Best Advice from the Community

Create two working environments: a development site and production or live site. It is always a good idea to make changes and build an online store on the development environment before making the changes to a live site. Use a Revision Control tool (such as SVN), it will let you keep track of all the previous changes, and compare / roll back old files in case something has stopped working. It is also the best tool for collaborative work, if multiple people are developing a single site.

Make sure backups are saved on at least 1 external source (sent via email or stored on a 3rd party site like Amazon S3), if they are saved on your server and the server goes down, you will not be able to get the backup. For websites with high traffic, consider doing multiple database backups a day and make sure you can easily get the backup files and that you can extract them properly. Don't forget to check from time to time that the backups are still being created and saved properly.

Create an easy-to-use navigation to avoid overcomplicating functionality for customers. Make the checkout buttons visible and never overwhelm visitors with too much information. Clean and simple sites receive the best conversions.

Make sure modules work together before purchasing. Some modules may not be compatible with each other, if you have any doubts, contact the module developers and ask about compatibility. Be especially careful if a module requires core modifications. Make sure the module will actually do what you think / need and ask for a demo page if possible. For payment modules or any localized modules, make sure it is designated for the country you need, many payment gateways operate in multiple countries, but a module that works for one country may not work for other countries. Check that the module works with your current Prestashop version, and find out if the developer keeps the module up-to-date with the latest Prestashop releases.