Almost 300,000 online shops are now PrestaShops. Behind each of these shops are retailers who want to succeed and grow their online retail sites, as well as partners, developers, and people who are essential to the smooth running of the site. For those who wish to accelerate their learning, or simply to improve their skills, PrestaShop has been running a training service for several years, so that everyone can improve their PrestaShop skills.
To learn more about our current training offers, here is the interview with Christophe Bernon, Head of the PrestaShop Training Department.
Who are you, and what is your role at PrestaShop?
My name is Christophe Bernon, I joined Prestashop in January 2011 and I am responsible for providing support and training to online retailers. Since January 2020, I have been in charge of the training department, both in France and overseas.
Are there different courses? If so, what are they?
We have several types of training courses, depending on the users' profiles. Today we have three types of audiences.
The first type of audience is rather marketer/user oriented, in order for them to learn how to use and take full advantage of the tools we provide them with to create their online business.
Examples:
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Creating and launching an online store
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Marketing and personalising an online shop
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Natural/SEO referencing
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Law, social networks and more to come
The second type of target audience has a more technical profile, which is why we provide training for integrators and developers, enabling them to support merchants in developing their business by responding to specific design and development issues etc.
Examples:
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Integrator - Fundamentals
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Front Office Developer
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Back Office Developer
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Advanced development with Symfony
The third type of audience concerns schools, with which we work very hard to train master's students who are pursuing digital programmes. The idea is to introduce them to a leading French online retail solution, so that they can promote our solution in the companies they will work for at the end of their course.
What are the requirements for participating in PrestaShop training courses?
As far as user trainings are concerned, you do not need any requirements to participate in the training courses, nor do you need to have an advanced project to take part in them. We have both neo retailers, who are just starting out on the online retail adventure, as well as retailers who have already set up their shop and who are looking to learn more about our solution.
As far as technical training is concerned, by way of example, if you want to take a Back Office Developer course, you need to have at least a good understanding of PHP 5.4, MySQL and object programming. For all our technical training courses, the requirements are indicated on the training sheets, so you simply need to read the sheet description on our marketplace, addons.prestashop.com, where courses can be purchased by anyone who is interested in taking part.
In case of doubt, please do not hesitate to contact our sales team, who are there to inform and accompany people with questions about the training courses.
What do you get from the training?
We are currently working on implementing recognised technical certifications. We already have a user certification that we are now essentially passing on to the schools in which we operate.
Can we get funding for our training?
We are currently in the process of preparing our training programmes to be recognised by the CPF, in order to be fully funded by the training account. It is obvious that our trainings can be financed by all the organizations that take care of the financing of OPCO type trainings and others.
We also help our retailers with the formalities for obtaining financing, for which they are very well supported by Katherine, who is our key player in training administration.
Does the lockdown change anything at all in the training offer?
Today, the lockdown does not change much to the training offer since we have been providing online training for several years. We were therefore able to provide all of our retailers with the option of online training in a very short period of time. Also, all the schools in which we had planned to attend to deliver training sessions have now switched to online training, which means that we can now manage training sessions for 3 to 4 people or even groups of up to 40 people using our own training software.
During this period, what changes do you see in relation to retailers' needs?
I think the merchants need two things at the moment.
The first is to be able to rapidly establish a simple and effective online retail solution that allows them to bounce back quickly, and, above all, to help retailers concentrate on their business and not become consumed with the technical side of things, so it's up to us to be even more responsive, to be able to propose simple and user-friendly solutions that any retailer can understand.
The second is to have access to support that allows retailers to quickly gain exposure and to just start selling. Having an online shop is a good thing if you have customers and orders, otherwise it's useless. Today, however, a real revolution has been initiated by this situation and many merchants have had to rethink the way they present themselves to their customers. It is also up to us to support them with these subjects, by providing them with tools, assistance, putting them in touch with recognised partners etc.
In which languages are the courses offered?
Today the training courses are given in French, English, Italian and Spanish. For this, we rely on a set of partners from all over the world who provide training services.
What are the next training dates and their subject(s)?
All training courses are now online and the next dates are the 20th and 21st of April and the 26th and 27th of May.
The technical training courses for both Integrators and Developers are now online and are scheduled for the 20th April for the Integrator course, the 21st April for the Front Office Developer course and the 22nd April for the Back Office Developer course. For the month of May, the dates will be the 25th for Front Office Developer and the 26th for Back Office Developer.
It goes without saying that we can also organise specific sessions at the request of companies.
Are there any special offers at the moment?
Today we are offering a €200 discount on all our online training courses to allow retailers, developers and integrators to train themselves to be able to react quickly with the current economic situation.
