PrestaShop: a French CMS for creating and managing your online store

PrestaShop is a French open-source CMS specially designed for online stores. It’s the solution of choice for entrepreneurs and online store owners looking for a robust, flexible e-commerce platform. In this article, we’ll explore PrestaShop’s main features, compare its advantages with other e-commerce CMS such as Magento and WooCommerce, and provide tips on how to optimize your site and get the most out of this powerful platform.

The Prestashop Guide: Create an e-commerce site and optimize your online store

Prestashop Guide Contents

Understanding the PrestaShop CMS

PrestaShop is an open-source CMS(Content Management System) specialized in the creation and management of online stores. Before using it, it’s important to understand its features and benefits.

What is PrestaShop?

PrestaShop is an e-commerce solution that makes it easy to create, customize and manage an online store. It offers features for managing products, orders, customers, promotions and much more, while being highly customizable thanks to a multitude of themes and modules.

How do I choose the right PrestaShop version?

PrestaShop offers several different versions, each with regular improvements and updates. We recommend choosing the latest stable version to benefit from the most recent features and security patches. However, if you’re redesigning an existing website, make sure your modules and themes are compatible with the chosen version.

PrestaShop 8.0: The new major evolution of e-commerce software

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the PrestaShop CMS?

Advantages of Prestashop CMS

Free and open-source: PrestaShop costs nothing to use, and its active community contributes to its development.
Customizable: A wide range of themes and modules make it easy to customize your online store.

Easy to use: The administration interface is intuitive and requires no advanced technical skills.

Disadvantages of Prestashop CMS

Updates: Updates can sometimes cause compatibility problems with certain modules or themes. That’s why it’s important to have your CMS maintained by a qualified professional. At Altosor, our Prestashop experts are certified Prestashop developers or integrators. This certification is a guarantee of quality.
Cost of premium modules and themes: Although PrestaShop is free, some premium modules and themes can be expensive. Prices for themes and modules range from €29 to €500 plus VAT. With an average cost of €79. Free modules are to be avoided, as they are often designed in spite of common sense and are riddled with security holes. Or they may feature freemium or integrated advertising (it’s no coincidence that they’re free).

Complexity: Compared with other e-commerce solutions, such as Shopify, we recommend Prestashop for experienced users or those accompanied by a Prestashop Expert. It’s a tool that will give your e-commerce business great flexibility and scalability over the medium and long term. Where Shopify, like e-commerce, is aimed at e-tailers who want to test the market, or who have few or less complex products to sell.

What’s the difference between Prestashop Edition and Prestashop Project?

There are now 2 versions of Prestashop.

Prestashop Edition

Prestashop Edition is offered by a private, non-open-source company, which provides, in addition to the e-commerce solution, prestashop-specific hosting and integration with the Add-Ons marketplace. The ideal solution for those who don’t want to manage the hosting of their wbe site and the technical constraints that go with it.

Prestashop Project

Prestashop Project the open-source version of Prestashop, proposed by the community that manages the open-source branch of the CMS. The marketplace is not integrated, and you need your own hosting. This makes this version “lighter” and more malleable for specific developments around your needs. However, marketplace modules and premium themes are of course 100% compatible. This is the version we offer our Altosor customers.

Key PrestaShop features

PrestaShop offers a full range of features to manage all aspects of an online store, from catalog creation to order tracking and integration with marketing tools. These functions are extended by the marketplace addons, offered by the software publisher itself.

Product management

With PrestaShop, you can easily create and manage an online product catalog. The platform allows you to add images, detailed descriptions, prices and various options (sizes, colors, etc.) here called declinations for each product. Products should be organized into categories to facilitate navigation on your site.

Customer management

PrestaShop features a user-friendly interface for managing your customers and their contact information. You can add, modify and delete customers, as well as view their purchase history. The platform also offers the possibility of segmenting your customers into groups based on criteria such as location or type (associations, companies, individuals, etc.), making it easier to personalize the customer experience. Prestashop is also a flexible CMS solution, allowing you to sell in both BtoB and BtoC, or both, thanks to a multi-boutique system.

Order and delivery management

PrestaShop supports a wide range of payment and delivery options to suit every merchant’s needs. The platform integrates secure payment modules or add-ons such as PayPal, Stripe and credit card payments. Fractional payment solutions such as Oney, Alma, Clearpay, Klarna, etc. Merchants can also configure customized shipping charges based on package weight, volume or destination, and manage automated package tracking.

Marketing tools

To promote your online store, PrestaShop offers a range of integrated marketing tools. These include natural search (SEO), discounts and promotions, integration with social social networks and emailing (via add-on modules). The CMS is of course compatible with Google Analytics to track your marketing performance. It can also be connected to Instagram or Facebook, for exporting your complete product catalog with modular marketing automation solutions.

Create a Prestashop Marketplace

The module Marketplace PrestaShop module enables administrators to manage and monitor seller accounts from the background. Administrators can easily view and manage products, orders, salesperson commission, etc.

With PrestaShop, you can create a complete marketplace with an easy registration system for sellers, intuitive product and order management, automatic commission allocation to sellers and much more. What’s more, PrestaShop offers optimum security to ensure that all data remains protected.

Advantages of PrestaShop over other e-commerce CMSs

Compared to its main e-commerce competitors ShopifyMagento and WooCommerce, PrestaShop offers several advantages:

Ease of use: PrestaShop’s interface is intuitive and ergonomic, making it easy for beginners to get the hang of. It is 100% focused on e-commerce.
Flexibility: Thanks to its open source nature and large community of developers, PrestaShop offers a vast catalog of modules and themes for customizing your store.
Performance: PrestaShop is optimized to deliver a fast, fluid experience on all devices, including mobile. It is particularly responsive, and the CMS is natively mobile-first oriented.
Customer support: As a French solution, PrestaShop offers customer support in French, which can be an asset for some merchants.

Community: PrestaShop benefits from a large community of users and developers who regularly share their knowledge and resources, facilitating access to help and information.
Regular updates: The PrestaShop development team is constantly working to improve the CMS, and regularly releases updates to optimize performance and security.

However, it’s worth noting that Magento offers more advanced features for larger businesses, while WooCommerce is a popular option for smaller stores due to its integration with WordPress. Shopify is aimed at self-employed entrepreneurs and dropshippers in particular.

Create your Prestahsop store

Search engine optimization with PrestaShop

To improve your e-commerce site’s SEO, it’s essential to optimize content and keyword usage. Here are some tips on how to achieve this with PrestaShop :

Use relevant keywords in your page titles, descriptions and meta tags.

Create unique, high-quality content for each product and category.

Optimize your site’s structure by using clear, hierarchical URLs.

Make sure your site is fast and compatible with mobile devices.

Tips for getting the most out of PrestaShop

Here are a few tips to optimize your use of PrestaShop and maximize the performance of your online store:

Make the most of available modules to add functionalities specific to your business.
Invest in a professional, customizable theme for an optimal user experience.

Stay informed about PrestaShop updates and update your site regularly to benefit from the latest enhancements.

Article on modules

Steps to creating a store with PrestaShop

1. Choice of theme

PrestaShop offers a wide range of themes to customize the look and feel of your online store. You can choose from free or premium themes available from the PrestaShop community.

2. Module installation

Modules are extensions that add extra functionality to your store. You can select them according to your needs, such as a module to manage sales, promotions or inventory.

3. Product creation

Add your products by filling in the necessary information such as name, description, price and images. You can also create product variations by modifying attributes such as size or color.

4. Customer management

PrestaShop lets you easily manage your customers by offering them a secure customer area. You can store their contact information, order history and preferences.

5. Menu configuration

Organize your store by creating a customized menu with product categories, information pages and links to other important sources.

6. Content optimization

Improve the visibility of your online store by optimizing content for search engines. Use good SEO practices, such as using relevant keywords, creating meta tags and structuring HTML code.

7. File management

PrestaShop offers you an integrated file manager to organize and manage your multimedia files, such as images and documents.

8. Form creation

Integrate contact forms, newsletter sign-up forms or quote request forms to gather information about your customers and prospects.

9. Setting up links

Create links to your social networks, partners or other websites to increase the visibility of your online store.

10. Sales follow-up

Analyze your store’s performance with PrestaShop’s sales statistics and analysis tools.

In conclusion, PrestaShop is a powerful and flexible e-commerce solution for many online merchants. By exploiting its advanced functionalities and optimizing your site for SEO, you can create a high-performance online store and attract a wide audience. So don’t wait any longer, explore PrestaShop and embark on your e-commerce adventure!

Create your Prestahsop store