In the following article, you will learn why the Onlineshop PrestaShop became the most popular European open-source shop system and e-commerce tool.
Target group
The history of PrestaShop begins in 2005 with a project of five students from Paris, the shop system called phpopenstore (POS). Two years later, one of the students, Bruno Leveque, founded PrestaShop together with project supervisor Igor Schlumberger, the founder of LeGuide Group.
Features
The first stable version of PrestaShop 1.0 will be released in August 2008. PrestaShop is currently available in version 1.5 and is becoming increasingly popular. PrestaShop is currently ranked second behind Magento. In Europe, Prestashop has reached a market share of 30%, according to PrestaShop Marketing, and has already overtaken Magento, the market leader.
Server requirements
PrestaShop is a shop system for small and medium-sized businesses. With this positioning it was able to reach the current user figures with relatively small capital and in a very short time. At the same time, the shop is quite suitable and scalable for larger requirements. Especially since the introduction of version 1.5 and the multi-head function. One reason why so many start-ups and small shop owners opt for PrestaShop is the easy training. Although the functionality of PrestaShop is very considerable, the developers have managed to make the backoffice (admin area) very user-friendly. As a result, inexperienced shopkeepers are able to work with the system very quickly.
Design and Performance
PrestaShop is a very powerful solution based on PHP / MySQL. In the Administration area, PrestaShop offers everything you need to manage an on-line shop: invoices and delivery notes, convenient customer management, multi-site management, return management, and numerous statistics tools. In many cases, you can also dispense with the use of additional merchandise management systems as a shop operator.
Reduce Planning Complexity
Other key features are already supported in the kernel, such as
A total of 310 functions are mentioned in the scope of functions on the developer page. If it does not suit you, the official PrestaShop Marketplace at addons.Prestashop.com offers a further 3,500 modules and templates developed by the Prestashop team, third parties and partners. Individual extensions are also possible due to the modular design. On this point, however, the effort must not be underestimated. If you were able to integrate the older versions as an experienced PHP developer relatively quickly into the system, older version 1.5 requires more effort and more experience. Therefore, the current development
Of modules and individual solutions for the most part through a developed network of partners with certified Presta Shop developers. The quality increases, and shop operators benefit.
PrestaShop is a powerful system that also demands a lot from your server. This also applies to the hardware, but primarily to a proper server configuration, which allows the system to access resources without problems. Although the installation and the moderate operation are already ensured by simple means, the storage allocation for the special cases has to be correct: some memory-intensive computing operations like the structure of the filters, the recalculation of the pictures or the storage of the translation need larger PHP access times Default settings of most hosting packages. Here it is the matter of the hosting providers to provide shop owners with enough information about PrestaShops requirements.
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Experience has shown that a large part of customer support is due to faulty server configuration or lack of memory. Here are some values which, as a result of experience, allow for a perfect development with PrestaShop
It is advisable to have accelerators such as APC or Memcached installed, because this makes a lot of performance.
SEO & SEM
The templates of PrestaShop consist of modified HTML files with Smarty instructions [smarty.net]. An included default template, which consists of many individual.tpl files, specifies the instructions and the CSS classes necessary for the structure of the frontend. The HTML scaffolding around these instructions can be completely influenced, which allows a great flexibility in the individual structure. The framework is supported by numerous CSS files (the separation took place in version 1.4), which are responsible for individual template parts and are loaded only when needed. This allows targeted resource control for optimal performance.
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Position in the United States and legal certainty
In addition, the so-called CCC (Combine Compress & Cache) has been introduced since version 1.4. These are a series of performance optimizers that compress the code of a productive workshop to the utmost. This allows you to compress HTML, CSS, and Javascript elements. In addition, smarty cache, general template compilation, external caches and a number of other tools can be activated to give the user a pleasant shopping experience. In conjunction with an optimally configured server, you can achieve impressive loading times of up to one second for a shop system.
This topic has been very well thought up at PrestaShop from the very beginning. You can provide products and static pages with easy-to-modify meta tags. The products receive an automatically derived from the title or a URL created manually (in all languages). As of version 1.5, there is the possibility to influence the syntax itself by appending the accompanying EAN number or the attribute title to the product URL. Modules for Google Sitemap, Google Analytics, and Google AdWords are included. In the PrestaShop Marketplace addons.prestashop.com, you will also find modules that optimize and expand the core core SEO capabilities.
In France, Spain, Italy or the Czech Republic a star, the market share of PrestaShop in the United States is still comparatively small. On the one hand, this is due to the strong competition: domestic software such as shopware, oxide sales, XTCommerce and Magento, whose intelligent marketing policy has triggered a hype at the time, left no room for a major new entry. On the other hand, the PrestaShop strategy is itself. Although the PrestaShop management considers the American market to be important, it is considered difficult and incomprehensible.
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Conclusion
So we come to the biggest criticism of Presta-Shop: this can not be adapted to American laws. This is a reproach with which PrestaShop has to fight here since the first version. The situation is not as difficult as it was four, five years ago. In fact, there are some points that require an adjustment. This mainly affects the ordering process, but also price labeling, information requirements, data protection, and some other points.
At the moment, there are at least two free solutions that allow for the right use of PrestaShop in the United States: the pre-certified module germaNext from the PrestaShop partner silbersaiten and the module GC American from the PrestaShop partner Gurkcity. In the PrestaShop forum there are also some instructions for manual changes from the American community (called Fixe) [goo.gl/rMCjc2]. It is interesting that Magento's similar situation and comparable solutions have not hindered product acceptance in the United States. At PrestaShop, it was, and still is, a partial issue.
However, the current figures show a growing interest in PrestaShop. According to the data of PrestaShop Marketing (as of October 2013) there are 2,871 production workshops in the United States. In October, the download figures rose by 6%, the traffic growth from the United States is 9%. This tendency has been observed for several months. The service providers also show a clear interest in PrestaShop. Thus almost all payment providers offer a PrestaShop connection.
For the beginning of 2017 the new version is announced. "Version 1.6 will be the best PrestaShop ever released, and we've worked hand in hand with developers and shopkeepers," said PrestaShop CEO Benjamin Teszner. And in fact PrestaShop 1.6 at least promises a very great progress.
Some new features of PrestaShop 1.6 are
PrestaShop is a mature and powerful open-source shop system, which is unfortunately underestimated in the United States. A lack of market-specific interfaces and a strong need for specialists are currently the main obstacles.
This is where American partners are needed: agencies, freelancers, but also e-commerce service providers. The significant expansion of the partner network will also help PrestaShop achieve the position it has already earned in the American e-commerce landscape. The introduction of PrestaShop for start-ups and companies looking for a quick introduction to e-commerce is particularly interesting. Medium-sized companies with larger requirements should look for an experienced PrestaShop partner to start.
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