Book Image

PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide

Book Image

PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

PrestaShop is a hidden gem. There are many much more widely known online shopping cart solutions that have nothing like the features, potential, and ease of use that this open source, completely free-to-use, system has. But until now there has been no information available on how to make the most of it. This book takes a step-by-step approach to help you set up your own e-commerce store and maximize its potential. Even if you are totally new to e-commerce and PrestaShop, you can have your own functioning e-commerce store quickly and with tiny expenditure. Imagine the feeling when you get that glorious e-mail saying that you have your first paying customer.This practical guide follows the order of developing an active business. Packed with easy-to-follow steps with loads of screenshots and clear explanations, it follows a step-by-step approach to set up a PrestaShop e-commerce store from the very beginning through finding a web host, setting up your PrestaShop store, accepting money from customers, and planning for the future of your business.The first few chapters are a lightening, but thorough, illustration of how to get your shop online, stocked up, and looking smart and unique, including some really cool and really simple product features to show off your wares in style – very quickly. The later chapters are quite diverse and cover some exciting stuff such as newsletters, loyalty schemes, alternative revenue streams, statistics and analytics. You will also learn about security, disaster recovery, payment handling, currencies, taxes, shipping, and more. Towards the end, the chapters cover final preparations before going live, handling orders in PrestaShop, and how to promote your store and get more customers. Once the money starts to flow, the book looks at the future of e-commerce and your PrestaShop business. Then it discusses how to get to the top of your niche and stay there. And then the big secret: to use the knowledge you have gained to turn a single PrestaShop into a thriving e-commerce empire.The Appendix covers a number of worthwhile topics such as a handy PrestaShop control panel reference and various web resources for PrestaShop.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
PrestaShop 1.3 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
Preface

Appendix A. Control Panel Quick Reference

What follows is a really brief account of every tab and sub-tab. Where we have already covered the tab I will remind you in which chapter(s) this occurred.

Catalog

When you click on the catalog tab you can quickly create, edit, and delete categories and products. Here is what you will find on the sub-tabs.

Tracking

This is a summary of your shops categories including empty categories, disabled and out-of-stock products.

Manufacturers

This tab enables you to enter the names and details of the manufacturers of your products. Doing so is entirely optional but can have some benefits. See Chapter 2 for details.

Suppliers

You can enter the names and extra information about your suppliers. There are a number of good reasons for doing this. If your supplier is a trade secret then this one is not for you. The details are in Chapter 2.

Attributes and groups

This is a very powerful feature that enables you define product attributes, group them and then assign them to products. This can be a big time saver as well as really useful to your catalog and your customers. See Chapter 3 for full details.

Features

It is a great way to add a list of product features to a separate tab underneath the main product description. This is a good place to put all the information a customer might want to know without cluttering the main product description. See Chapter 3.

Image mapping

This is cool. Assign multiple clickable zones to an image so that different product pages can be opened by a single image. Go and have a look on the Image mapping sub-tab. A full guide is given there.

Tags

Create tags for any or all of your products and assign different tags for each language.

Attachments

This is potentially very useful. Here is an example. On the attachments tab add a new attachment. An attachment is a file. Perhaps an image or a PDF file. Then on your product creation page you can click on its attachment tab and add as many attachments as you like. Now on the product page that the customer sees there will be a downloads tab. This is great for technical documents, instructions, large images, or anything else you might want the customer to have access to but do not want to actually put in the product description.