Introducing the new plugin for WooCommerce products that are no longer available
Our latest plugin - WooCommerce Discontinued Products - was released today. It's the only plugin on the market that lets you manage WooCommerce products that are no longer available without losing their SEO value.
If you've ever removed a product from your store, you'll know that WooCommerce doesn't provide any good options for products that are no longer available. You can mark an end-of-life product as out of stock. However, this implies that stock will be available again in future, and messes up your stock reports. Some people delete end-of-life products, but this loses their SEO value and creates broken links.
The new WooCommerce Discontinued Products plugin solves all these problems and more. It's the perfect way to manage WooCommerce products that are no longer available.
Note: The WooCommerce Discount Manager plugin was acquired by our friends at Kestrel in March 2024, and is now available on the Kestrel website.
Easily mark WooCommerce products as no longer available
The WooCommerce Discontinued Products plugin adds a new 'Discontinued' stock status to WooCommerce. This sits alongside the default stock statuses of in stock, on backorder and out of stock.
Discontinued products work in a similar way to out of stock products. For example, they are not purchasable. However, they have some unique features that you need for products that will never be available again:
- You can add some custom text which appears on the product page for all your no longer available products. This clearly communicates with customers that the product has been permanently discontinued and will not come back in stock.
- Discontinued products are clearly marked in the WordPress admin and stock reports. They won't be mixed up with your current products which are still available.
- It only takes a second to mark a WooCommerce product as no longer available. Simply change the stock status of a product or variation to 'Discontinued'. Even better, you can also change the availability of products and variations in bulk.
- You can choose whether to show or hide end-of-life products from the public parts of your store, such as the shop page.
- Discontinued product pages are still accessible to search engines. This means that you don't lose their SEO value simply because products are no longer available. (Check out our top tips on how to get sales from customers who land on your discontinued product pages.)
Video - see it in action
You can see how the plugin handles products which are no longer available in our Discontinued Products video. This walks you through the plugin's features and how to set them up:
Does it work with other Barn2 plugins?
You can use WooCommerce Discontinued Products with any Barn2 plugin, as well as plugins from third party companies. For example:
- The 'Discontinued' message will appear in the stock column in WooCommerce Product Table, and in the bulk variations grid when you use WooCommerce Bulk Variations. Discontinued products will not be purchasable because they are no longer available.
- When you use WooCommerce Quick View Pro, the discontinued information will work in the lightbox in exactly the same way as the single product page.
Where can I get the plugin?
WooCommerce Discontinued Products is available today, and only takes a minute to set up. You'll soon have a better way to manage WooCommerce products that are no longer available - while still getting all their SEO benefits!
2 Comments
Can this show on shop pages as well?
Hi, Chuck. By default, the stock status of products (which includes our plugin's discontinued stock status) is not displayed in the shop and category archives/pages in WooCommerce.
However, you can use our WooCommerce Product Table plugin's Table display options to show your shop and category pages in the product table layout in which you can also add/display/include the stock column to show the current stock status/levels of your products (see Available columns).
This way, you can show the WooCommerce Discontinued Products status in the stock column of the product table displayed in your site's shop and category pages.