We live in highly competitive times where online transactions are becoming increasingly dependent on suitability of their intrinsic eCommerce platforms.
Make one right move and your web sales suddenly skyrocket beyond measure. By the same token, one minor lapse on your backend is more than enough to impact your product’s performance adversely.
What is an eCommerce website?
To demystify the much misunderstood concept of an ‘eCommerce website’, it is important to understand that any transaction that takes place online comes under the realm of eCommerce.
Therefore, an eCommerce website simply offers a suitable platform to help businesses complete online transactions smoothly. Within that parlance, there are a host of other factors that come into picture.
These include but are not restricted to website layout and design, navigational ease, functionality of displaying product catalogue, product descriptions, hosting, auto responders, pricing details, payment options, checkout page, security features, etc.
It is here that the deployment of a feasible ecommerce platform is not only expedient, but also immensely useful.
This is particularly true for small scale businesses that do not always possess the technical know-how to showcase, manage, market and sell their products online.
PrestaShop: A boon for aspiring businesses
To say that PestaShop is one of thepremier ecommerce tools in the global market, would be an understatement, by a country mile.
With a wide array of advanced tools services at its disposal, one of the major highpoints of this all-inclusive suite is its unique penchant for user-friendliness and customization-related flexibility.
Little wonder that more than 150,000 merchants are singularly depending upon PrestaShop, catapulting their product sales through online platforms.
Product Management and ease of use
When we talk about the various intriguing aspects of PrestaShop, the one thing that clearly stands out is its world class product management capability. Regardless of the number of products to be covered by their client, its back-office functionality allows them to manage them dynamically through aninteractive user interface.
Powered by technologies like Smarty Template Engine, PHP and SQL, the platform is ideally suited for inexperienced users or absolute lay men who are just acquainting themselves with the nuances of high-tech tools.
Open source and customization features
Don’t let the simplicity of its setup and installation process fool anyone, though. Comprising of a number of useful features that any upcoming business would do well to incorporate, one can augment the service level to include advanced modules, should the need arise.
This makes a lot of sense as most businesses evolve with time and develop a varied set of specialized requirements.
Being an open source platform (this means that you do not have to pay for it), it is a programmer’s delight. It is incredibly easy to customize the end product as per the specific requirements of the customers, which usually are individual entrepreneurs or other small businesses.
Inventory Management
Even intricate inventory management is made possible by one-click updates that can be availed in real-time to help accountant professionals and other team members make critical business decisions based on the inputs derived thereof.
Combined with easy import/export features and the ability to distinguish/spot different types of products seamless, this one is a must have for every small business that is looking to up the ante.
Committed towards customer satisfaction
PrestaShop, unlike most other competing ecommerce platforms, excel, for the simple reason that its approach towards problem solving is inherently intuitive.
Replete with more than 310 thoroughly intelligent features integrated within the software, it helps business boost their online sales; rather effortlessly while enabling them to streamline a host of other related functions.
Key features
- PrestaShop accommodates just about everything you need to run a shopping cart on your website. These include stocks, catalogue, shipping, pricing information, newsletters, reviews, orders, and even coupon codes. Furthermore, the platform also leaves plenty of room for additional feature addition.
- Best of all, one does not need to be a programming wizard in order to implement changes on their website or handling technical information like statistics, etc. All of that would be taken care of by the platform itself.
- As business gain foothold within their niche and start expanding, they tend to focus on one of the most important aspects of sustainability: customer retention. To that end, PrestaShop brings about an element ofcustomer loyalty; the suite also accommodates other add-ons like gift vouchers, interactivity (via comments and feedbacks) and even discounts.
- As a user, you would also have the ability to combine PrestaShop with other customizable affiliate programs to gauge customer response and other measurable indicators. Also, features like cross selling (offering related but different products by bundling them), product comparison (comparing each point of a different product), and layered navigation (displaying the various types of products on a single page without having to click the back button) are quite useful for all categories of users.
- Security features is yet another USP of PrestaShop, which is replete with tools that safeguard the online stores from malicious users and mail wares. All of these security measures are in compliance with internationally acceptable standards (like SSL and PCI). They establish permission and authorization levels for users and allow for easy maintenance and modifications from the standpoint of programmers. The blockage of email header injection is another key aspect encompassed by the product suite, which thwart the attempts of those who make repeated attempts at recovering passwords.
- Apart from supporting international languages as well as currencies, the product also lets online merchants make subtle changes to their website theme without disturbing its technical and structural ethos in any manner.
- PrestaShop also offers a plethora of features to help market your product or service in an impactful manner. For instance, the newsletters service helps you keep your prospective clients updated about any new feature or upgrade in your product line-up.
- Managing websites on large servers is sometimes an onerous task, which is best handled by technical experts. A key benefit of using PrestaShop is its operational ability
- even on smaller servers, which is great news for small entities.
- PrestaShop is arguably one of the most SEO friendly ecommerce platforms that helps your website get noticed on leading search engines like Yahoo and Bing. Its built-in features include:URL re-writ-ability.
- Integration with Google sitemap.
- Dedicated URL.
- Automatic robot.txt.
- Auto-generated sitemap.
- Htaccess files.
- Keyword tag management.
- Ability to tackle the issue of duplicate content.