Should I hide, delete or redirect a sold-out Wix product?

1. What to do with each kind of product

Start with one question: will you sell this exact product again? Your answer picks a row in the table above.

Two terms come up often. A 301 redirect is a permanent forward from an old address to a new page. A 404 is the “page not found” answer a site gives for a missing page.

Not sure yet? Keep the page out of stock for now, and pick a date to decide by.

Sources: Google: Pausing your online business · Wix: Hiding and showing products · Google: Troubleshooting crawl errors · Wix: Showing an out-of-stock notice

2. What Wix does when stock runs out

When a product sells out, Wix shows an “Out of Stock” message wherever the product appears. That includes the product page, category pages and galleries. The page itself stays on your site. This happens on its own only when “Track inventory quantity” is on and stock reaches 0. If it’s off, set the product’s Status to Out of Stock yourself.

Products with options, such as sizes or colors, keep stock for each variant, such as small and green. The notice shows only when a shopper picks a variant that has sold out.

You can change the words on the product page. In the Wix Editor, go to Pages & Menu → Store Pages → Product Page, click the product page, then Settings → Text tab, and edit “Out of Stock Message”. In the Studio Editor, the text is under Action Buttons → “Add to Cart & Buy Now” → “Out of Stock”. In the Wix Harmony Editor, pick the Product page from the Page drop-down, click it, then click Edit Text. Category pages and galleries have their own setting for this text. These labels match Wix’s help pages in October 2026. Wix changes its screens often, so yours may differ.

If you track stock quantities, Wix can also warn shoppers before an item runs out. Select “Low stock message” in the product page’s Settings tab. It shows once stock for an item drops below 10.

Google’s help for Merchant Center, where you list products for Google Shopping, asks for clear words on the page, such as “sold out”, or a grayed-out buy button. Wix’s notice does this for you.

Sources: Wix: Showing an out-of-stock notice · Wix: About inventory management · Google Merchant Center: The availability attribute

3. Tell shoppers when it’s back

1. Go to the Back in Stock Requests tab in your site’s dashboard.
2. Click Start Collecting Requests.
3. Click Activate Automation. This is the switch that emails shoppers.

Wix Stores has back-in-stock emails built in. The two switches are separate: collecting requests doesn’t email shoppers on its own.

With requests on, a sold-out product’s “Add to Cart” button reads “Notify When Available”. You get an email for each request. With the automation on, each shopper who asked gets an email with a “Buy Now” button when you restock. To edit that email, open the Automations tab → Preview & Edit → Send an email. You can pause the requests, the emails, or both.

It covers all products or none. Wix’s help page (July 2025) says you can’t limit requests to some products. So a discontinued product that stays out of stock on your site can still collect sign-ups.

In October 2026, Wix’s plan page lists “10 back-in-stock notifications” on the Core plan. Business and Business Elite list “Unlimited back-in-stock notifications”. The page doesn’t say what counts as one notification, or whether the 10 is per month, per product or in total. Ask Wix before you rely on it.

Pre-orders are the other choice. The button reads “Pre-Order”, and shoppers pay the full amount in advance. Open the product and turn on “Sell as pre-order when this product is out of stock”. Pre-orders don’t work for digital or subscription products.

If a product takes pre-orders and you collect requests too, shoppers see only the pre-order option. Use pre-orders when you know the restock date, since shoppers pay now. Enter a short pre-order message with the ship date, such as “Ready to ship by mid-May”. Wix shows it above the pre-order button. Google’s Merchant Center help says pre-order pages must show the expected ship date. If you use Merchant Center, check how the product shows there.

Sources: Wix: Telling customers when products are back in stock · Wix: Back-in-stock requests for some products only (feature request) · Wix: Online store plans · Wix: Setting up pre-orders · Google Merchant Center: The availability attribute

4. What Google wants for a sold-out product

Is the product coming back? Then Google says to keep the page and mark it out of stock. Shoppers who find it can still understand what’s happening, even if they can’t buy it yet. Google also says not to use its Removals tool, which hides pages from Google Search, for sold-out products.

You may read advice to redirect sold-out products to similar ones. For a product that is coming back, that is not what Google suggests.

Google asks you to keep the product’s structured data up to date, too. Structured data is code that describes a product to Google. Wix adds it to product pages for you, and it says “in stock” or “out of stock”. Wix lists only those two values. Its help pages don’t say how a pre-order product is marked.

Do you list products in Google Merchant Center? Google wants the page, the structured data, the checkout and your product feed to agree. If one of them differs, Google disapproves the product. If you use Wix’s product feed, Wix says it syncs on the schedule you set, not in real time. After you sell out or restock, click Fetch Now on the Feeds page in Merchant Center.

Sources: Google: Pausing your online business · Wix: Your site’s default SEO settings · Google Merchant Center: The availability attribute · Wix: Adding a product feed to Google Merchant Center

5. Hide, delete or out of stock?

Hiding looks like a safe pause, but it isn’t. Wix says a hidden product’s address shows a 404 “page not found” error, which may hurt its Google ranking. Wix’s page mentions hiding seasonal items in bulk, but its FAQ warns about this 404. To keep a product’s ranking, the FAQ suggests setting it to out of stock instead. For seasonal items, Wix’s idea is to group them in their own category and link it from a blog post or your footer.

Did you hide products as a pause? First set each one to out of stock. Then open it in your dashboard and turn on “Show in online store”.

Deleting is permanent. Wix says deleted products can’t be recovered, and suggests deleting the ones you have discontinued. Its help pages don’t say what a deleted product’s old address shows, so open it afterward to check.

Wix makes a redirect for you when you change a product’s URL slug, the last part of its address. Its help pages don’t describe one when you hide or delete a product. If the product has a replacement, add the redirect yourself.

Sources: Wix: Hiding and showing products · Wix: Deleting store products · Wix: Setting up a 301 redirect

6. Redirect a discontinued product

1. Pick the closest replacement, such as the same tea in a new tin size. If nothing is close, delete the product and stop here.
2. Check that your own domain is connected. Wix says 301 redirects only work with custom domains.
3. Open the old product on your live site. Copy the part of its address after your domain. By default it starts with /product-page/.
4. Delete the old product. Then go to SEO & GEO in your site’s dashboard.
5. Scroll down to Tools and settings. Click URL Redirect Manager, then + New Redirect, then Single redirect.
6. Under Old URL, paste the old path. Under New URL, start typing the replacement’s URL slug and select it from the drop-down.
7. Click Save. After a few minutes, open the old address in a private window to check where it lands.

These steps are for a product that won’t come back, when another product does the same job. Google says to use a 301 redirect when a page has a clear replacement.

Don’t send it to your home page. Google calls that a “soft 404”, and says it can confuse both shoppers and search engines.

If nothing is close, skip the redirect. Google says a 404 is the right answer for a deleted page with no replacement. It treats a 410 “gone” code the same way, so you don’t need one.

Removing many products at once? See how to import redirects from a CSV file.

Sources: Wix: Setting up a 301 redirect · Wix: Your site’s default SEO settings · Google: Troubleshooting crawl errors · Google: 404 “page not found” errors

7. Tidy up after the season

The table shows how a made-up store sorts its list at the end of winter. Use the sheet below for your own products.

Sold-out products stay in your category pages and galleries, marked out of stock. Wix’s help page (July 2025) says you can’t set them to hide automatically. Check your own dashboard. Out of stock is fine for products that are coming back. Products you delete leave those pages.

Next, check your own links. Menus, blog posts and email templates may still link to a product you removed. Link them straight to the replacement, so shoppers skip the redirect.

If you use Google Merchant Center, remove discontinued products from your product feed. Google says not to mark them out of stock there.

If Search Console lists old product addresses, see what each label means.

Sources: Wix: Showing an out-of-stock notice · Wix: Hiding out-of-stock items automatically (feature request) · Google Merchant Center: The availability attribute