This is a best selling sweatshirt offered in 8 colors here. Three of the colors are sold out and customers are actively clicking on the greyed out options, trying to select a size that is out of stock and not receiving the result they are looking for and then ultimately leaving the page. This type of scenario occurs on the most popular items at the retail and are exacerbated by circumstances such as an influencer promotion that has just sold out the most popular sizes.
Out-of-stock variants are one of the many under-rated conversion-killers on Shopify. By default, the theme will display them, leaving lifeless swatches on your store – clickable but useless. Most store owners won’t even think twice about this, regarding it as a trivial detail. But it’s not.
This tutorial covers all methods to handle sold out products: hide, strike through, move to end, or have variants automatically update on the product page. Shopify products have a limitation of 2048 variants when using Combined Listings, as well as 3 option types.
In this post
- Why it matters
- Option 1: hide sold-out variants entirely
- Option 2: strike through sold-out swatches
- Option 3: move sold-out to the end
- Option 4: auto-sync with combined listings
- Comparison table
- Step-by-step setup
- FAQ
Why sold-out variant handling matters
Your out of stock items compete with the in-stock ones for your customer’s attention. If a customer scrolls through your site and hits upon an out of stock swatch first, you have wasted the first second of their visit. And that’s a lot of wasted seconds across a product line of 500 items!
Whether or not to display variants that are sold out is often discussed within the community of ecommerce designers. On one hand, displaying sold out variants can cause customers to end up on a page that cannot be purchased from (or so called “dead-end” links), but on the other hand it can cause more people to sign up to be notified of that specific sold out item. My personal stance on this is to hide the variant if you do not have a solid system in place for a wait list. Most stores don’t have a working “wait list” system in place, and this would simplify the process for your customers.
Option 1: hide sold-out variants entirely
Clean. Aggressive. The sold-out variants are gone until restocked (at least until next restock!). Some themes require Liquid edits to the variant-picker snippet in older versions of Dawn. Recently updated versions of Dawn will have an option in the theme settings > variant picker to toggle this feature.
Option 2: strike through sold-out swatches
A good compromise. You can still see the color in the swatch, but it is almost translucent, with diagonal lines. Customers know the color exists but is not available. I think this look is okay for very busy stores that use scarcity psychology to sell products (i.e. You always want what you can’t have). It wouldn’t look good for a store that is consistently out of stock of products.
Rubik Variant Images comes with Hide and Strike-through toggles! No hassle. No coding required. No themes have to be changed.
Option 3: move sold-out to the end
Instead of hiding or cutting, move the sold out colour(s) to the end of your swatch row. Available colours first followed by the sold out trail. Requires a few Liquid edits most themes allow. A decent compromise if you can’t bear to completely hide the sold out colour(s).
Option 4: auto-sync with combined listings
If you use separate products for different colours then (with If you use separate products per color (linked via Rubik Combined Listings)) auto-sync will remove Sold-Out products, from the swatch row, as well as Draft and Archived products. With auto-sync you really can set and forget. See how it works in Rubik Combined Listings.
Comparison table
| Approach | Effort | Auto-sync | Collection pages | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hide entirely | Low (theme toggle) | Yes (theme-level) | No | Most stores |
| Strike through | Low (app) | Yes | No | Scarcity / waitlists |
| Move to end | Medium (Liquid) | Yes | No | Flexible brands |
| Combined listings sync | Low (app) | Yes | Yes | Separate-product catalogs |
Step-by-step setup
- Decide your policy: hide, strike, or move-to-end. Write it down so it stays consistent across product and collection pages.
- Check your theme settings. Dawn 13+ and Prestige have native toggles. If not, install Rubik Variant Images.
- Open Rubik Variant Images settings. Toggle “hide sold-out” or “strike through sold-out” on.
- For collection pages, install Rubik Combined Listings alongside. Enable auto-sync so sold-out groups vanish from collection swatches automatically.
- Test with a known sold-out variant. Set its inventory to 0 and confirm the swatch disappears or strikes through.
- Set continue-selling-when-out-of-stock to OFF for variants you want the app to track properly.
- Monitor for a week. Check bounce rate and time on product page in GA4.
Want to know which products have the highest sold-out variant rate? Our updated new inventory auditor provides a sorted list of top products with the highest sold-out variant rate first. You can also track when products will next be restocked with our restock calculator.
Pet peeve: Shopify makes you go to a ridiculously nested section (Settings > Payment > Banking and Funding > General) to set this. I don’t get why it’s so convoluted. Go change it and move on.
Watch the walkthrough
Demo store, the tutorial video above, and docs are all accessible from the app listing. Install in under a minute and test on one product with the free plan.
FAQ
Should I hide sold-out variants or show them?
Hide if you don’t have a waitlist Yes if natively supported by your theme (Dawn, Prestige). Otherwise there are theme edits, or apps that can do this for you. These can increase bounce rate which can decrease ranking but the product itself is still indexing correctly. Use Rubik Combined Listings. Auto-sync will prevent sold out grouped products from appearing in collection swatches. This option allows you to enable Auto-sync. When items return to the inventory, you will get this swatch back automatically. Yes for most themes including Dawn, Prestige, Impulse, Motion, and page builder themes (Beae, EComposer, Foxify, GemPages, Instant, PageFly, Replo). 2048 variants per product with Combined Listings enabled, 3 option types max.Can I hide sold-out variants without an app?
Do sold-out variants hurt SEO?
How do I hide sold-out colors on collection pages?
What about variants that are sometimes in stock?
Will this work on my theme?
What is the Shopify variant limit?
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