3 Ways to Keep Selling When Products Have Low Availability
In the world of online travel agencies (OTAs), sold-out products can disrupt sales and disappoint potential customers. However, by using smart strategies alongside tools, you can keep sales ticking along and keep customers satisfied, even when availability is limited.
Read on and find out how to turn these challenges into opportunities for continued growth and increased profitability.
Essential Strategies and Tools to Keep Low-Availability Products Selling
Here are three simple ways you can sell your preferred products, even when availability is low:
- Experience Pages: if you’re promoting a high-demand product with low availability, consider using an experience page instead of a product. This will allow customers to find more choices and available options.
- Product Grouping: for some of our most popular venues we have a new feature that allows you to provide more options to your customers through simple links added to your website. Check out some examples below.
- Implementations Dashboard: this lets you easily check to see which products are inactive and shows suggestions for similar alternatives.
1. Leverage Experience Pages
Instead of missing out on a top-selling product that’s in high demand, you could consider directing your customers to a broader experience page, such as a Venue or Activity Page, rather than a standalone product page. Here, your customers will land on a wide range of curated product types such as guided tours, audio tours and entry tickets - leaving them with more options, and you with more sales opportunities.
For example, if you wanted to sell tickets to The Duomo in Milan, you might be tempted to simply have your affiliate link or affiliate widget, direct to the individual product page as pictured below.
Instead, you could redirect your customer straight to the Experience Page that offers 10 different ticket options, rather than one. The landing page also features an availability tool for a seamless experience when comparing ticketing options with preferred dates.
This approach ensures that even if one product is sold out or unavailable on a specific date, customers are not left empty-handed and are more likely to complete a purchase with other available experiences.
Pro tip: you can also send your customers to an experience page and keep highlighting your preferred product by adding a simple parameter in the url (/?product=product id). This way, they will be redirected to the experience page with more options and still see the main product on the top.
Example: https://www.tiqets.com/en/milan-cathedral-the-duomo-tickets-l145637/?product=1023884
2. Explore Product Grouping for Popular Venues
Product Grouping is a useful feature that enhances customer experience and can boost sales. By organizing similar products offered by multiple providers under a single page, customers can easily compare options and find what they're looking for.
Unlike traditional product pages, Product Grouping is centred around date availability. This means that customers can quickly see all the relevant products available on their desired date, whether it's different Vatican Museum tickets or various guided tours of the same attraction. By redirecting customers to a Product Grouping page, you can increase the chances of them finding a suitable product, ultimately reducing the risk of lost sales and boosting revenue as a result.
Check out some examples here:
- Uffizi Gallery: Priority Entrance Ticket
- Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel: Fast Track Entry Ticket
- Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's Basilica: Guided Tour
- Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill: Reserved Entrance
- Duomo di Milano: Entry Ticket with Rooftops
- Acropolis: Guided Tour
- Sagrada Familia: Guided Tour
- Alhambra: Admission Tickets
To discover more Product Grouping pages, reach out to your account manager.
You can benefit from Product Grouping right away by simply adding one or more links of the pages listed above directly into your content. Be sure to add your account parameters to correctly track your commissions. Find out how to create a customizable link via the link generator here.
3. Regularly Check the Implementations Dashboard
Staying informed about the status of your linked products is key to maintaining sales momentum. The implementations dashboard is an essential tool for tracking the performance and status of your website links and widgets. It helps you:
- Identify inactive or sold-out products: Quickly spot when a product is no longer available and replace it with a suitable alternative.
- Monitor redirects: Keep track of temporary page unavailability and ensure smooth customer redirection.
- Detect broken links: Quickly identify and fix malformed or non-existent links to maintain a positive user experience.
By regularly checking the implementations dashboard and promptly updating any broken or inactive links or widgets by using the suggested alternatives, you can address any potential issues, maintaining the flow of traffic, user experience and sales, as a result, on your website.
Check it out now and read here to find more information.
Sold-out products don’t have to result in missed sales opportunities. By exploring Experience Pages, Discovery Widgets, Product Grouping, and the implementation dashboard, affiliates can optimize their sales opportunities. These strategies keep customers engaged whilst also ensuring that you can adapt quickly to changing product availability. Embrace these tools and strategies to capitalize on opportunities for growth and success.