Prestashop is an e-commerce platform that has many advantages, but for now we will focus on the things which are ahead of other market solutions from our point of view. These will be the main reasons why should you end up choosing it for your online store.
Open Source Platform
Prestashop is an Open-source e-commerce platform. This not just mean we can use it for free, but we can also modify it to our heart’s content, regarding both functionality and styling. As an important point to note is that as an open source platform it facilitates integrations with external systems such as ERP, accounting systems, payment gateways, etc.
This makes Prestashop a very attractive platform for developers, and shop owners alike, whom has formed a large and ever growing community. Thanks to their activity, the platform is constantly evolving.
Design: custimization or premium templates
The customization possibilities of your Prestashop store are endless. As the quick and easy way, there are complete templates and themes which can be purchased on various sites such as the Prestashop Addons or ThemeForest. These options can be applied to your store in a matter of clicks, with a predefined layout and style that suits your business without the need for an upfront high investment. It can be an ideal option at the start of a shop’s life-cycle, when you are finding and testing your possibilities, meanwhile defining the future evolution process of your store.
On the other hand, the possibility to customize any aspect of the storefront is always there, but it requires some knowledge in Design, UX and web development. You can also hire a eCommerce company like us 🙂 to get the user experience, appearance and functionalities what you need to differ from your competition.
Modularity and Custom Dev
Prestashop as an e-commerce platform, comes with a wide variety of functionalities by default that are more than enough to create your first online store (stay tuned for a list of default functionalities in the close future).
In the need of new features, Prestashop depends on Modules. These are standalone installable extensions, providing functionalities over the defaults. Prestashop and its community has your back with stores, marketplaces and forums where you can find a lot of modules created by others. These can be free or paid, where the price is usually consistent with the difficulty of developing such functionality and also with the impact it could have on your sales.
If you need something you can’t find an existing module for, you always have the possibility to develop it and make it to match your requirements. For this you need deeper programming knowledge and familiarity with the platform or you can hire a development team specialized in Prestashop. You can see that in one way or another you will be able to have the functionality you need.
Ease of use
Currently there are more than 300,000 stores under the Prestashop platform, also it has more than 11 years behind it’s back, which makes both its admin-panel and storefront well tested and adapted for intuitive use, making your shop’s management a breeze from it’s first moments.
We highlight – with respect to other platforms – the ease of managing products and their combinations, coupons, discounts and offers, as well as reviewing received orders.
Multi-store
Prestashop offers a multi-store possibility out of the box, which you can activate as you like. It means you can manage more than one storefronts from the same admin panel.
This is interesting if – for example – you are a distributor with a B2B channel, but at the same time you have accounts or want to open a B2C line. In this case you can sell directly to the public meanwhile serving your distributors with different products, prices and advantages from the same platform. You can set the rules for every shop individually such as different means of transport, price, payment methods, discounts, etc. The main benefit is you don’t have to manage two separate admin-panels for this, you can do everything on a single one.
It could be also a solution for you if you sell in different countries and want to offer prices or differentiate your products based on the country, even with different domains.
Scalability – Prestashop grow with your business
For all the options we have mentioned before, the internal architecture and ease of use, makes Prestashop a very solid option both for online stores that are starting, or for companies that have a medium to high volume of sales and catalog size, invoicing as much as 40 million euros yearly.
As you can see, if you are starting in the eCommerce world and choose to develop your online store with Prestashop, in the future when you’ll have more traffic and sales, it has the possibility to adapt and grow with you. At any time you are able to add new functionalities and automatization (such as synchronizations with ERPs and marketplaces). With Prestashop you will not have to change the platform as you grow, which could happen if you opt for other options such as WooCommerce or VirtualMart.
