Access

Your access details will be supplied by TOSD. The administration area is password protected. Contact TOSD if you are unsure how to access the admin area of your online shop

Settings

All initial settings will be set up by TOSD. One preference you may wish to alter is Gift wrapping (admin/preferences … scroll down). Here you can indicate whether you wish to offer gift wrapping or not. If you do, you can also set the fee.

Categories

• Adding a category
  • admin/catalog and click the “Add a new subcategory” link to add a category at the highese level . . . or, navigate to the existing category you wish to place a subcategory under and then click the “Add a new subcategory” link.
  • insert a name and description (if required) for your category and then add the meta data. Meta data is very important for search engine optimisation. Goggle it if you need to know more.
  • The friendly URL is added to the end of your domain name. It should be a relevany keyword associated closely with the category e.g. if the category was “Pots and Pans”, the friendly URL could be ‘pots-pans’ (note the use of a hyphen and no spaces. If after you click [Save] you navigate to the page you will see that the URL would be along the lines of: http://www.yourdomain.com.au/pots-pans/
• Adding a product
  • Navigate to the required category and click the “Add a new product” link
  • [Information] tab – as a minimum, enter the following information:
    • Name
    • Pre-tax retail price
    • Tax (within Australia select GST from the drop down box)
    • Quantity – can be set to ‘1′ if you are not using Prestashop to track inventory (most businesses don’t)
    • Category selection – check the box next to those categories you want the new product to be displayed in.
      • Special Notee: If you select the ‘Home’ category, the product will also appear as a featured product on the home page.
    • Click the ‘Click here to improve product’s rank in search engines (SEO)’ link to add Meta data. As with the categories, if you are unsure about this Google it. But it is important, so don’t leave these entries blank.
    • Always fill out the short description. This will appear in the product listing (the page that appears after a customer clicks on a category)
    • The “Description” entry appears as a tab (labelled “More Info”)toward the bottom of the detailed product page and provides you with great scope for adding additional supporting information.
    • “Tags” are optional but a great idea. They provide the customer with an alternative way to search your site. For example consider an online fruit shop. The fruit would normally be categorised by type (vegetables, stone fruit, citrus etc) but could be tagged according to their vitamin content. In this case tomatoes and oranges could both be tagged “vitamin C”, even though they exist in different categories.
    • “Accessories” – this is a very powerful facility that allows you to select any other product as an accessory to the one you are created. As with the “Description” information, accessories appear in a tab toward the bottom of the product page.
    • Choose a save option to record the core information you have just added.
  • [Images] tab - for best presentation it is very important that you images be correctly prepared. If you are unsure, ask TOSD before proceeding. It may well save a lot of wasted preparation time.
    
    • Click [Browse] to navigate to the required image on your PC
    • Add a relevant caption
    • Leave the thumbnail resize method to the default, “automatic”.
    • Click [Save Image] to complete.

And that’s it! You have now created a new product.

See also:

• Prestashop Attributes (options)
• Prestashop image preparation and upload
• Creating Prestashop information pages
• Prestashop: setting up GST for Australia

Did you find this article useful? Feel free to leave a comment.

Having researched and implemented eCommerce sites based on Prestashop I am now of the opinion that both end users and administrators have been very well catered for. Here is a sample list of some of the key features:

Without a doubt I think the single most important thing associated with managing a small business web site that sells products or services is the mindset that is adopted by those responsible for its growth and development. If it is perceived as a “web site” then that is exactly what it will be. A poorly defined thing with little or no focus.

A “shop” on the other hand has far more focus. We all intuitively understand that a shop:

• is accessed by visiting a published address
• entry will not be a problem
• the stock on display will be labelled, priced and available
• and there will be a range of payment options.

How does this help us manage an online shop? Now that we are thinking “online shop” not “web site” it is easy to extrapolate basic customer expectations.

For example: customers visiting your online shop will expect many of the things they have been conditioned to expect in “bricks and mortar” shops. They will expect to be able to move around easily to find what they are looking for, and when they do, they will expect it to be displayed to its best advantage with pricing and any option details clearly marked. In other words, they will expect sufficient information to be able to make a purchasing decision.

But as any “bricks and mortar” retailer will tell you, it goes a little deeper that that. Customers will also expect the online shop to have an ambience that supports the product range, help when they need it and excellent after sales service … and that is just for starters!

Do you begin to see how much easier it is to anticipate what customers will expect when you think of an online shop rather than a web site? It is simply a matter of extrapolating what we all expect when visiting a “bricks and mortar” shop. What follows of course is that that the online shop manager must ensure that all those things are where they are wanted, when they are wanted and are fully functional. It is quite unacceptable for instance for a customer to visit an online shop only to find that access is denied, information is missing, navigation and signage is inconsistent, prices are incorrect or the checkout system is faulty (or worse) insecure.

One parting comment: when was the last time you visited a shop, at intervals over a period of several months, without a single thing ever changing? And yet we have all seen it in an online shop haven’t we. Perhaps the owner thinks he is managing a web site …

In fact your images are often the single most important factor affecting your potential customer’s decision to buy. Aside from the images you present, all your customer has is a basic description and price . . . so they had better be good!

And by “good”, I don’t just mean high quality. That should be a given. Rather, I mean that they should be carefully selected and presented to tell a story.

Typically I suggest you consider having the following images incorporated:

• a thumbnail for convenient item viewing and selection at the category level. This should be a small replica of your standard image.
• a standard image that shows a full view of the product.
• an enlargement that either shows a larger version of the standard image, a larger version shot from a different angle, or a close-up of a particular feature.
• an “in use” image. This could be a woman modeling a handbag, or a frypan cooking a delicious meal.

Note that the first three essentially allow the customer to see the features, while the last one shows the benefits: in these examples how stylish you could look swinging the handbag, or what wonderful meals you could cook with the frypan.

The bottom line?

Features describe – benefits sell!

For a good example of how this can be done well have a look at an Online Shop I completed for Eurolux Australia The quality of the images I was supplied with were excellent, but more importantly the range of images told the whole story – features and benefits. Just look at the shots of the meals cooking in the frypans. You can almost smell them!