Pricing & Availability

Weight: 5.6% — AI shopping agents need reliable pricing and availability data to make recommendations. A product without a price or showing as out of stock is unlikely to be surfaced to shoppers.

What Vantage checks

Vantage evaluates four aspects of your pricing and inventory data:

Price present (30 points)

The most basic check — does your product have a price set?

• Price is present and greater than zero: 30 points
• No price or zero: 0 points

Compare-at price (20 points)

Shopify's compare-at price field allows you to show sale pricing. Vantage checks whether it's used properly.

Setting a compare-at price isn't required — you still earn 10 points if you simply don't have a sale running. But if you do use it, make sure the compare-at price is higher than the current price.

Inventory tracked and in stock (30 points)

AI agents avoid recommending products that shoppers can't actually buy.

• Total inventory across variants is greater than zero: 30 points
• Out of stock but the product is not Active (draft or archived — so not a live problem): 15 points
• Active product with zero inventory: 0 points

All variants in stock (20 points)

For multi-variant products, Vantage checks whether all variants are available.

• All variants have inventory greater than zero: 20 points
• Some variants out of stock: partial credit based on ratio
• All variants out of stock: 0 points

Tips to improve

1. Always set a price. This seems obvious, but draft products sometimes get published without pricing.
2. Use compare-at pricing correctly. If you run a sale, the compare-at price should be the original (higher) price, and the current price should be the discounted amount.
3. Track inventory. Enable inventory tracking in Shopify so Vantage (and AI agents) know your stock levels.
4. Keep products in stock. If a product is consistently out of stock, consider hiding it from your published catalog until it's available again.

Before and after

Poor example:

Price: $0.00 Compare-at: (empty) Inventory: Not tracked

• No usable price, no inventory data
• Score: 10/100 (only the default 10 points for having no compare-at price)

Good example:

Price: $49.99 Compare-at: $64.99 Inventory: 142 units in stock All variants in stock: Yes

• Complete pricing with proper sale markup, strong inventory
• Score: 100/100

Common mistakes

• Compare-at price lower than price. This creates a confusing signal. The compare-at price should always be the higher (original) price.
• Not tracking inventory. Without inventory tracking, AI agents can't tell if the product is available.
• Leaving out-of-stock products published. Products with zero inventory drag down this dimension. Unpublish them or restock.