Do 'only 2 left' messages make people buy?

Sometimes, and only when the message is true. The competition regulator's own evidence review finds that telling people something is scarce can make them more likely to buy, but it calls the evidence on which kinds of message work "mixed". A false stock warning is another matter altogether. It's on the UK's list of banned sales practices, and the CMA's guidance says most of those practices are crimes as well as carrying fines of up to £300,000, or 10% of worldwide turnover if that's higher.

Our interest, stated first. We build websites and landing pages and run paid ads, and stock warnings and "people are looking" messages are sold as a way to make those pages sell more. So the answer that would suit us is that they always work. They don't.

It's the fifth part of our series on sale prices and urgency, checked. Like the others, it sets out what the evidence and the regulators say, with a link to each source, and it isn't legal advice.

What the research shows

The review's example is a field experiment in which scarcity claims got more people clicking "add to cart". Clicks aren't sales, though, and we found no independent study of what these messages do to a small shop's actual sales.

When a stock message is legal

Only when it's true, and only when it gives a fair picture. If stock isn't short, don't say it is to hurry people into a deal they wouldn't otherwise take. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans exactly that: "Providing (including passing on) materially inaccurate information about market conditions or about the availability of the product with the intention of inducing the consumer to acquire the product under conditions that are less favourable than normal market conditions". The advertising code says the same.

A message can be literally true and still mislead. The CMA's own example is a pop-up saying "Be quick! We've sold 10 in the last 5 mins." when "the trader's stock levels are high and there is no need for consumers to hurry". Its guidance on urgency claims adds three more: a low-stock warning when new stock is arriving shortly, a "looking now" figure borrowed from a different period, and a count of sales across a whole brand shown as if it belonged to one product.

Keeping a stock message honest

• Only show stock levels that come live from your own stock system.
• Check what your plug-in is actually counting: over what period, and for which product.
• If you're restocking shortly, leave the message off altogether.
• Don't pile on the pressure. Put a false countdown, a low-stock warning and an inflated "was" price on the same page, and you have exactly the combination the CMA singles out.

When to discount, and how hard to push it, is a question for your digital marketing strategy before it's a question for the page.

The other parts of the series cover countdown timers and 'was' prices, and if you're building the page itself, start with how to structure a landing page that sells. Product pages that sell without any of these risks are part of our websites work.