Best E-commerce Shopping Cart Solution: PrestaShop
PrestaShop
If your neighborhood had two grocery stores, one with shopping carts and the other without, which one would you shop at?
Your online e-store needs a shopping cart, too!
The availability of a shopping cart or basket increases the efficiency and user-friendliness of your e-store. Shoppers are free to focus more of their attention on your merchandise and less on the mechanics of completing the purchase. Customers buy multiple items when a shopping cart holds their purchases so they can continue shopping. They like being able to pick up where they left off—yesterday or last week. Many like the convenience of profiles that preserve their method of payment and other checkout preferences.
Reasons to use PrestaShop for your online shopping cart
- Winner of the 2010 and 2011 awards for best “Open-source Business Application”
- Used by 125,000 online stores in 52 languages in 150 countries
- 3,500 free downloads per day
- 1,500 add-on modules, 1,200 templates and 700 themes available
- 30% increase in sales conversions over competing online shopping carts
- Compatible with PayPal, Google, Amazon, eBay and many other partners
- Search-engine friendly and scalable for increased SEO ranking
- 350,000 active community members
- Free, secure, agile, open-source coding software platform
PrestaShop Beginner's Guide
Visitors access your e-store database through a custom storefront
PrestaShop enables e-commerce websites to provide customers with a convenient online shopping cart. You can readily upload logos, change colors, choose fonts and select product displays. Enhanced features allow PrestaShop to blend seamlessly into any website. Clients who have previously used other shopping cart software typically notice a marked improvement in conversion rates.
Over 310 fully customizable features include:
- Checkout, Payments, Taxes, Shipping
- Catalog management, Product displays
- Site management, SEO
- Client accounts, Security
- Analytics and reporting, Marketing
- Localization, Translations
PrestaShop Themes
Manage your site from a sophisticated back office dashboard
The PrestaShop administrative “back office” panel minimizes the work involved with managing categories, products, shipping, discounts and payments. Statistical and demographic features produce reports that enable the merchant to analyze when and where visitors buy specific items. Better information results in a better shopping experience for the shopper and higher conversion rates for the web shop merchant.
Customer service from PrestaShop
Some providers of shopping basket software have been around longer (e.g. Magento or osCommerce), but with offices in Europe and the United States and a staff of 100, PrestaShop, founded in 2007, is quickly becoming a favorite among many multinational and enterprise-level merchants. Small business web store owners like the variety of support services, which include great demos, manual guides, their blog and a forum.
Small business owners most often compare it with Magento, osCommerce, OpenCart, Zen Cart and Shopify. If you are already using one of these or another shopping cart program, it could be worth comparing. Jot down what you like and dislike in your current software. Then view PrestaShop’s demos and the screen shots of features for comparison. Should you choose to switch, migrating from other systems is seamless. The online shopping cart software downloads quickly and is easy to install.
Summary review of PrestaShop
The key to successful online marketing is a shopping experience that is easy for shoppers. I want my customers to purchase multiple items, to be able to return easily to continue shopping, to save favorites, wish lists and other preferences. I want seamless handling of taxes, shipping and forms of payment. PrestaShop does it all with perfect balance between simplicity and features.
