DEV Community: PrestaSOO

Average Order Value: 6 Highly-Effective Tips

PrestaSOO — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 03:45:46 +0000

The Average Order Value (AOV) is the average money amount that a customer spends an order on your Prestashop website with you.

With the conversion rate (CR) & revenue per visit (RPP), the average order value is the most important value that an online store based on Prestashop must increase to be profitable.

Because increasing AOV is the easiest way to increase profits, merchants need to try to improve it first, which is the process of making more money out of each customer.

What you have : You launch an eCommerce business to consistently market and sell your products. You try many ways to get more traffic: spending thousands of dollars on Google Ads or Facebook Ads, focus much of your energy on writing articles, and optimizing your website.

In fact : more traffic does not equal more success.

Increasing AOV does not cost money, but increasing traffic does. Encourage your customers to buy more expensive products and more products!

You know What Average Order Value means , and the next question is How to calculate AOV and especially How to increase the average order value?

You will learn about:

I. How to Calculate the Average Order Value

Here is the simple formula to calculate the average order value: Average Order Value = Total Revenue / Number of orders.

Let's look at a hypothetical situation in which Carol, a beautiful woman from Hanoi, spent £6,000 on a total of 3 orders. This means that, on average, Carol spent £2000 for each purchase from your store.

Another example: let’s say that in the day of the week - Monday, if you have a total of 2000 orders and your site's sales were £100,000, that meaning the AOV for Monday is £50.

II. 6 Highly-Effective Tips to Increase AOV

Here is the most important question: How to increase Average Order Value?

There are 6 tips that may increase your average order value, and they are essentially different ways to get your customers to checkout with larger carts.

Upsell or Cross-sell to Increase Basket Size
Setup Quantity Discounts
Make Better Product Recommendations
Next Order Coupon
Set Order Minimums for Free Shipping
Sell More to Loyalty Customer.

1. Upsell or Cross-sell to Increase Basket Size

Cross-selling is when you invite customers to buy a related or a complementary product to make a profitable sale, in contrast, upselling is when you promote the more expensive items or other add-ons. They are pretty magical. They both focus on providing additional value to customers.

Here’s how Jimmy (Vietnam) uses Onpage Cross-selling module to deploy a cross-sell tactic on his Prestashop website. This tip increases the AOV up to 15%.

2. Setup Quantity Discounts

Setting up a quantity discount is easy on Prestashop. Quantity Discounts (Volume-based pricing) also is a very handy tip. You could see it not only from the physical store but also from the online store. A customer buys a lot at once to get a lower price per unit.

Might someone be tempted by an offer for 3 snack bags for the price of 1. £5 each or 3 for £10?

First, quantity discounts help you to close your first deal. And because you continuously want to beat the competition, you want a specific customer who seeks the lowest price, this is an excellent way to go to get the customer and a large order – for a smaller margin.

It is a strategy that provides discounts for purchasing a product or service in high volumes.

There are many different formulas companies use to promote buying larger quantities.

For example, you could offer 5% off on orders over £100 or 10% on orders over £200. This could be either a percentage-based discount or a monetary discount.

You should create some quantity discounts for Manufacturer Specific Price Lists:

By using SOO Automatic Cart Rules module, you can not only create the quantity discounts but also show the promotion message on the product page, with a timer countdown to make it obvious that you're offering the quantity discounts.

Perfect your volume-based pricing strategy to make it profitable for every single deal.

3. Make Better Product Recommendations

Shows the smartest product recommendations to your product pages or checkout page.

You can sell some slow-moving stock, provide recommendations based on attributes and price of the product the customer has chosen or your own business priorities.

4. Next Order Coupon

This unique way of after-sales marketing will give your customers with dynamically generated coupon codes while they place the orders.

By this way, you encourage them to buy more by providing offer codes to their next order.

SOO Automatic Cart Rules module will allows you to define coupon amounts as a percentage of the order that triggers the coupon or when the voucher will be sent: while a customer places an order or after order completed.

5. Set Order Minimums for Free Shipping

You can also increase the average transaction value by incentivizing customers to spend a minimum amount for free shipping.

Your offers should be shown on the product page or checkout page to make sure your customers to think about adding some additional products to meet the condition. For example, in offers free shipping for all orders over £100 or only offering free shipping for certain products, which is easy to set up in Prestashop with SOO Automatic Cart Rules module.

6. Sell more to loyalty customer

Creating a customer loyalty program helps you increase the average order value and motivate your customers to keep coming back to your online store.

Loyalty customers spend 70% more than new customers as a result of they know your brand and believe in you.

And last but not least: They tell their friends regarding positive experiences. Word-of-mouth marketing is simpler at driving new customers than advertising.

New groups for loyalty customer

Create new groups: Back Office ->Shop Parameters ->Customer Settings->Groups.
You might want to setup a discount for this group, but we do not recommend use this option because it does not make a profitable sale.
On the next step, we will use SOO Automatic Cart Rules to reward loyal customers by offering cumulative discounts on selected lines or giving away free items with multiple purchases for a limited time.

Select customers for these group

Option A: Select some specific customers based on their purchase history.

Option B - the better way: Sell the membership subscriptions and select these customers who bought the subscriptions into the loyalty customer groups.

SOO Paypal Subscriptions & Recurring Payment module will helps you power a subscription business on your Prestashop website for secondly.

Reward Loyalty Customers

Now you have a list of the most valuable customers. Give them some best offers, and you'll be able to expect to visualize the AOV increase considerably. SOO Automatic Cart Rules allows you to apply the Volume-based pricing for customer groups.

Prestashop products, subscription products vs subscriptions

PrestaSOO — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 02:15:05 +0000

SOO Paypal Subscription & Recurring Payment is the only Prestashop module that allows you to sell products as recurring products on the Prestashop website using Paypal.

It provides two different, but related items: Subscription products and subscriptions.

Everyone is aware of a subscription relationship is far additional valuable to you than a once purchase.

On the business facet, subscription commerce offers a stable money model in recurring monthly revenue that may be designed around nearly each niche – from foods, beauty , membership to pets.

If there’s associate existing community around a product or class on-line, likelihood is you'll be able to build a subscription box around it. Offering Subscriptions on your PrestaShop website is a good idea!

Here we will provide an explanation of the differences between a Prestashop product (regular product), a subscription product and a subscription. And then, you could find some examples to illustrate those differences.

Prestashop products

These are the default elements that you can use to sell on your website using regular payment methods such as Bank wire, COD, Visa, MasterCard ..etc...

Subscription products

Subscription products are an extension of Prestashop products. You can create them from Product Manager page in Backend Office, or convert from an existing product.
By assign a product to a subscription plan that start immediately, you can sell this product as a subscription product.

Like any other Prestashop product, subscription products have all the same data and they can be added to the cart and purchased by customers via Paypal website.

The purchase of a subscription product is recorded in an order and the future payments will be added as a new order.

PayPal Subscription Payments helps you manage scheduled payments on Paypal website, charge the future payment and send payment notifications to the module to manage the orders.

Subscriptions

Now you know what is a Prestashop product and what is a subscription product.
So, what is the subscription?

Whereas a subscription product is something offered to customers to purchase, a subscription is an agreement between your store and a customer for future transactions but can be displayed as a product, and it also has all the same data as standard products, too.

The difference between a product, a subscription product and a subscription is a subscription will be assigned to a subscription plan that allow customers choose the start date, ensue a product's order / a subscription product's order is a record of a transaction in the past, whereas a subscription's order is an agreement for transactions in the future.

This module is very flexible

You can sell your product as a standard product / subscription product / subscription or all of them. It's very easy.

Examples

Here you can find some example to imagine.

Purchasing a Weekly Pizza Subscription Product

A typical flow of a customer subscribing to a product in your store is:

Customers visit your Pizza Store.
They view a Pizza subscription product that ships every week.
They add this subscription product to the cart and proceed to checkout.
Customer completes checkout on Paypal.
Prestashop creates an order to record the transaction. The Pizza subscription product will be included as a line item on that order.
SOO Paypal Subscription & Recurring Payment creates a subscriber to record the agreement for future transactions.
One week later, the subscription will renew according to its billing schedule via Paypal.
Paypal send the nofication to this module. SOO Paypal Subscription & Recurring Payment creates a new order.

A Subscription for Annual membership fee

Imagine your club offers a membership for $300/annual. So, you create a membership plan on Subscription Plans page and then, visit BO -> Catalog -> Products to create a subscription and assign this subscription to your membership plan.

Summary

It's very easy to create subscription/subscription product or convert a existing product to subscription/subscription product on Prestashop website.

Everything you need is only a Paypal Business Account and fill in the form with the necessary information.

When customers purchase those products, the orders will be created and the future payment will be automatically charged. You also have the option to sell a default product as a subscription product, subscription or all of them at the same time.

Logo Prestashop: Complete tutorial

PrestaSOO — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 08:15:05 +0000

Logo Prestashop? How well do you really know the logo on your website? How to customize it, replace the default logo by another? I've compiled in this tutorial everything about the logo of a site made with Prestashop.

How to change Prestashop Logo

This is not only the first question but also the most really interesting question people ask when developing a Prestashop website.

To change the logo of your shop, go to BackOffice and then in the Preferences -> Theme menu.

On this page, there are 4 types of customizable logos:

The logo of the shop.
Another one of emails & invoices.
The icon on your website.
The logo are used on the mobile theme.

The logo of the shop

This logo will be displayed on all pages of your Prestashop site and also used by default if you do not define a logo for the 3 other existing types.
Now, click on the "Add a file" button, choose the logo on your local computer and then click on the "Save" button.

The logo of emails & invoices

Actually, if you do not setup a logo on this step, the main logo of the shop will be used.
By the way, i case you worry that your logo does not display correctly on emails or Pdfs that will be generated by the store, you might want to use these two fields to send a different version of your logo that will be more suitable.

The icon on your website

What is an icon on a website?

It is short for favorites icon. A favicon is typically a graphic 16 x 16 pixels square and is saved as favicon.ico in the root directory of the server.

Why use an icon?

When initially viewing your Prestashop website, most users will first scan the page for visually interesting content, and only after something grabs their attention will they actually begin reading. Icons are a simple, effective way to draw users into the content of your site.

The logo are used on the mobile theme

This logo will be used on the theme dedicated to mobile devices.
But nowadays, everyone are using responsive theme there is no reason for you to activate the Prestashop mobile theme.

How to change the size of the logo in prestashop

It's very easy. Just use Photoshop or any image editor tools to resize your logo before upload on your site.

How to get Instagram Client ID & Client Secret Key

PrestaSOO — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 12:53:25 +0000

Instagram Client ID and Client Secret Key are use to intergrate an Instagram social login module on Prestashop site, that allows visitors to access websites using an Instagram ID.

Many customers report being tired by having to create new accounts to buy something, and a social login module is a good solution to boost conversion rates that provided on Prestashop ecommerce sites will give rich opportunities for merchants.

We also have a plan to release a Prestashop Social Login module (Fb, Twitter, Instagram...). What will the module called? Just tell me a name!

Instagram Client ID and Client Secret Key - What are they?

The Client Id is a public identifier for Prestashop module, and the Client Secret Key is a secret known only to the module and the authorization server.

Your module won’t be able to exchange data with the Instagram API without them.

How to Get Instagram Client ID and Client Secret Key

Step I - Visit Instagram Developer Network

Visit https://www.instagram.com/developer/register

Click on Login button to login Instagram

Login as an Instagram user, or register a new account to proceed this Prestashop tutorial. It's very easy. I promise that every steps will be the same.

Step II - Developer Signup

Fill these fields in seconds to signup as a developer:

When you done, it's time to build your first Application to connect the Prestashop Social Login module to your Instagram API.

Step III - Register your application to get Client Id and Client Secret Key

Click on Register your application to start

Fill all fields in the form that asks for:

Application Name: Name of the application. It should be Prestashop Social login.
Description: Write a short description of your application.
Website URL: Full URL. For example: https:// yoursite.com. You should have a SSL certificate for your site or your website's ranking is very low.
Valid redirect URLs: have to be https:// yoursite.com/modules/my-social-login-module/instagram

Confirm all information, click on Register button for the final result.

Step IV - Final

It's done! You’ve got Instagram Client ID and Client Secret Key! Copy and paste the Client ID and Client Secret key in the admin panel of your Prestashop modules.

Why you should use Prestashop for your ecommerce site

PrestaSOO — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 02:57:16 +0000

Prestashop is the solution for businesses that are looking for a programming platform that guarantees quality functionalities that you can use to make your e-commerce site attractive and easy to maneuver. It is open-source, meaning that you don’t have to pay a dime!

Here are the reasons that you need to use Prestashop for your online shop!

I. It has everything you need

Everything you need to build an e-commerce shop can be found on Prestashop. Its awesome features guarantee good performance. Your easy-to-use user interface will be enjoyed by visitors that come across your shop.

Prestashop assures that your shop will be seeing business growth. You’ll pull off a multi-product website with as many categories as you’d like with ease.

II. Easy to use

Something users love about Prestashop is that literally anyone can use it. You don’t need technical expertise and development experience to build your platform. All you have to do is download your favourite modules, install them, and you’re good to go.

If you’ve got some coding experience that you’d like to pull out, you are always welcome to make some modifications in the source code to make your online shop truly unique. If you’d like, you can just as easily add one or two Prestashop Addons to your existing site.

III. It’s great for low budget businesses

Prestashop is great for SMEs. You shouldn’t have to pay an exorbitant amount for an attractive e-commerce shop. Any of these quality addons can be used without having to pay any fees.

Small e-commerce shops will be glad to have all these options without having to add to their costs.

IV. A flexible platform

Prestashop isn’t only for computers - you can put together an m-commerce site as well. You’ll be able to reach customers that use their mobile phones to shop, rather than only able to access those with desktop computers or laptops. Themes will work across devices, and your customers will thank you for the thought.

V. You can personalize your shop

A unique site is easy with Prestashop. You can take your pick out of the array of themes available, and apply modules and features that you think your customers will love. Your shop will be personalized to your business, for example, add icons to Prestashop menu, and it will be easy to recognize in the internet marketplace.

VI. Manage your products easily

Some shops find themselves with a great number of products of many types, and find it challenging to make it easy for customers to find what they need. With Prestashop, you’ll be able to manage your products easily. You can categorize your offerings and tag them according to type.

Your customers will thank you for the wonderful user experience that you can offer with a shop that is easy to navigate.

I also have a Prestashop tutorial for beginners How to install Prestashop 1.7 that helps to make a Prestashop website easily & without any problems.

How to install Prestashop Theme

PrestaSOO — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 14:05:42 +0000

Before you start your business on your ecommerce Prestashop site, though, you'll have to know how to install Prestashop, and then, set up your theme.

These days, owning a professional looking website is of crucial importance for any type of business. And you need a really good theme, because it's your greatest ambassador on this endless digital market.

If it doesn't look professional and presentable, people will avoid interacting with it.

The goal of this tutorial is to show you everything that needs to install Prestashop theme with sample data.

Prestashop allows you to choose between different outlooks for your store built from Prestashop. As a beginner, you probably have heard about tons of available free and paid Prestashop themes. You've found the web design of your dreams, and it happened to be a theme.

You will learn about

I. Download Theme Package to Local PC
II. Import Theme into Website
III. Activate Prestashop Theme
IV. Install Sample Data

Step I - Download Theme Package to Local PC

First you need to download theme installation package. Usually the theme comes with the installation guide and provides several ways of installation (manual, via plugin, etc), so make sure to check the guide before you even start working with the theme.

Then, extract the downloaded file.

Step II - Import theme into website

Log into PrestaShop admin panel and go to Design -> Theme and Logo.
You would be redirected to the Theme management page. Here you need to click Add New Theme button.

Import from your computer: It's an easy way - just browse theme package inside the folder you downloaded and extracted on Step I, and then, hit Save button to import your theme into site.

Import from FTP: It's a hard way. Why do we need it? By default, PHP permits a maximum file upload of 2MB, and you can find a simple and light weight theme but let’s face it: they are the large files. That's why you shouldn't deploy your ecommerce website on a hosting - everything is limited!

You might want to ask your hosting provider to configure your hosting for uploading a big file. And you need to wait some hours (or some days) to receive the answer. So crazy, huh? Lets use a KVM VPS, it's just 5-10 usd per month. Today, KVM VPS pricing is lower than yesterday.

Where do you find a good provider? I love Linode, Digitalocean, Vultr ... They are some good providers you can believe for your business. It's my suggest. It's not advertising. There is no affiliate link here.

And remember, if your site is running on a hosting or a weak server, you can not use our Prestashop Cloud Backup module to schedule to backup your website automatically.

You know that feeling you get when you're waiting for hosting provider's answer.

Can't wait anymore? So now, upload theme package to your-website/themes/ using FTP clients.

Once have done that, back to Design -> Theme and Logo -> Add a new theme. Here you might want to select the newly uploaded theme from the list of available themes at "Select the archive" and press the “Save” button.

Congratulations! The theme is now installed! Now, activate the theme as default theme.

Step III - Activate Prestashop Theme

Now go back to the Design > Theme and Logo page and find the newly installed theme. Hover the theme thumbnail image and hit the “Use This Theme” to activate the theme as default theme.

Step IV - Install sample data

Dump file is a database file that stores all the theme settings. Usually it is imported into the database to make the website look like the demo of the theme you have purchased.

Import dump.sql file to your database. You should get the following message: Import has been successfully finished, XXX queries executed (dump.sql).

The installation is successfully completed. Refresh your Prestashop site to enjoy the result and start to download Prestashop Modules to improve your website features and boost your sales.

Don't forget visit our blog to discover more Prestashop Tutorials.

How to install Prestashop 1.7

PrestaSOO — Sun, 03 Jun 2018 06:52:38 +0000

Prestashop is one of the most popular content management system for e-commerce websites. It is used by small businesses and large enterprise companies alike, and can be enhanced by thousands of extensions and themes. More than 270,000 ecommerce sites worldwide run on PrestaShop and is available in 65 different languages.

It is fairly easy to use, provides a powerfully responsive store interface for shoppers, offers a comprehensive set of features, and it's free.

In this tutorial, we will go over how to install Prestashop on your hosting / server (i always love to install a Prestashop ecommerce site on a Ubuntu Server - it's lightweight and easy-to-use).

What are the steps to prepare for Installing Prestashop 1.7

I. Download Prestashop & Upload to Server
II. Create a Database
III. Run Prestashop 1.7 Installation Wizard
IV. Delete Install Folder & Archive file

And remember, installing Prestashop on a server is more involved and time-consuming than using cloud hosting, but the rewards are greater: Better Performance, Greater Flexibility with the freedom to tweak your settings as you see fit. You won’t ever have to wait for a cloud-host support team to change PHP settings for you.

Step I - Download Prestashop & Upload to Server

Download the PrestaShop package from the official website then Extract the package locally on your computer.

In order to do that, please, use any extracting software to unzip. For example : Winzip, Winrar, 7Zip (Windows) or Keka, Archive Utility (MacOS)...

Open the extracted folder that includes prestashop.zip file. Upload this file to your server via cPanel’s File Manager or using an FTP client.

Bear in mind that the uploaded package should reside under the public_html directory, which is the web root folder for your account, or alternatively under a subdirectory of it.

Once you have uploaded the archive, extract it there.

Step II - Create a Database

As soon as the files are uploaded to your server, you should create a database for runing the setup Wizard.

You can easily do this from cPanel -> MySQL Database (if you're using Cpanel) or Virtualmin -> Edit User / Edit Database (if you're using Virtualmin). If PhpMyadmin is installed on your server, use it to create a new database.

Step III - Run Prestashop 1.7 Installation Wizard

Navigate to your-website. com in a browser and the wizard will guide you through the setup process. On this step you will be asked to choose the language you want to use for your store.

Select language: The first screen is the language setting. Select the language for the installer, then click the “Next” button.

This will also set the default language for your PrestaShop installation – but other languages will also be available for you to enable later.

License agreements: PrestaShop is free and distributed under a certain set of open-source licenses. Read the terms and condition and select to agree with the terms and conditions.

(You simply cannot use this software if you disagree with the terms of the licenses, and this step requires you to explicitly acknowledge them).

System compatibility: It's a quick check of all the server parameters. If it is proceeded, that means, the system is ready to install Prestashop 1.7.

Store information: Where you can start customizing your shop: give it a name, indicate its main activity and personal information of the owner.

System configuration: Do you remember Step II? Fill in all the fields with the database connection information: Database server address, Name, Login, Password, Tables prefix (The table prefix can be left unchanged as well).

Ok, now test your connection to the database server.

When you done, click the next button to proceed with the installation. This might take a few minutes: please, be patient and do not touch your browser.

The Wizard will create the necessary tables and finalize setting up the store. You will see a page that looks something like this:

Step IV - Delete Install folder & Archive file

For security purpose, you need to rename or delete the “install” folder inside the Prestashop 1.7 installation folder & Zip Archive file.
Final

Waw! PrestaShop 1.7 was successfully installed on your server.

You can now log into the PrestaShop back-office by going to your newly-renamed “admin” folder, and start modifying your store by downloading Prestashop Modules to improve the feature & customize theme.

Let's enjoy it & don't forget to visit our blog to see more Prestashop Tutorials!

How to add a custom link to Prestashop Menu

PrestaSOO — Wed, 30 May 2018 14:35:36 +0000

Want to add a custom link to Prestashop menu? This Prestashop tutorial shows how to add your link to the menu in Prestashop easily.

Menus in Prestashop may contain links to pages, categories, custom links or other content types. So, in case you want a menu tab to link directly to another website/webpage, then follow these instructions.

What are the steps to prepare for adding a custom link?

I. Configure Main Menu module
II. Scroll down to "ADD A NEW LINK" area.
III. Fill the custom link to Link field and Save.

To get started creating a custom menu, log in to your Prestashop site and click to expand the Modules menu on the left side.

Step I - Configure Main Menu module

At first, you need to open the list all you installed modules and find Main Menu module, then click on the "Configure" button.

Step II - Scroll down to "ADD A NEW LINK" area

You will see "ADD A NEW LINK" area where you can add any custom links. If you are using multiple languages on your Prestashop ecommerce website, you can choose a different URL address for each language.

Step III - Fill the custom link to Link field and Save

Right, this is the final step. Fill your custom link into Link field. If you are using multiple languages on your Prestashop ecommerce website, you can choose a different URL address for each language.

What is the better way?

You might want to use SOO Magic Menu - the Winner of Navigation module for Prestashop Awards 2017 to create not only your custom link but also images, icons and custom content to your Prestashop Menu.

Step I - Click on First-level menu that you want to create Custom link

Step II - Fill the custom link into Custom

Add your custom menu with a custom link and you can Drag-and-Drop these menus easily.

This Prestashop Module is packed with a ton of feature for your ecommerce website to customize menus, offer Prestashop Discounts & deals or show your advertising.
Let's enjoy it.

How to generate Prestashop Invoice by Customer name

PrestaSOO — Thu, 24 May 2018 01:47:05 +0000

Want to generate the invoice by customer name instead of the boring numbers?

It's so easy - on this Prestashop Tutorial, i will show you how to do it.

Step I: Modify function getFilename() in your-website/classes/pdf/HTMLTemplateInvoice.php.
Step II: Get the customer object by adding this line: $customer = new Customer((int)$this->order->id_customer);
Step III: Return with the name and the number.

Are you ready? Follow me.

Before you do anything else, please make sure backup your website / your file first. When you done, let's go.

I - Modify function getFilename()

Open and edit function getFilename() in your-website/classes/pdf/HTMLTemplateInvoice.php by using your favourite editor.

II - Get the customer object.

Find getFilename() function (line 500):

public function getFilename()
{
$id_lang = Context::getContext()->language->id;
$id_shop = (int)$this->order->id_shop;
$format = '%1$s%2$06d';

Change it to:

public function getFilename()
{
$id_lang = Context::getContext()->language->id;
$id_shop = (int)$this->order->id_shop;
$format = '%1$s%2$06d';
$customer = new Customer((int)$this->order->id_customer);

III - Return with the name and the number.

Look into this code:

return sprintf(
$format,
Configuration::get('PS_INVOICE_PREFIX', $id_lang, null, $id_shop),
$this->order_invoice->number,
date('Y', strtotime($this->order_invoice->date_add))
).'.pdf';

Change it to:

return sprintf(
$format,
Configuration::get('PS_INVOICE_PREFIX', $id_lang, null, $id_shop),
$this->order_invoice->number,
date('Y', strtotime($this->order_invoice->date_add))
).''.$customer->firstname.''.$customer->lastname.'.pdf';

Final - Enjoy your result

The invoice name will be IN_number_customername.pdf. For example : IN000001_Natalia_Eva.pdf.

Is it cool, huh? Don't forget our blog to find the useful Prestashop tutorials.

Have a nice weekend!

The best length of Prestashop meta description (updated)

PrestaSOO — Thu, 17 May 2018 07:45:17 +0000

Bad news! I said you can write meta descriptions for 300 characters, but it's not correct anymore. Everything has changed!

As of mid-May 2018, Google has reverted back to shorter display snippets and these changes are widespread.

Most meta descriptions are being cut off in the previous range of about 155–160 characters.

Do you thing a shorter meta description is great to reduce costs of marketing and simple to automate with codes meta descriptions using main keywords combinations?

The world is constantly changing. Nothing remains static. I wrote "SEO Prestashop Made Simple", but actually, you're always wake up every morning and ask your self: What's next?

Why Google won’t give specific meta description lengths?

The important thing to note is that Google has never given any specific character or word count for the meta description tags, even when they have increased the length in the past. So it isn’t surprising they are continuing the same.

As you know, John Mueller reiterated this when he said that the search results are very dynamic, as we can easily see when we spot tests in the search results. He said that it is important for Google to keep testing and seeing what works best for their users.

With this in mind, it is likely the shorter snippets was tested before being unleashed to everyone.

Just get to the point

They still shows search results with longer snippets. Especially for non-commercial queries, there are some longer snippet descriptions on the result page. The length of result snippets is dynamic.

Although there is no maximum snippet length, it might be a good idea to limit your meta descriptions to 150 - 160 characters if you want to be sure that the full description gets displaye on Google’s result pages. Remember that Google will only show the meta description of the page if it is relevant to the search query.

The good news (or bad news?) is most of the products descriptions on Prestashop sites are very short - the merchants maybe do not know what should they write on product's description.

For example, here you can see the product description of Bag of ‘sun stick’ chocolates from a famous website: "Bag of chocolate «bâtons du soleil» candied orange and hazelnuts" - 64 characters.

In e commerce, write product description with love is not easy. But if you have a blog, that's another story (and you should have a blog on your Prestashop website to have a higher ranking in Google results).

Should we just go back to a 155 character cut-off? If you've already written longer meta descriptions, should you scrap that work and start over? The simple truth is that none of us know what's going to happen next week!

We think writing effective descriptions that engage search visitors is still very important, in theory (and that this indirectly impacts even ranking), but you may find you can write perfectly well within a 150 - 160 characters limit.

Google seems to be rewriting more and more descriptions. This is difficult to measure, as many rewrites are partial, but there's no guarantee that your meta description will be used as written.

But at least, you can use SOO Pretty Urls module to improve SEO Prestashop without concern for the description meta.

What should be the length of title on SEO Prestashop

PrestaSOO — Wed, 02 May 2018 13:27:07 +0000

How to write a strong SEO Title Tag that Google will love on your Prestashop website?

In my previous Prestashop Tutorial on SEO Prestashop Made Simple : A Step-by-Step guide, i said that the title should be succinct between 5 and 10 words, roughly 60 characters. Yesterday when i worked on a Prestashop 1.7 website, i saw that Prestashop suggest you to write a title tag with max 70 characters.

What is the correct number?

Because title tags are one of the essential elements, and even a slight change in the meta title of your page can bring a significant shift in your organic rankings, so, we need to find the correct number.

The title tag tells search crawlers what your page is exactly about, it is the first content crawled on your page, so writing perfect title tag is extremely important.

Take a look into the picture above.

Here we searched "remove Powered by Prestashop from email". #1 title has more than 65 characters, and #2 title has 63 characters ( it's me :D - Please don't tell me about the ranking ^^ : the first result from Prestashop. I just want to say that the #1 title has been truncated.). As i said, the length should be maxed 60 characters (including spaces), however, it is not a character length but actually, it is a pixel length which is considered by Google (600 pixels).

Hence character length for different languages can be different.

Stick to those, and your title on Prestashop website will generally not be truncated, if they’re relevant and you’re not doing anything crazy with special characters.

According to Moz community, the best title length is 50-60 characters, but in a blog post on Bigleap, Adam Fifield said that you can use max 70 characters.

Ok, I admit that i don't have a better position on ranking than someone :3, but at least, my title not be truncated. What is your choice? For me, 60 - 65 characters is the best option. No more.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Hope my Prestashop Tutorials series is useful for beginners.

How to show subcategories images in Prestashop's top menu

PrestaSOO — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 05:48:59 +0000

Few months ago i wrote an article to share about the way to show categories images on Prestashop Menu.

Then @Psdesigner and @damien Belgacig asked me about the way to put subcategories images instead of main category's image. Sorry 2 guys, Disqus didn't tell me about your comments.

Well, as my previous article, if you edit ps_mainmenu template file (ps_mainmenu.tpl) and put the source code as my suggest, all categories images will be showed on Prestashop Menu. In case you only want to allow subcategories images, we need to make some changes.

First, make sure you uploaded subcategories images

Edit your subcategories and upload menu's image as my previous article. You can't show the images if you don't have at least one, right?

Ok, this is the most important step.

You need to make sure the main category is the root menu, and the categories are the submenus. I don't have time to play with Prestashop default menu so i don't know can we setup a subcategory as a root menu or not (we have SOO Magic Menu - do you remember? We love it so much and hope people use it everyday :D).

Re-open your-website/themes/classic/modules/ps_mainmenu/ps_mainmenu.tpl file and find the code around line 27.

Visit my page to explain how to play with your Prestashop website : https://www.prestasoo.com/blog/how-to-show-subcategories-images-in-prestashop-s-top-menu.html