Welcome and PrestaShop Origins
Hey everyone, thank you for attending our webinar. My name is Danny and I'm the official PrestaShop trainer. My focus within the company is to create content that helps merchants like you succeed in running an online business. From writing blog posts to hosting webinars, it's my job to get you the help you need to succeed.
What exactly is PrestaShop? A little history: before we became the company we are today, our co-founder had the vision to help small merchants sell online. He developed the initial software and made it open source, allowing other developers to build upon PrestaShop. That's the reason for many free features we have today. Even though our software was free, we saw many merchants having problems fully launching their stores due to technical hurdles with installing and hosting their shop. That led to one of the largest evolutions: a cloud-based service we launched earlier in 2015, PrestaShop Cloud.
How PrestaShop Generates Revenue
One question I receive a lot is: how is PrestaShop free? I think the better question is how do we make money. PrestaShop makes money in three ways.
The first way is through the Addons Marketplace. It's the official website where developers and designers can sell their modules or themes. We don't charge any listings or fees and only make money when something is sold. It helps the community innovate and grow and, since we launched PrestaShop Addons, we've helped merchants make over $10 million.
The second way is through strategic partnerships. We work with other service providers in the e-commerce industry by giving them visibility and qualified leads in exchange for special rates for merchants like you. Some strategic partners include analytics, payment, and shipping providers. If they can help you become a successful merchant, we try to partner with them.
The third way is by offering technical support and teaching our courses. In addition to our webinars, we have full-length courses that teach PrestaShop in detail. We also offer technical support through a ticket system you can buy directly from your PrestaShop back office. We offer 10 free tickets when you first open your online store; if you need more, you can always purchase them in batches.
Course Roadmap and Cloud vs Downloaded Versions
What are we going to be talking about today? We're going to create a store real quickly. We'll talk about the difference between the download version and the cloud version. Both versions share the majority of their features; the initial difference lies in hosting and customization.
PrestaShop Cloud hosts your shop for you and it's completely free. You are provided with a subdomain and you also have the ability to add your own domain. For the PrestaShop download version, you must get your own hosting provider and often a domain name as well. For both, you can use the thousands of options in the PrestaShop Addons, including themes and modules. However, for the download version you can also install third-party themes and modules.
Front Office and Back Office Explained
We're also going to be talking about the front and back office. The front office is what customers see when they browse to your shop: the interface, the products, the pictures, the descriptions, and the whole purchase process. As a shop owner you should know the front office like the back of your hand—not only because you owe it to yourself to know your shop and edit it, but because it helps you understand what your customers face, the number of pages and clicks they go through during a typical buying session, where they might get stuck, and how to help them out.
The back office is the administration panel of your PrestaShop site. This is where you'll spend most of your time, as everything the user sees is handled directly through the back office. That includes adding, editing, and removing products; handling carriers; building packs; creating vouchers; keeping in contact with customers; improving your shop; and much more.
Administration, Localization, and Shipping
We're also going to be talking about administration, which is pretty much what we just mentioned. We're also going to talk about localization. As a shop owner you're going to have to cater to as many customers as possible. This means giving your website a full translation in as many languages as necessary, with local taxes, weights, and currency units, local geographical zones, and many more.
The main page under Localization enables us to configure the units used for products. We're also going to be talking about some shipping information. How you choose to shape your products is going to be a key element to the management and success of your store. You have to account for a great variety of available methods which can mix carriers, regional and international taxes, package weight, and also the price of a product itself. PrestaShop makes this real easy and lets us handle all this in just a few screens.
Categories, Products, and Customer Management
We're also going to create a category and a product. Categories are essential as they enable you to group equivalent products. This helps customers find their way through your catalog and narrow down their search when looking for a specific type of product. Categories also make it easier for customers to find and compare them and, thanks to PrestaShop's product comparison feature, that becomes a lot easier.
We're also going to be adding a product. Products are the most essential part of any e-commerce store. The product creation process includes general information about the product, the search such as the description, setting up prices, search engine optimizations for search engines like Google and Yahoo, associations, shipping, combinations, quantities, and a couple of other options that make PrestaShop a really flexible platform for adding products.
We're also going to be talking about managing our customers. Managing your customers correctly entails making sure their profile contains all the information you need to package and ship to them, follow up on their support requests, create special discount groups, know which orders have been completed and which have been abandoned, and much more. The Customers menu enables you to check customer details, create groups you can apply discounts to, view current shopping carts, handle customer service, and pretty much anything to do with customers and customer service.
Orders, Returns, and Pricing Rules
We're also going to be talking about tracking your orders and managing returns. Remember, as a shop owner you're going to have to deal with heaps of orders and their accompanying invoices and customer support requests. The daily task of handling numerous orders can be daunting. Fortunately, PrestaShop does its best to help you work through them all and successfully handle your customers' purchases along with their credit slips and unavoidable merchandise returns.
We're also going to be creating price rules. Catalog price rules enable you to assign price reductions by category, manufacturer, supplier, attribute, or feature; this type of rule applies to a range of products. Vouchers are available as well and can play a very important role in your daily relationships with customers. We're also going to be talking about discounts, which are going to be great for your shop.
