Inhibit Ordering of Specific Products

Inhibit Ordering of Specific Products

Overview

For some products, you may want to provide the product details online in your catalog, but you might not want to allow customers to add these specific products into their cart. In other words, you want to restrict online ordering for selected products.

There are a variety of reasons for this, such as for products that have regular fluctuations in pricing such that any price displayed in the catalog would usually be inaccurate or stale.

For whatever reason, the procedure below should inhibit selected products from being ordered in your Volusion catalog (as per the Volusion documentation and per Volusion Support).

You will need the unique SKU or Product Code for the product(s) to be restricted from online ordering.

Instructions to Restrict

  1. Login to your Volusion Admin area.
  2. Go to SETTINGS / Custom Variables
  3. Click [SEARCH] button
  4. Enter "back orders" into the Name field (not the Description field)
  5. Click blue [SEARCH] button
  6. For "Enable Back Orders", ensure its Value is unchecked (off)
  7. Click blue [SAVE] button (if the Value was changed)
  8. Click [SEARCH] button
  9. Enter "stock status" into the Name field (not the Description field)
  10. Click blue [SEARCH] button
  11. For "Display Stock Status", ensure its Value is unchecked (off)
  12. For "Show Stock Status for Limited Products on Deal of the Day", ensure its Value is unchecked (off)
  13. Click blue [SAVE] button (if any Value was changed)
  14. Go to INVENTORY / Products
  15. Click [SEARCH] button
  16. Enter the unique product SKU in the "Code:" field and click the blue [SEARCH] button in the top-right corner (not the grey search button)
  17. In the resulting list, click the SKU link
  18. Scroll down to the "Advanced Info" area and click the "Advanced Info" heading to display the details under it (if not already displayed)
  19. Click "Product Display" in the left margin of the Advanced Info section
  20. Enter a message in the "Add to Cart Button Replacement Text" input field (max 255 characters). This message will be displayed instead of the [Add to Cart] button for this product (e.g. "Call for Pricing", "Not available for online ordering", or whatever). You need to populate this field to suppress the [Add to Cart] button and to suppress the display of the price for this specific product.
  21. Click "Stock" in the left margin of the Advanced Info section
  22. Enter "0" (zero) into the "Stock Status" field
  23. Click/Enable the "Do Not Allow Backorders" checkbox
  24. Click blue [SAVE] button
  25. If you have more SKUs to restrict, repeat starting at the "Go to INVENTORY / Products" step
The "Add to Cart Button Replacement Text" field (when populated) suppresses the [Add to Cart] button and the price for all user devices for stores that are configured with a responsive design template. However, for stores configured with an old legacy template, the button and pricing is only suppressed for desktop users. Mobile users of stores configured with an old legacy template will not be affected by this parameter and will still see the [Add to Cart] button and the pricing. That's why the "Stock Status" and "Do Not Allow Backorders" field also need to be set as indicated.

When the "Stock Status" field is set to zero and the "Do Not Allow Backorders" field is enabled, it inhibits the ordering of this product. However, for mobile users on stores configured with an old legacy template, this field has the undesired side-affect of also suppressing/hiding the product from the catalog.

Hint: If your Volusion store is still using an old legacy template, there are MANY reasons why you should upgrade it to use a modern, flexible responsible design template that automatically reshapes the user's view of your catalog to suit the size of the user's device (e.g. phone, tablet, desktop). In addition, search engines are now penalizing sites that do not support responsive design (i.e. your store shows up lower in user search results) since non-responsive design sites usually result in a poor user experience on mobile devices. Emerge2 can upgrade your Volusion site to use a responsive design template. Ask us about it.

Instructions to Revert Back to Normal

Follow the above instructions to get back to editing the SKU which you had previously restricted. But this time, remove the message from the "Add to Cart Button Replacement Text" field and also uncheck/disable the "Do Not Allow Backorders" field. The "Stock Status" field can be left as-is. Then click the blue [SAVE] button. The product should now be back to its previous settings.