How to Clear Slow-Moving Inventory and Boost WooCommerce Sales

Learn how to identify underperforming items and boost sales for slow-moving inventory in your WooCommerce store.

Let’s face it! Every online store eventually deals with dead stock. Sometimes it is incredibly hard to sell certain products, and that creates a major bottleneck: the longer stagnant products sit without getting sold, the more capital is tied up, and the fewer possibilities you have to clear them out.

This inventory management issue gets even worse when you have hundreds of low-selling products buried deep inside your catalog.

Knowing exactly which items are poor sellers is crucial to any successful e-commerce business. If you are just starting up or managing a massive store, it can be difficult to easily see whether a product is a top performer or if it’s completely stalled.

In this article, we will show you how to easily identify your slow-moving inventory and execute six highly effective, automated strategies to improve sales on those low-selling WooCommerce products using the WP Sheet Editor plugin.

Install the WP Sheet Editor Plugin

This WordPress plugin completely transforms how you manage your WooCommerce store. It allows you to apply bulk changes to thousands of products simultaneously with just a few clicks, completely bypassing the slow default WooCommerce product editor.

You can skip this step if you already have the plugin installed and activated.

Open the WooCommerce Products Spreadsheet

WP Sheet Editor displays all your products and their underlying data in an intuitive spreadsheet grid. This instantly gives you a bird’s-eye view of your stock levels and sales data, helping you locate and manage your products in a much simpler way.

It definitely helps you save hours of administrative work.

1. Filter all slow-moving WooCommerce products

Before we can optimize our stagnant inventory, we need to find it. To edit only the products that are selling poorly, you need to filter your catalog using the advanced Search tool.

Open the Search tool from the plugin’s top toolbar.

Now, set these exact values to locate your low-selling merchandise:

• Tick the Enable advanced filters checkbox and use these values:
  • Field key: Total Sales
  • Operator: <
  • Value: 10 (This isolates products with fewer than 10 lifetime sales. You can adjust this threshold based on your store’s average volume).
• Click on Run search to filter your products.

2. Bulk edit low-selling products to boost conversions

Now that we have successfully filtered all the products with fewer sales, we can execute bulk marketing strategies to get them moving.

To do this, open the Bulk Edit tool on the top toolbar.

a) Run an inventory clearance: Reduce prices by 30%

One of the best options to liquidate dead stock is to apply an irresistible discount. Dropping the price significantly creates a great incentive for bargain hunters.

For example, you may want to reduce their price globally by 30%. Enter the following values in the Bulk Edit tool:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: Regular price (or Sale price)
• Select type of edit: Decrease by a percentage
• Decrease by: 30
• Click on Execute now.

b) Leverage FOMO: Append an “On Sale!” message to product titles

Lowering the price is excellent, but customers need to notice the promotion immediately. Another option to improve sales on stagnant items is to append a promotional call-out directly to their titles.

For example, you may want to add an urgency tag like – On Sale!. To do this, enter these values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: Title
• Select type of edit: Append
• Replace existing value with this value: – On sale! (Make sure to leave a space before the hyphen for clean formatting).
• Click on Execute now.

c) Optimize conversion copy: Add a CTA to product descriptions

Besides applying discounts and adding a message to the product’s title, you can bulk-add a Call-To-Action (CTA) to their descriptions.

It’s really important not to lose any opportunity to push browsing visitors toward the checkout. If you want to add a compelling message inviting people to buy, enter these values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: Short description
• Select type of edit: Append
• Replace existing value with this value: <br><strong>Get 30% OFF for a limited time!</strong>
• Click on Execute now.

d) Increase visibility: Feature low-selling products in the catalog

Sometimes, products don’t sell simply because they are buried on page 10 of your archives. Pushing them to the front page or pinning them to the top of category pages can drastically improve their visibility.

You can instantly mark all these slow-movers as “Featured Products” using this configuration:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: Is featured?
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Tick this checkbox
• Click on Execute now.

e) Build trust: Bulk enable product reviews

Social proof is a massive conversion factor. Allowing customers to post reviews of your products helps instill confidence in undecided shoppers.

In fact, statistics show that 82% of consumers actively consult reviews and ratings before buying an unfamiliar item. To bulk enable reviews on your underperforming products, enter the following values:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: Enable reviews
• Select type of edit: Set value
• Replace existing value with this value: Tick the checkbox
• Click on Execute now.

f) The Ultimate Tactic: Cross-sell dead stock on your best-selling product pages

One of the most powerful e-commerce strategies is piggybacking on high-traffic pages. You can leverage the success of your best-selling products to promote similar but lesser-selling inventory via WooCommerce Up-sells and Cross-sells.

This can do wonders for liquidating dead stock. To accomplish this, follow the steps below:

Optional step: Filter your low-selling products by keyword or category

If you want to cross-sell logically (e.g., suggesting a slow-selling summer hat on a best-selling sunglasses page), you should refine your filter by category, attribute, or tag first.

https://media.wpsheeteditor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02091640/search-for-poor-selling-woocommerce-products.png

When the Search tool is open, enter values depending on the specific catalog section you want to target:

• If you want to search for a specific item, enter it in the “Contains keyword” field.
• Otherwise, use the Enter tags field to input a category, attribute, or tag (as we did in the screenshot below).
• Then enable the advanced filters, and use the following values to ensure you only target poor sellers within that category:
  • Field key: Total Sales
  • Operator: <
  • Value: 10
• Click on Run search to filter your products.

Step 1: Export a list of your low-selling products’ SKUs or IDs

To assign these items to your popular pages, we need a list of their IDs. You can export this information to a CSV file using the Export tool.

Once the tool is open, enter the values as shown below:

• What columns do you want to export?: Enter the ID, Name, and SKU columns
• Which rows do you want to export?: All the rows from my current search
• What app will you use to edit this file? (optional): Select Excel or Google Sheets
• Click on Start new export. Once downloaded, copy the IDs or SKUs, separated by a vertical bar (e.g., 101|105|209).

Step 2: Filter your best-selling products

Now, clear your search and find your highest-traffic products. For a detailed guide on this, follow our tutorial on How to Find Best Selling Products in WooCommerce.

Step 3: Bulk add the slow-sellers as Up-sells or Cross-sells

With your top-selling products filtered in the spreadsheet, open the Bulk Edit tool.

Configure the tool to randomly assign the poor-performing items to your high-traffic product pages:

• Select the rows that you want to update: Edit all rows from my current search
• What field do you want to edit: Select Upsells or Cross-sells
• Select type of edit: Set random value (This ensures a nice variety of products are displayed across your top pages).
• Replace existing value with this value: Paste the copied IDs or SKUs separated by a vertical bar (|).
• Click on Execute now.

Optimize your catalog and make more money!

Dead inventory doesn’t have to stay dead. With WP Sheet Editor, you can quickly analyze your sales data, isolate stagnant products, and apply all these powerful marketing changes instantly to clear out slow-moving inventory and maximize your profits!