Currently if I search for "meccano" on Woolworth's website, I get back a promising list of search results. I follow one that looks interesting. And then something in the top right catches my eye
Sorry, this product is now permanently out of stock.
Muppets. If it's now discontinued, why does it appear in search results?
Generally sites do this so that visitors can differentiate between "This is definitely the item I wanted and now I know I can't buy it", and "I don't know whether this site just doesn't have the item I want, or whether their search system sucks so much that I just can't find it".
Finding the item and telling you it's no longer available so you can move on and look for something else (or try to find a different site where you can buy this) is very often the better result.
Of course, providing a way that you could buy it (even if just linking to an eBay search) would be even better.
Re:Feature, not bug
nicholas on 2006-12-13T10:12:36
OK. It's a fair cop. Although I'd like it better if the default search only showed available products, with a clear button to get everything else too. But I suspect that the counter to that is that this is confusing to some peopple. (In turn, most sites could do a lot to simplify the visual confusion of all their not-for-the-task-in-hand links and buttons first, rather than worrying about that.)
Still, it looks like they have other issues, with such gems as Results 0 - 12 of 13 and Results 12 - 24 of 13. I wonder if a fencepost would do as clue by four
:-) Re:Feature, not bug
Aristotle on 2006-12-18T04:13:39
Hiding these results behind an extra button defeats the point of having them. Would you have repeated your search with “show me out-of-stock items”? I think the right approach would be to put a “permanently out of stock” marker right next to the link in the search results page.
