Best Practices for Setting Up PrestaShop

PrestaShop has been used for ecommerce since 2007. In that time, good practices have accumulated from hard won experience on how best to develop your online store using their solution. This information comes from both long time users and the developers of PrestaShop. These suggestions are simply recommendations, but all of these options are good advice on how best to keep in mind when working on your ecommerce solution.

Recommendations for Setting up your PrestaShop Solution

• Make use of the Maintenance Mode when you are working on creating your PrestaShop solution. This feature allows you to install the software on your domain name, but keep the store unaccessible until you are ready to launch. You may also want to consider the third party options available in PrestaShop's Add-on shop. You can find different iterations of the maintenance option there, but they are not free.
• Backup your files everyday. You can make backups through FTP or use a third-party vendor or application. If you are in development, make sure to make a backup at your major stopping points so that you are able to restore to these points if necessary.
• When you create your product pages, keep them simple and uncluttered.
• Use social media solutions like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to help build a loyal and informed customer base. Social media plays a strong role in helping your content rank within search engines enabling your customers to act as your own mobile marketing force.
• Use caching on your PrestaShop website to help with performance. Enable Force Compile in the Performance section of Advanced Preferences in the PrestaShop Administrator Dashboard. This will force changes to update on your website pages regardless of the caching.
• Provide the appropriate ways for your customer base to pay and then ship their purchased items. These options should match with their geographic location. In some cases, this may require that you research your shipping and payment options.
• Provide a way to accept feedback, and report your changes to your social media followers. This lets your customers know that you are paying attention to them. Assess your website on a regular basis and make changes to match both your needs and your customer needs. This helps to keep your site up-to-date and interesting.

For more information, check out the PrestaShop Education channel for more helpful articles on using PrestaShop.