A backorder is an order you accept for a product that is temporarily out of stock, on the understanding that you will dispatch it when new stock arrives. The customer pays, or commits to pay, now and receives the item later. It differs from a pre-order, which is for a product not yet released, and from a stockout, where the item simply cannot be bought.
How backorders work
Most ecommerce platforms let you choose, per product or per variant, whether to keep selling when stock reaches zero. Shopify does this through a setting to continue selling when out of stock; WooCommerce has an option to allow backorders, with or without notifying the customer. The product page then stays live with a message such as “Back in stock on 14 November: order now to reserve yours”.
Behind the scenes, the order sits in your order management system until stock lands. Some retailers take full payment at the time of order; others charge only when the item ships. A card authorisation usually lapses within days, so charging on dispatch for a wait of several weeks needs a payment set-up that supports it. Where a basket mixes in-stock and backordered items, you need to decide whether to send everything together or ship in parts, and tell the customer which.
The same status should reach your other channels. Google Merchant Center accepts a backorder value for the availability attribute, which must be paired with an availability date, and schema.org has a matching BackOrder value for product structured data.
Why it matters
Backorders keep revenue and demand you would otherwise lose. A shopper who finds the item unavailable will often buy elsewhere; one who sees a clear date may be happy to wait. They also keep a product page live and indexable instead of turning it into a dead end, which matters for pages that rank well or receive ad traffic.
UK consumer law sets the limits. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, goods must be delivered without undue delay and within 30 days of the contract unless the customer agrees to another period. So the expected dispatch or delivery date has to be stated clearly before the customer buys, not explained in an email afterwards. If you then miss the agreed date, the customer may be entitled to cancel and get a refund. Their usual 14-day right to cancel an online order still applies, counted from when the goods arrive.
Common mistakes
- Accepting backorders with no date, or a date hidden in small print.
- Taking payment and then saying nothing until the parcel ships weeks later.
- Leaving the product feed set to “in stock”, so ads promise immediate delivery.
- Allowing unlimited backorders on an item the supplier has discontinued or cannot deliver in volume.
- Showing a backorder date that was never updated after the supplier’s delivery slipped.
How to act on it
Enable backorders only for products with a reliable restock date, and cap the quantity at what is actually on its way. Show the expected date on the product page, in the basket, at checkout and in the order confirmation, so the customer agrees to it knowingly. Set the feed availability and structured data to match.
If the date moves, contact customers before it passes, give them the new date and make cancelling easy. Plan what happens when an item is discontinued instead, using sensible out-of-stock handling. Keeping stock status accurate across the site, the feed and search results is part of the ecommerce SEO work I do for online shops.