What platform should I choose for my e-shop? For example, Prestashop

Modern technology brings new possibilities one of the possibilities is selling goods online and on the Internet. An online shop is used to sell goods on the Internet. One of the options is Prestahop, thanks to which you can quickly set up your eshop.

About Prestahop

Prestashop is an opensource web application for selling goods over the internet - i.e. an online store. Like most eshops, it is written in PHP. The first release was in January 2008, since then eight major versions have been released. Of course, patches are continuously released. The current major version is 1.5 . In April 2014 the next major version should be released, i.e. 1.6.

Division of eshops

There are a large number of eshops. Personally, I would classify eshops as follows:

• Eshop as a service - as the name suggests you pay for the service. Thus, there is no work involved in developing an eshop or launching it. The eshop is ready to use right away, usually it still needs to be configured and of course filled with merchandise. The start-up is quick, but the customer gets nothing more than exactly what is offered.
• Commercial closed eshops - this includes the customized part of eshops. The capabilities of the eshop are according to the customer's needs, but any customization by the customer is impossible. They have to be handled by the supplier, which again is paid for, although it is a small thing that even a prospective eshop owner could handle.
• Open-source eshops - the main feature is the openness of the project - source codes are available, so anyone can edit it. Of course, knowledge of the eshop is needed to make it work. First of all, you need to install and configure the e-shop, you can do that yourself. It depends on the willingness to learn how to work with a new application and the willingness to invest your time. After choosing a suitable open-source solution, customizations are usually needed, as each requires various extra features over the base. For customization, more or less expertise is already needed. It depends on the complexity of the requirements, but usually an expert is paid, whether it is an employee or a freelancer. The advantage of an open-source e-shop is, of course, the independence from the supplier, i.e. anyone can do the customisation if they have the necessary knowledge. Typically, various modifications of the e-shop are handled by different experts, and the division of labour is also typical in the development of large companies.
• real customized solution - nowadays it is rarely used, but even in this case, it is based on an already developed version or a universally applicable solution is used as a basis.

Eshops falling into the first category are interesting to start with. The basic version tends to be cheap, sometimes even free to lure new customers. Eshops from the second category also have their advantages, but they are interesting only for large companies with a surplus of money. If one is serious about internet sales, then the only choice is the third category - an open-source e-commerce solution. And this is where Prestashop falls.

Another advantage of open-source solutions is that you can start with a small budget and create a small, simple eshop. Other necessary features are added as the eshop grows nicely tailored to the needs of the seller.

Features of Prestahop

Admittedly, I haven't tried all of the eshops and have more experience with only one other, but from what I've tried, seen, and the information I've gleaned, I can say that Prestashop is the most capable, non-progressive and fast to use open-source application for online sales (2014). Which is confirmed by the majority of the internet population that is interested in deploying eshops.
Hand in hand with the capability of such SW, of course, goes the difficulty of operation and the knowledge and skills of the programmer, who will be deploying and possibly customising the eshop.

Since criticism is the most important thing after praise, I have to mention a few shortcomings as well. Even Prestahop suffers from a common problem of all PHP projects of separating content from appearance. But it's not that the developers didn't pay attention to it, on the contrary they use Model-View-Controller, but after all, eShop is not an ordinary website ( like an editorial system for example) and so separating the appearance from the application logic is much more challenging. Prestasho uses the Smarty template system for this purpose. Indeed, with the latest version of Prestashop (1.5) the separation from the application logic of the appearance is already much better.

When it comes to the knowledge needed to modify Prestashop or develop custom components, there is no shortage of it. As for most larger web projects, it is optimal to have knowledge in many areas .
There is a need for people with the knowledge to cover these technologies at some level: Graphics creation, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, XML, PHP, Smarty, SQL (Database), Unix/Linux. (Here again everyone will complain, that there hasn't yet been a person born who has covered two or more disciplines and all the technologies involved at the highest level.)

Experiences using Prestahop

Specific parameters and basic features can be found on the official website and to get the clearest view, it's best to install Prestashop and try it out! Therefore, I will mainly cover what is not obvious at first glance.

A lot of effort needs to be put into Prestashop by a new user. I too was discouraged by the complexity of this e-shop in the early days. But the complexity of Prestashop is due to its capabilities. And so, the ignorance of Prestashop is a big barrier for new users. I recommend to start the eshop in basic functionality and gradually learn and get its other features working. And only later start to extend the features that are specific to the operator.
It is essential to fill in all the fields and use all the capabilities of a given part of Prestahop. It is useless not to use all the possibilities. If it is not filled in correctly, the user is then surprised that something does not work as it should. It's great to try out a given part of Prestashop functionality on a copy created from a sharp e-shop.
You also need to think about the requirements and sales possibilities and suggest how to apply it to Prestashop. For example, it is unnecessary and for many reasons inappropriate not to use functionality such as: combinations, discounts, quantity discounts. It's also a good idea to think about how the warehouse will be managed.

In Prestashop, the carrier and payment are selected separately, which, given the choice of prepayment versus cash on delivery, it's not always easy to set up correctly. Especially with Czech Post, which has different types and prices of parcels. Payment is handled as a module in Prestashop, so you can modify payment methods without interfering with the core system. Carriers are not handled by the module, which was good if it was redone in the future. So it is possible to use custom modules for payments. However, a lot of logic needs to be implemented for proper functionality. But there is nothing special about it, since it is a major component of the system. However, I myself did not dare to do more than modify and redesign the existing modules for payments. It's just the way the implementation is done that payment and carrier are selected separately,. Which is sometimes a bit strange, for example when there is only one carrier and payment type to choose from based on the customer's terms. At the same time, the selection of payment and carrier are not dependent on each other, but this can be solved additionally, i.e. to bind the carrier and payment choices.
Prestashop handles even 50tis items. But of course, a sufficiently sized and properly configured server is a must! For some functions, especially for large eshops, it will be advisable to increase some PHP limits.
My personal experience is that the Prestashop developers take a proactive approach to fixing reported bugs :-).
For a large eshop, even otherwise good web hosting wedos will not be suitable.

As you can read from the discussions, the work doesn't end with the launch of the eshop. It is usually a good idea to extend and improve the features of the eshop, which is related to the developer. And as far as the merchant is concerned so getting familiar with the eshop the work is just beginning. It is necessary to constantly work on the promotion of the eshop and especially to attract people to buy. It is advisable to use some way of sending out news (newsletter) and interesting possibilities are offered by the new followup module in Prestashop. The resulting hassles with order processing are actually a reward for your work.

PS: please do not send unsolicited emails (SPAM), this includes emails sent to purchased email addresses. Usually these addresses are actually collected by bots wherever possible.