Availability Module Overview

Benefits to Retailers

Provides detailed and accurate stock information and order fulfilment options. For shoppers, it typically helps to answer the following questions:

• What item is available?
• When and how can I get it?
• How much do I pay in total?
• Where is it available?

For Retailers, it helps to provide near-real-time product availability information and fulfilment options to customers before the buy button, payment cart and checkout pages, refining the options with each step. Additionally, it can determine customer location and delivery method and calculate the time and cost of delivery.

• Allows customers to obtain all possible fulfilment options on the PDP, reducing cart abandonment chances.  
• Provides accurate available stock information—customers are shown up-to-date availability on the PDP and checkout page using the Fulfillment Options call. Note: Storage information on the PLP  is achieved by regularly refreshing the inventory cache (e.g., every 15 minutes).

Availability Module Features

Availability Module features include:

• Get real-time available-to-sell (ATS) and Available-to-Promise (ATP) stock for any product and its variants to show availability on an e-commerce product details page (PDP), cart and checkout pages, and Point-of-sales system (POS).
• Show different availability for home delivery, store pick-up, or another choice of fulfilment or delivery.
• Obtain all possible fulfilment options for an entire cart in real-time for given quantities, an address, or a pickup location.
• Provide an ETA based on fulfilment times and delivery type: home delivery, click and collect, ship-to-store, or ship-from-store.

Product Display Page (PDP) Example

Below is an example of a product detail page (PDP) for a cosmetics retailer to help illustrate the Availability of key features.

Refer to the numbers (1 to 5) that correspond to the features illustrated in the image below:

(1) Display information for any products and their variants on the PDP (or checkout page) based on underlying inventory data — this increases cart conversion rates.

(2) Allow backorders for an item that is temporarily out-of-stock (Note: This is a capability possible through extension with SDKs)

(3) Provide delivery ETAs and pickup options upfront to the customer (e.g., 24-hour click-and-collect), enhancing customer satisfaction and retention.

(4) Allow customers to see what’s in stock at local stores nearby — this provides convenience and flexibility for the customer.

(5) Show availability of related recommended products increases the chance of customers purchasing add-on products and ultimately spending more.