed.
Features;
- A specific section of My Account can be used to control pre-orders.
- Simple and variable products can be assigned a preorder status.
- You can assign expiration dates for any items that can be pre-ordered.
- You can sort orders to include the ones that were placed during the pre-order time frame.
- Items that are currently out of stock can be converted into pre-orders automatically.
- Once the pre-order period ends, you can automatically make certain products available for purchase.
- It won’t let clients who already have items that are in stock in their shopping carts add pre-order items to cart.
- Single product prices can be adjusted during the pre-order time frame. Prices can be set as a markup, fixed amount, or percentage above the current base price.
- The pre-order status can be applied to variable products. Each known variant of that item will then have the pre-order status applied to it.
- You can inform your customers when the pre-ordering period has expired and when those items are in stock.
There is a free and paid version of the Bright Preorder WooCommerce plugin.
Mighty WooCommerce Pre-order
With Mighty Pre-order plugin you can make your customers more happy by allowing them to place orders before the product is released or when it’s temporarily unavailable, resulting in increased sales and higher revenue.
The plugin is packed with features that allow you to create pre-orders and customize products, send reminder emails about the pre-order, accept partial payments for the product, display a countdown to the product launch, view a list of all products at one place, set a country’s timezone specific to each customer and more.
Having the Mighty Woocommerce Pre-Order plugin on your site means you can stop customers from going to other sites and instead send them to yours, leading to better conversion rates.
Here are some of its key features:
1. Allow pre-purchases on your website
The Mighty WooCommerce Pre-order plugin lets you create pre-order products on your store, which can be further customized accordingly. You can also set the price, availability, date, number of in-stock products and status of a pre-order product.
With everything setup, your customers can pre-order what they want from your website without having to wait or go anywhere else. This way you’ll make more sales!
2. Promote sales with customized text
Use the Mighty Pre-Order plugin to create engaging fully customized styles that encourage customers to buy more from you.
Among the customization options are default Add to Cart text, countdown title text, text color and background color, pre-order pay price text and color, call-to-action button text and background color, and default availability text, color and background color.
3. Integrated payment system for pre-orders
The plugin’s biggest benefit is the integrated payment system for pre-orders. Customers can now pre-order and prepay for products they want to buy, ensuring guaranteed delivery of the product once it is made available.
There are two ways to pay – full payment and partial payment. When partial payment is selected, you can specify the Original price and Pre-order price of the product.
Moreover, you can specify the maximum number of products that customers can pre-order for a limited time. This way you help them order their wanted items in advance and fuel your sales.
4. Automatic reminder emails for customers
Once your pre-ordered items are ready for sale, it’s time to let your customers know. How would you do it?
You can use the Automatic Reminder Emails feature of the plugin to send reminder emails to customers who have ordered from you in the past.
5. Get pre-ordered out-of-stock items to not miss any sales
Not only is the plugin applicable to upcoming products! The Mighty Pre-Order plugin allows you to let your customers reserve products that are temporarily unavailable in your WooCommerce store. As soon as these products are back in stock, they can purchase them, thereby increasing sales.
6. Manage all pre-order products at single place
The Mighty WooCommerce Pre-Order plugin helps you manage pre-order products from a single page, saving you time and streamlining the process. You can clearly see the status of each product, and any changes you make are right there, too.
Moreover, you can perform bulk actions on the products list, such as editing or moving to the trash.
7. Shop with regular products and save time
We know how important the customer’s shopping experience is. Checking out the products multiple times wastes your time and effort.
That’s why the Mighty Pre-Order plugin allows you to place pre-order products anywhere on your site and let customers complete checkout with regular products.
WooCommerce Pre-order / Pre-purchase
IgniteWoo WooCommerce preorder plugin enhances your WooCommerce backorder management. It allows you to publish items in your store before they are in stock. Shoppers can pre-order these items, and you can fulfill these orders and send them when they are available.
Features:
- You can select the availability date for each pre-order product.
- You can determine the availability time if you choose.
- Automatically make certain products available at a designated date or time.
- When products are available, you can automatically set the inventory levels that are available to purchase.
- You can add your own customized pre-order message to the product page.
- Feel free to add a countdown timer for your pre-order items to generate anticipation and excitement.
- You can use your own CSS to customize the look and feel of your preorder product countdown timer.
- A “Pre-order” custom status will be assigned to all pre-order items. This makes it easy to find and select the right products when it’s time for shipping.
- The plugin works with downloadable, simple, variable, and virtual products. However, you can’t manage or alter pre-orders for different product variations. All variations are treated the same as the rest of the items in the pre-order custom status.
- With downloadable products, when pre-order products are available, and those pre-orders are in completed status, download links are then sent to your customers. These links aren’t sent ahead of time.
NOTE: This plugin was last updated in 2017. so I don’t recommend using it.
WooCommerce Backorder Plugin Conclusion
Pre-orders are a unique WooCommerce product category. They’re items that clients can order before they’re available or even manufactured in some cases. Pre-orders also allow you to showcase high-demand items that may be temporarily unavailable, best sellers, or other new products.
Above mentioned WooCommerce preorder plugins would be a great addition to your store. And if you need an excellent WooCommerce shipping plugin, then check my list of best WooCommerce UPS shipping plugins, DHL WooCommerce plugins, and WooCommerce FedEx plugins.
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WooCommerce Pre-Order by using this plugin, you can sell pre-orders for products and services in your WooCommerce store. place an order for products or services before it is available for purchase. You can also add optional date, time, and discount for pre-order.