PrestaShop Blog

Securing a customer’s loyalty is 4-5 times cheaper than gaining a new one. So before you start looking for new customers, take a minute to secure loyalty from the customers who have already placed orders with you. Read our 4 tips to encourage your customers to keep coming back to your shop.

E-commerce websites should highlight the quality of their services and turn them into a USP. Show your dedication to your customers and instil a climate of confidence by making commitments to your customers. The result? More orders! Here are 6 tips to highlight the quality of your services to the max!

Internet users read an average of 17% of commercial emails. Increase this amount by implementing these 8 tips. Set up more efficient email campaigns and generate website traffic and sales!

With more than 100,000 stores throughout the world, PrestaShop, created 4 years ago, is now Europe’s no.1 e-commerce solution! At the beginning of 2012, we reviewed our solution, and we are sharing this with you in graphics… everything you need to know about PrestaShop is in this infographics.

With the Christmas holidays only just over, e-merchants are already thinking about doing the stocktaking and preparing for the January sales. This period is an opportunity to draw lessons from the past year and more particularly, the Christmas period. What products sold best? Is my site fast enough at peak demand periods? Which keywords generate the most traffic in my store? In this week’s report you will find 6 pieces of advice for starting 2012 on the right foot.

Among the various marketing techniques which can be used to attract new customers, an Introduce a Friend scheme is one of the most effective.

Your should choose your domain name wisely as it influences your website’s visibility on search engines and therefore the number of people visiting your online shop. These 4 helpful tips will help you choose the perfect domain name for your online shop.

Online retailers can’t put their feet up in the weeks that follow Christmas as ’tis the season for your after sales service to be in high demand. “My order is damaged. What should I do?” “I can’t set my product up. Can you help?” “How long do I have to return goods?” This is just a taster of the sort of questions you are going to have to answer so read our top tips now and improve your after sales service.

As it’s nearly the January sales, we have drawn up a special report on sales including the helpful advice of an e-commerce specialist: Peggy André. “In some sectors, the January sales can represent 10 – 20% of the annual turnover”. A vitally important period therefore, which all e-merchants must “thoroughly prepare for.” The manager of Bagatelle.fr and member of the last PrestaShop Awards panel offers you these 7 tips for maximizing your sales in this period.

Great news for our Canadian Community, PrestaShop is now fully compatible with Canada’s e-commerce requirements, and handles among other new features, the application of cumulative taxes for Quebec and Prince Edward Island. Thank you to our great Community who strongly contributed to these improvements!

The slideshow has been an essential part of online shopping sites for a long time now. 8 of the 15 most visited French websites feature them on their homepage. The slideshow is an indispensible sales tool which you need to learn how to create as it will not only increase product visibility but also clearly express your positioning. Set up a standout slideshow on your site with these 5 top tips!

Dear Melinda, Thanks a lot for accepting to answer our interview! Your contribution in our Community is greatly appreciated by our whole Team.

A CSRF breach consists of exploiting a trusted user’s identity by forcing the browser to send commands unbeknownst to the user. Basically, if a page is protected by a login/password system (e.g. stored in a cookie) then you cannot access it without signing in unlike the retailer who is already signed in.

PrestaShop provides a basic theme that any online retailer can use to launch their online shop for free and make it a success. This theme has barely evolved in terms of both graphics and features over the last 4 years. With PrestaShop 1.4.5 version, users have been able to use a new theme which we call “default”. These are the main improvements...

Newsletters, sent periodically by email to subscribers, have proved to be the email marketing campaign most used by companies (over 65% according to Dolist).

Social networks are a fantastic opportunity for businesses to increase the visibility of their offers and put in place a personalised, permanent customer relationship. 86% of them already have a Facebook page and 68% have a Twitter account! In 2012, 95% of them should be present on the social networks (FEVAD study, 2011).

Fifteen of the top twenty French websites (in terms of visitor numbers) allow customers to provide feedback about their stock. A shop can boost its conversion rate by 40% through customer feedback (Olimeo study). These figures should be enough to convince you to put a customer review on your product pages! Read our 4 tips and make the most of your customer reviews to increase sales and look after your reputation.

We estimate that 20% of an online shop’s annual turnover comes from Christmas sales. So get yourself ready to increase sales and be part of a market worth over 6 billion Euros (2010 figures, Fevad/Directpanel study). Put our 7 tips into action and see your seasonal sales soar into the stratosphere!

It’s every e-trader’s dream: combining the new technologies of the internet and e-commerce to develop original ways to showcase their products with the aim of reproducing the physical experience of a product.

It’s a big day for PrestaShop as we have reached a major milestone, 100,000 online stores worldwide! Our open source e-commerce shopping cart is proving to be a big hit among merchants and partners alike. PrestaShop is committed to innovated technology and continues to make a stronger presence in the community.

Approximately 95% of French households use money-off coupons (Acxiom study). This shows that your customers are very interested in this type of promotional offer. It is therefore important that you have a good understanding of it. We will present the different types of money-off coupons that you can offer to customers according to the marketing objectives that they fulfil.

Our very first Meet-Up in Canada took place in Montreal last week. More than 20 PrestaFans gathered with new ideas for our e-commerce software, including suggestions on features, modules, developments, shops and more. This meeting was really productive and PrestaShop's growth in Canada is going to be awesome!

As you may know, postal charges are one of the main reasons why customers abandon their baskets.

It would be wrong to assume that you need to access a website’s code to be able to hack into it. In fact, even at the HTML display level, you need to protect all data that appears.

Please note, this article is aimed at advanced developers (knowledge of hooks, the Carrier object...) and applies to PrestaShop 1.4 and later.

On a basic level PrestaShop lets you create carriers and configure how shipping fees are calculated based on weight and price ranges that you can specify in the back office.

Around 80% of emails sent by advertisers reach their recipients’ inboxes… What about the remaining 20%? Why don’t they end up in the inbox?

It is thought that an email’s content accounts for 25% of its deliverability.
Therefore you should pay particular attention to content (text, pictures, etc.) as well as code (quality, conformity, size, etc.) to avoid your newsletter being classed as spam.

As some of you may have already noticed, the wiki is no more. It recently bowed out to make way for the new PrestaShop Documentation Site...

With almost 5,000 posts on the forum, let us introduce you Tomer, serial contributor and US moderator! Thanks a lot for accepting to answer our interview!

Your product sheets are the key selling tools of your website. That’s why it’s vital to understand how to design them. Follow the five tips below to boost your sales and your website’s conversion rate, thus helping to build customer loyalty.

At physical sales outlets, nothing is left to chance when it comes to the way products are displayed in the aisles.

It’s a fact that all the large retail brands have an online site.

Promotions are still one of the best ways to attract attention from potential customers. What is even better is that with flash sales you may give your clients a new reason to buy from you! This sort of sale is ideal for increasing turnover and must be prepared in advance in order to achieve real success.

Open-source software can sometimes be difficult for first-timers to learn, especially since there is so much room for change and customization. But Melinda Odom of Design Hosting has committed herself to simplifying that process for everyone, from our newest users to the most active PrestaShop developers.

As you know, it is very important to humanise your shop as we have mentioned in our tip of the week, “6 points to reassure your customer,” where we discussed the importance of displaying a phone number and email address

PrestaShop allows you to override various components and behaviours. PrestaShop version 1.4 consists of two major points:
- The first is overriding the visible parts of modules (Templates, JavaScript and style sheet language) so the themes can adapt better to them.
- The second is overridding software behaviour (class files and controller files) to target a specific section of the required components.

Eric Dolou (Broceliande on the forum) and Michael Marinetti (PrestaShop) have worked together on the new functionality OCU.

The OCU function allows the upgrade of a PrestaShop 1.4.4.x and above to the last stable version in one click.

PrestaShop and its partner Dell will be at the E-commerce exhibition in Paris on September 14th between 9:30 and 17:00 where you can take our special licensed Freelancer test for free.

My name is Olivier Bonningues and I’m 40 years old and fisrt Licensed PrestaShop Freelancer. I am a telecom training developer and I switched to the internet a few years ago.

I launched my consulting company, Oleacorner, to put my skills to good use in object-oriented programming. I support my clients at each stage of setting up their E-commerce websites: outlining requirements, specific developments, integration, installation, migration, set up, support and debugging.

Are you worried about running your own online storefront? Concerned that you may not have the knowledge or time to devote to making it profitable?

Today, we would like to bring you the story of Louis Haincourt, a 16 year-old from Versailles who is France’s youngest entrepreneur.

From Australia, Adrian Nethercott aka Rocky on the forum, relates for you his experience with PrestaShop.

Since 3 years now, Adrian is one of the most active members of the community, forum moderator in English and also our record holder with 10,000 posts soon to his credit!

A SQL injection is when a hacker enters malicious data in a SQL query. This type of attack is on the rise and you need to protect yourself as it is very easy to modify the nature of the query without sufficient protection.

We would like to illustrate this with an example rather than a long explanation. This is what can happen on a login page.

Most modules and developments on PrestaShop require you to use or enter information on a database. Any developer sees the core DB class as an essential part of the process. On top of providing potential abstraction for other types of relational database, the DB class has several tools to make life simpler!

Learn about the various methods, when to use them and the best practices for the development stage.

Cross-selling, also known as "added selling", is a sales technique consisting of offering an additional product to the Internet user when they make a purchase.

This 1.4.4 version which has been optimised from all sides and which has become faster and more powerful now allows you to update your store from your back-office.

Trust plays a crucial role in the purchasing process. Customers worry about: the product not being delivered, receiving a faulty product, payment fraud, not knowing where to return the product to, misuse of personal data. A reassured customer is a won-over customer!

Social networking sites were the stars of the 2011 IRCE event. Social shopping is growing and companies are taking an interest in these communication channels to bring them closer to the customer.

It is worth going back to the basics of traditional commerce to better understand e-commerce and be confident in having all the elements necessary to a winning strategy. Here are 10 key points to consider

It is with great pleasure that we can announce the availability of what we’ve been working on for the past few weeks: the update of the PrestaShop English documentation to v1.4, along with a new website (which used to only host the web-service documentation).

The wait’s over! Prestashop version 1.5 Alpha 1 is available!

Today we are unveiling the first Alpha version of PrestaShop v.1.5, a revolutionary new development.

On Monday 4 July at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Paris, the PrestaShop team attended a programme of conferences on the theme of the mobile revolution, organised by the Association of the Digital Economy (ACSEL).

From 14 to 17 June 2011, San Diego (California) welcomed e-commerce leaders for the sector’s major annual gathering, the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE).

Developers, you know as well as I that your first source of inspiration for developing comes from your customers. Each one of them, large or small, carries out projects that are interesting and also enriching on a personal level. It’s truly a pleasure to hear them, to advise them, and to take part in their daily success.

That's why this new version of PrestaShop is the chance for our entire development team to bring ourselves closer to the PrestaShop community. I personally contacted more than 300 merchants in order to ask for suggestions, plans for improvement, and small daily issues.

Pierre Bodinier, well known on the forum under the nickname Yoya971, has been working for 12 years as a developer.
Open Source enthusiast, Pierre loves engage and interact with a very active and welcoming community. That’s why he chose PrestaShop two years ago!

Michel & Augustin, creators of the famous brand of sweets and inventors of the "drinkable cow" chose to use PrestaShop for their online retail store. We welcome them among our 75,000 references!

An important debate was organized for the general assembly of Fevad on june 16th 2011: What is the future for E commerce?

More than 250 participants, renowned experts, and the occasion to hear some symbolic spokesmen of the industry were the main factors that drew interest to this event.

If there’s only one rule regarding security that a developer must adhere to, it’s this: Never Trust Foreign Data. Together, we’ll take a look at what this modern saying signifies.

Sometimes we need to set up an automated task (also called cron job), especially for certain modules that synchronize their product catalog to a marketplace.

Let’s take a look at the eBay module as an example...

We estimate that about 65% of our visitors create a shopping cart but don’t actually finish the process of ordering whats in their cart. This is a gold mine for your site. These clients have shown real interest in your products, they’re in buying mode, and therefore this presents an opportunity you can’t miss out on!

What’s driving us? Our impressive Open-Source community. In other words YOU and you have shown us your unfailing support for our software and its evolutions from the very beginning.

We would like to celebrate our 4th birthday and invite our biggest fans to take part in our new competition.

The PrestaShop team is pleased to announce the release of v.1.4.3! Update your shop now and make the most of the latest developments in terms of performance and improving security.

By using the DIBS payment solution, you access to several payment methods by integrating just one module.

This week we’re publishing the long-awaited version 1.4.2, improving our solution even further. Already tested by some lucky users, PrestaShop v.1.4.2 distinguishes itself apart from other solutions and other versions with its great stability and numerous optimizations

PrestaShop v.1.5 will be rich in features, more powerful than ever, but also accessible for everyone.

As you've probably noticed, PrestaShop is a software that allows you to create modules designed to interact directly with the heart of the solution’s display or events.

Ever since the creation of PrestaShop, our modules have been the easiest and most powerful way for merchants to customize their stores.

My name is Pierre-Alain Leboucher, or Peha on the forum. I’m a freelance graphic designer.

Last Thursday, 21 April 2011, we welcomed 6 Community members and integration specialists to our offices.

One month after publishing PrestaShop version 1.4, we are now offering PrestaShop version 1.4.1!

Version 1.4 of the PrestaShop solution has already been published for several weeks and has been met with great success—over 65,000 downloads to date!

PrestaShop v.1.4 offers more than 65 new features. In order for the entire PrestaShop community to be able to fully take advantage of them, you absolutely must update your modules and themes. We’re counting on you!

Dear developers and contributors,

One week ago, we announced the upcoming launch of PrestaShop’s Forge. You won’t have to wait any longer to discover this new collaborative tool: it’s already available!

An event on an extraordinary scale. After being on the market for only 3 years, PrestaShop demonstrated incredible dynamism at its third Barcamp event.

Un evento di portata eccezionale. Dopo appena 3 anni di esistenza nel mercato, PrestaShop ha dimostrato, in occasione del suo 3° Barcamp, una vitalità incredibile.

Ein Event von besonderer Bedeutung Nach nur 3 Jahren Marktpräsenz zeigte sich PrestaShop bei seinem 3. Barcamp wieder einmal unglaublich aktiv.

As part of our 3rd PrestaShop Barcamp, we handed out our PrestaShop Awards, recognizing the best online retail stores made using PrestaShop. The goal of these PrestaShop Awards is to highlight the energy and drive of French e-commerce, and to inspire businesses by giving examples of successful companies. Take a look at our happy winners!

Dear developers, our team has the pleasure of announcing the forthcoming launch of a new collaborative: the Forge.

The Barcamp 3 is approaching and the PrestaShop Awards too. After seeing hundreds of shops, the nominees are now known.

Over 65 new features, an unrivaled performance ... The most complete version of PrestaShop, long -awaited by our community, is now available! Update your store now and enjoy its many new features and hundreds of optimizations, or join the 50,000 merchants who already trust PrestaShop!

Before the much-awaited release of version 1.4 of our Open-Source e-commerce program, the PrestaShop team is happy to announce the updating of its distribution licenses.
We wanted to make the creation and distribution of PrestaShop extensions or themes easier and clearer for our Community.

Thank you very much to all of you! Our community has crossed over the symbolic line of 200 000 members, and now our forum offers more than 500 000 posts !

Congratulations to our winners! And thank you to everyone for your participation! Thanks to you, PrestaShop 1.4 will be available in a maximum number of languages!

We’re even closer to final version of 1.4-- still more efficient and complete—and today we’re announcing the release of PrestaShop 1.4 RC6.

We’re still approaching the final version of PrestaShop 1.4, we publish this week the RC5 version of our solution!

Yesterday our team published PrestaShop v1.3.7, our latest stable version to date. This version brings together several improvements and optimizations added just recently to our solution.

The final version of our solution will be published very soon, so it's time to prepare and adapt your modules and themes to take advantage of this version’s success!

While waiting for the Final v.1.4, this week our team published a new version, RC4!

Prestashop announces a strengthened partnership with Moneybookers, part of Skrill Holdings, one of Europe’s largest online payment systems, with over 16 million account holders.

Because PrestaShop is foremost a collaborative project, you can take part of it too.

We’re getting closer and closer to our final version! Right now, version RC3 is now available. It’s even more powerful, so don’t hesitate to give it a try!

The date is set ... PrestaShop’s next big event will be held March 31, 2011 in Paris.

On your mark, get set, TEST! Our final version, long awaited by our community, is approaching again! Don’t wait to test the RC2 version, we’re in the final lap to the final one!

To start off the year right, our team is offering you a new translation contest. Based off of the contest’s huge success two years ago, where we received more than 200 translation packs, we decided to revive the contest this year so that we can offer PrestaShop 1.4, our best release to date, in as many languages as possible!

For the third consecutive year, our team participated in E-Marketing Fair in Paris. Once again, PrestaShop received a very satisfactory outcome from the fair!

Yesterday, our team published a new version of PrestaShop 1.4, now in Release Candidate!

Founder of SYBEL and Meilleurtaux.com, Christophe Cremer becomes head of PrestaShop.

The final version of PrestaShop 1.4 is fast approaching... This week we are pleased to announce to our beloved community the release of PrestaShop v.1.4 Beta 5.

Our team continues developing and improving the 1.3 version, the current stable version. Now version 1.3.6 is available!

Our team has just released the Beta 4 of version 1.4 and has optimized various components of the solution, in order to make it as easily accessible as possible in its stable version.

This week we decided to highlight the "Store Locator", a new feature included into PrestaShop v.1.4, in the tab "Tools"> "Stores".

Enhance with Trusted Shops your online turnover and the consumer confidence of your online customers.

PrestaShop developed a new module for your activity - "Newsletter - Send & Track" - offering many features to send and check the ROI of your e-mailings. Check it out in this article, and get a limited special offer on this module!