admin, Author at BHOOST Fast, secure and reliable eCommerce hosting to increase your sales

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When you decide to open a site, a blog, an E-Commerce site, the first thing to do is definitely to buy a domain. But what exactly is a domain?

This question often, which for many may seem trivial, in reality is not, especially for those who enter the world of the web for the first time. In fact, those who are only now approaching this world need clarity in this sense. So for an informed choice, it is right to have clear ideas and know what is meant by domain and how to choose the right one for us.

So what is a domain?

So let’s try to actually understand what we are talking about …

A domain, to put it simply, is nothing more than the web address of your site. Basically it is a name consisting of numbers and letters, with which you can access the server where your site is housed.

Basically it is a unique address with which you can find and identify your website, such as www.ilnomedeltuosito.it

It therefore becomes essential to choose a domain that identifies your company and is able to make it recognized and remembered.

But there are different types of domains, such as first and second level domains. But what are the differences?

Top-level domains

A top-level domain is used to identify a specific geographic area or type of business.

In the case of a geographical area, we will talk about ccTLD (country code top-leve domain). This is the case with .it domains. eng .fr .es etc.
In the second case, we will talk about gTLD (Generic top-leve domain) and are those used for organizations and companies. For example the .com which is used to indicate commercial activities

Second level domains

The second level domain is instead linked to the name of your business / company and is essentially the name that is before the .it / .es / .fr etc.

and therefore in www.nomesito.it, the “sitename” part is the second level domain, while the “.it” is the first level domain

The choice of this domain is fundamental because it must be:

short
simple to remember
easy to write

Third level domains

However, there are also third-level domains, also known as subdomains, which identify a part of the domain itself.

For instance:

blog.sitename.it

in this case “blog” represent a sort of in-depth analysis linked to the main domain.

How and where to buy a domain?

To register a domain you will need to contact specific companies that provide this type of service.

We also provide domain registration and transfer services, for more info contact us!

Once you have selected your domain provider, you will need to choose a name that is unique and you can easily see this. In fact, upon registration, the provider will tell you if the chosen domain is currently available or not.

Also there are some other features to consider:

the domain must be unique
it must consist of alphanumeric characters and dashes
there are no spaces
it would be good to enter a keyword

Conclusions

As you can see, the domain is nothing particularly difficult, neither to understand nor to register, but if you still have doubts, let us know in the comments.

How to choose the most suitable platform for your e-commerce

Reading Time: 3 minutes

When a merchant decides to undertake an E-Commerce business, the first challenge he encounters is to choose a platform.

In fact, there are many possibilities: Magento, PrestaShop, Woocommerce, Shopware etc, all have their positive and negative sides. But above all, each one has its specificities, which may or may not adapt to your needs.

As with many other products, it is not as easy as searching on Google for “the best e-commerce platform”. There are many factors that should be taken into consideration before making this choice.

For example, you should consider the costs related to opening your online business, costs that are not only related to the price of the platform itself. Any additional functionality you may need will typically be provided by paid apps/extensions or by custom development. And this fact also requires an additional budget.

This is why it becomes essential to make the right considerations. You will find some key elements you should look into before jumping into a new ecosystem below.

Understanding your business and its characteristics

First, we must understand that all E-Commerce platforms provide more or less the same basic functionality. However, the various business models are unique and have specific needs.

This is why the requirements for an E-Commerce platform must cover more than just basic functionality.

So you need to understand what makes your business unique and how you intend to engage your customers.
One way, for example, may be to provide discounts for different goods, according to predefined rules. As a result, customers with a matching set of products in their cart should receive a discount. The discount system should include many factors that play a role in generating the final price.

In some rare cases, maybe only one thing is required in addition to the basic functionality provided by most platforms. In other cases, there are at least a couple of other extra features that are a must for a merchant’s business.

Define the right e-commerce structure

Another example is related to site search. In general, we can outline two main categories of the E-Commerce store structure:

The first has as the main idea to “guide” customers through the catalog, use different configurators/wizards to create a correct set of products in the cart.
The second is the research-oriented approach. An excellent example of the latter is a market like Amazon.

So, if your store is going to use the second search-oriented model, you’ll need a well-organized search on your website. In this case, well-organized means support synonyms, stopwords, filters, suggestions, etc.

Also, it would be great to have AI-based research.

With these two elements of your business model, you can check the capabilities of the different platforms on the market. The main goal is to find a platform that covers the scenarios mentioned.

Stay one step ahead …

In addition to the functionality we were talking about above, it also makes sense to think about perspective. Most likely, if you are aware enough, you will not put everything in the very first version of your store.

This means that in choosing the platform, you will have to take one that is scalable. In this case, it makes sense to check the capabilities of the different platforms, considering the features planned for the future.

At some point in time, you will face the situation where no platform covers your particular business needs. So, you need a third party solution or developer team that will bring the missing features.

Therefore, you must take this aspect into consideration. If you see that you may need a lot of custom development in the future, it is good to check the price attached to this type of business for the different platforms available.

Consider the size of your catalog

Another thing you should consider is the size of your catalog and visitor base. If you have a million SKUs and more, it may not be easy for some platforms to manage this amount of data.

Or, if your business model will use flash sales with hundreds of orders per minute, it could be overkill for most platforms as well.

In this case, you must therefore consider the characteristics of the various platforms, whether or not they can support a large number of products, but not only.

In fact, you must also define a hosting and its characteristics, especially if you have a lot of products and a lot of traffic. The choice of hosting also leads you to additional costs to consider.

If you are interested in a quotation, contact us and we will find the right hosting for your needs!

Choose the right solution for you

To sum up, when choosing an E-Commerce platform, you must first think about the following factors:

Functionality that the platform provides outside the box.
Features that can be easily added to basic functionality.
How many “unique” business cases do you have and how expensive it will be to reflect them in the e-commerce store now and in the future.
The size of your catalog now and in the near future.
Number of customers you expect now and in the future.
What is the ROI in terms of maintaining and improving your store.

There are many other factors to consider, but in this guide we have described the most common ones, then it is up to you to decide according to your needs.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Today, rather than mail, the E-Commerce sector is having an incredible rise. Many companies have decided to invest in this new form of commerce, because they have understood how much potential it has.

People now buy at any time, from the comfort of their home, office, or on the go, thanks above all to smartphones.

It therefore becomes essential to be able to access this huge slice of the market.

But before doing that, you need to choose an E-Commerce platform that has the features that best suit your business. There are in fact many proposals that the market can do in this sense, such as Woocommerce , Prestashop , Shopware and Magento.

And it is the latter that I want to talk to you today.

We will see, what Magento is and why you should use it, so as to understand if it is the right platform for you.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open source platform for creating E-Commerce sites. It was released on March 31, 2008 by Varien and developed on the Zend Framework.

Many companies use this CMS for their online store including big brands like like Nike, Samsung, etc.

In 2018, Adobe acquired Magento with a price tag of $ 1.68 billion to complete its business cycle. This acquisition was key to a number of very useful developments in Magento.

According to internal data from Litextension , in 2020 Magento was one of the three platforms on which merchants migrated the most.The choice on other platforms instead was in the minority.

Magento Opensource and Magento Commerce

There are versions of Magento to cater for all types of e-commerce, from SMEs to the largest corporate retailers: Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce .

Magento Open Source , what was previously called Magento Community Edition, is the free version of Magento. You can download your version for free from the Magento Download page .

Although free, this version is still rich in features, which can still be implemented, thanks to the numerous third-party modules present in the marketplace.

Thanks to Magento Open Source, you can create a high-performance and feature-rich E-Commerce site.

Magento Commerce , formerly Magento Enterprise Edition, is the paid formula, which has a variable license cost based on the annual turnover of E-Commerce.

This version has many native features, which for Open Source must be implemented through external modules.

Why use Magento?

If you are a company or a private individual who wants to develop a professional E-Commerce site looking long term, you should definitely think about Magento.

This CMS is in fact the best open source for the creation of E-Commerce.

There are some basic features of Magento that make it a truly unique professional tool.

Let’s see some of the most important:

Product Management: With many images, optional comments, product reviews, favorites list, inventory.
Category Management: Easy to find and select products by category
Stock management: management of products left in stock, import, export
Customer account: account status, transaction history, favorite catalog, address, cart …
Customer service: improve functionality, customer contact form; the complete follow-up, e-mail service.
Order management
Payments: Many payment methods like credit card, PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, support for external payment modules like CyberSource, ePay, eWAY and more.
Search technology: Fast, friendly, supports Google SiteMap search
International support: multilingual and monetary
Promotional and marketing tools: coupons, promotions and more.
Analysis and reporting: integrates with the Google Analytics service and provides multiple reports.

What are the advantages of Magento?

Open source – Highly customizable

Magento not only offers flexible and scalable E-Commerce solutions, but is also highly customizable. In fact, thanks to the numerous modules present in the Magento marketplace, you can tailor your E-Commerce to your needs.

Furthermore, this CMS has the characteristic of adapting well to change and has the potential to be modified to meet the needs of store owners.

Hosting and free choice

With Magento, you can choose the hosting provider and the features that the web space must have. Obviously the choice must be aware, since Magento has a complex structure and therefore requires optimized hosting.

Responsive Mobile

We know that a large chunk of E-Commerce shoppers make purchases via smartphone. Magento therefore becomes a great choice, because both the free community edition and the business version of Magento incorporate the HTML5 platform to maximize the mobile shopping experience. As a result, your eCommerce store will always be optimized.

Easy cross-platform integration

You can easily integrate third party add-ons and modules into your Magento store. In this way you can expand the functionality of your E-Commerce and implement it with everything you need.

The platform also allows store owners to add Google Analytics and other third party integrations (such as eBay, Paypal, Mail Chimp, etc.) to their site to facilitate data analysis.

Better speed

You probably already know that slow-loading pages “sink” very quickly. A user who has to wait too long for a page to load will surely leave the site. Not to mention that after the Google Core Web Vitals , Google penalizes those who have a site that is too slow.

Magento can surprise you with the performance of the platform itself thanks to the customization ability and the trust it brings. Using a PWA showcase can speed up your website even further and delight your customers.

Choosing a good hosting, perfectly optimized for the platform, is also definitely a choice to make.

If you want to know how to speed up your Magento site, read our dedicated guide.

SEO friendly

Magento contains many SEO features such as:

Search friendly URLs
Sitemap
Layered navigation
Product title
Keyword
Meta tags
Meta descriptions

As for SEO, Magento is up to date with the latest SEO ranking factors. This platform is able to provide good URL structure and meta-implementation options necessary for SEO.

Magento also includes useful analytics tools for tracking web visitors. This feature is essential for understanding how users move around your site.

Conclusions

As you can see, Magento is a multifunctional and multifunctional platform, perfect for medium to large businesses. It has a lot of customization possibilities, but obviously customizations still have a cost.

Even the hosting must have specific characteristics and be perfectly optimized, in order to make the E-Commerce site fast and efficient.

It will then be up to you to understand if the type of investment is right for your business.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

As you surely know, the E-Commerce world is growing more and more, also and especially in recent times due to the pandemic crisis.

Hence, thousands of new Ecommerce businesses are born every year and new online retailers have many platforms to sell online.

These include Shopware, PrestaShop, Magento and even Woocommerce.

But what is the right platform to choose? Well the answer is, it depends.

It depends on what your needs are and the capital to invest. With our guides, we will try to inform you as best as possible on the characteristics of each platform, so that you can make an informed choice.

In today’s guide we are talking about Woocommerce, a WordPress module for doing Ecommerce.

How Woocommerce was born

Used on approximately 2.3 million ecommerce stores around the world, WooCommerce is particularly suited to new ecommerce merchants because it combines ease of use with incredible power, flexibility and functionality.

In 2011, two developers Mike Jolley and James Koster released WooCommerce, made by making a replica of the E-Commerce plugin Jigoshop.

In 2015, WooCommerce and its sister plugin WooThemes were both acquired by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.

When WordPress and WooCommerce became integral to each other, they made E-Commerce grow more and more with these two tools. Woocommerce has thus become one of the most used tools for online sales.

What is WooCommerce exactly?

WooCommerce is nothing more than a plugin for doing E-commerce with WordPress. In fact, with this extension, you can easily create and manage an online store.

You will have several key features available, such as inventory and tax management, secure payments, and shipping integration.

Why use WooCommerce?

As mentioned before, you can manage your E-Commerce in a very simple way, through Woocommerce.

In fact, this module offers many useful features, such as order tracking, customer engagement, delivery status updates, inventory management and more.

WooCommerce is easy to use and very convenient. You can also include both great SEO value and e-commerce capabilities.

But let’s see some reasons why you might choose Woommerce as a platform for your online store.

How to set up a WooCommerce store

To install Woocommerce you just need:

go to the WordPress dashboard
select “Plug-in options”
search for WooCommerce
download the plugin on your WordPress site.
Then, the installation wizard will guide you through the quick and easy process of creating your online store.

Simple isn’t it?

10 reasons to choose Woocommerce for your Ecommerce

1. WooCommerce pricing

When you are thinking of starting an online sales business and you are deciding for an E-Commerce platform, the economic element is fundamental.

The cost for an E-Commerce application ranges from zero to many thousands of dollars per year, but this difference in price is not necessarily related to the capacity of the application.

Woocommerce is free and this is certainly one of the reasons for choosing it.

Not to mention that WooCommerce is competitive with the main E-Commerce applications. And since it is free, any company or entrepreneur can leverage its capabilities without having to commit to expensive support contracts or proprietary software licenses. This is a very important element especially for those who are at the beginning of the business, where the costs to be faced to have a successful business are many.

Obviously, even with this extension, there may be paid elements perhaps related to payments or other.

WooCommerce-plugin

2. WooCommerce can be extended

WooCommerce includes a rich set of features that can be extended with the addition of plugins. Those who use WooCommerce can therefore use thousands of WordPress plugins and themes, as well as hundreds of specific extensions for E-Commerce, created specifically for WooCommerce.

With the right plugins, you can create a perfect WooCommerce store for your every need, just like WordPress did.

Plug-ins can expand the functionality of the E-Commerce site, regarding shipping, payments, product management and more.

3. WooCommerce is WordPress

“But isn’t WooCommerce just WordPress?”
Many think that since Woocommerce is linked to WordPress, there may be limitations and therefore it is not an optimal choice for E-Commerce.

In fact, this guideline linking WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin is a plus. Compatibility between existing WordPress themes and WooCommerce themes will in fact allow for easy and very smooth integration.

WooCommerce inherits all the strength and reliability of WordPress and uses it to make its E-Commerce safe and efficient.

WooCommerce

4. You can use WooCommerce to sell anything

WooCommerce as you have seen is very flexible and therefore can be adapted to the sale of any type of product.

In fact, you will be able to sell:

physical products
digital products
subscriptions
and so on.

So why not choose this multifaceted platform?

5. Extended developer community for WooCommerce

Both WooCommerce and WordPress are open source, this means that the platforms can be modified and improved with new features. There are many developers able to work with Woocommmerce, which may not happen for other platforms. Having a good number of developers who are able to implement the functionality of the platform is a great thing. Not to mention that developers working with other platforms can often be very expensive.

If you need to make changes to your WooCommerce store, then it won’t be difficult for you to find someone who can help you with this. Furthermore, its widespread use and developer network makes it much easier to achieve optimal WooCommerce security.

6. WooCommerce includes Power Analytics

Integrated analytics is another advantage of WooCommerce, because it allows you to have important data regarding the behavior of your customers. In this way you will be able to know their habits and understand how they interact with your store, to structure a targeted strategy.

WooCommerce provides a large set of analytics displayed in a clear and intuitive interface. Plus, it’s easy to integrate WooCommerce with external analytics services like Google Analytics with extensions.

7. WooCommerce grows with your business

The choice of platform must be targeted. You need to choose a system that can be scalable and grow hand in hand with your business.

One of the benefits of WooCommerce is that it’s great for both small and large stores. It can scale from a few products to many thousands and from a handful of buyers per day to hundreds of buyers per second.

As your WooCommerce website grows, you can increase the functionality of your online store as well.

8. WooCommerce offers world-class content management

Content is an important component of E-Commerce marketing, in fact it serves for the optimization of sales and search engines.

Together WordPress and WooCommerce offer a wide variety of content management options, including blogging, landing pages, email marketing, and product descriptions.

WooCommerce compatible SEO plugins like Yoast WooCommerce SEO allow retailers to easily optimize their content for search.

9. WooCommerce is fast

WordPress and WooCommerce can provide a fast and responsive Ecommerce experience for online stores of all sizes.

You can also speed up your WooCommerce store by using performance-optimized hosting.

10. WooCommerce perfect for selling

Another benefit of WooCommerce is that it is designed for sale. Inside, in fact, you will find everything you need to be operational.

In particular:

Over 100 payment gateways
Different shipping methods
An intuitive backend for stock management, refunds, orders, everything you need
Tons of free and premium configurable and responsive WooCommerce themes
Useful guides that can give you all the info to get started

In conclusion

WooCommerce provides a complete and easy to use E-Commerce solution, even for beginners. Solution that is able to adapt perfectly to the needs of your business.

Not to mention that being free and with many free modules, it can really be a good solution even for those with a small-medium business.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Shopware is a German, open source E-Commerce platform that, especially in this last period, is gaining more and more market shares in Europe.

But why is Shopware so popular for E-Commerce?

What is Shopware?

First, let’s discover this platform in detail.

Shopware, as I told you, is a German open source platform founded in 2000 and which currently boasts more than 80,000 satisfied customers.

The interesting thing about Shopware is that the software is developed by the very people who use it. For this reason, the software has therefore been designed precisely on the needs of those who use it, both in terms of design and technology.

With the release of Shopware 5.5, the German platform wants to offer merchants the possibility of having an optimal user experience that can satisfy even the customer who visits the site in terms of design in front of competitors.

Shopware is available in the following editions:

Community edition
Professional edition
Professional Plus Edition
Enterprise Edition

Now let’s see what are the advantages and disadvantages of this Ecommerce platform, to understand if it is actually valid or not.

What are the advantages of Shopware?

The great success of Shopware is linked to the numerous advantages offered by the platform. Shopware comes standard with some specific features, which we are going to see in detail now.

Content Management (CMS)

The Shopware CMS is called “Shopping Worlds” and with this, you can create content / pages in a very simple way, without having knowledge or technical support.

In fact, the backend is very intuitive and allows you to respond to all the emotional aspects of shopping.

Drag & Drop design

This Drag & Drop feature is very interesting because it allows you to easily set up and manage complex components such as products, banners, content and product blocks and much more.

Scalable

With built-in tools, it’s easy for developers to increase performance and scalability.

In this way you will be able to easily customize your store and make it perfectly tailored to your needs.

Extensive marketing features

However, we can create a perfect, functional E-Commerce, but if we don’t convince the public to buy, we will never be successful.

For this reason it is important to have effective marketing tools. There are many additional marketing features in Shopware.

For example, there is an option to segment customers based on their interests or the shopping behavior shown above.

You can also create beautiful banners which you can provide with buttons and text for the call to action.

Another nice marketing tool is the loyalty program. Thanks to this, customers can accumulate points with each purchase and take advantage of special rewards or discounts. This is definitely an element that builds customer loyalty and brings them back to buy in your store.

Shopware is also multi-store

We already know Magento, which with its great potential also offers the possibility of having more shops “under one roof”. The same thing is offered by Shopware.

The management of the product and the catalog is very simple.

The fact that you can create so-called product flows is also a nice feature. Product flows respond to the visitor’s shopping behavior and provide a personalized experience.

You can create product groups by filtering by brand, price, manufacturer and reviews. When visitors select the right filters, they can see a customized product flow.

SEO optimization

Shopware is SEO optimized and offers a whole host of possibilities to make your site SEO friendly. For example, it allows you to create SEO-friendly URLs, adapt meta titles and descriptions, use Rich Snippet, has a built-in sitemap, and you can easily work with redirects and canonicals.

What are the disadvantages of Shopware?

So far we’ve seen the benefits of Shopware, but each platform has both pros and cons. So let’s see now the disadvantages.

Long development times

The development of a Shopware store takes much longer than, for example, a WooCommerce store. This is because Shopware is much more extensive and therefore involves greater complexity in the configuration phase.

Limitations for the international market

For such an important player and in the current moment in which more and more online stores are going international, it is surprising that Shopware still does not have everything in order. In fact, this platform does not yet have ready-made settings for these rules and indeed you have to configure them yourself.

The main competitor Magento, for example, did a lot better in this regard.

High server requirements

Thanks to Shopware’s flexibility and high performance, you will need more than just a hosting plan. Shopware requires serious server power, and you need to keep in mind that this is an investment too.

Limited offer of plugins / extensions

Although Shopware offers enough ready-to-use features, Magento has multiple plugins available. This therefore has a very strong impact on what can be the customizations and functionalities of an E-Commerce, created with this platform.

As always, also in this case, the competitor Magento, offers instead a rather wide choice in this sense. Even if this can affect development costs.

How much does Shopware cost?

Shopware is free to download. The license costs depend on the chosen edition.

Community Edition – Free
Professional – € 1,295.00
Professional Plus – € 5,995.00
Enterprise – On request

In addition to these fixed costs, you also have to contend with Shopware hosting costs, but also, for example, the costs of additional plugins.

But also keep in mind the following:

The costs of developing a good Shopware online store. This is undoubtedly the largest cost item.

So as you see, this is a platform that has advantages and disadvantages. You will therefore have to understand if its characteristics are close to your business idea or not.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

PrestaShop is an e-commerce platform developed in France in 2007, free to download and open source. This means that every E-Commerce owner is able to modify the software code to adapt their store to their individual needs.

This platform is perfect for any type of business, be it small, medium or large. You can easily customize your site, manage and choose the payment method you prefer and generally set up your site as you want.

But, despite being free, how much does it cost to create an E-Commerce with PrestaShop? Are we sure it’s completely free?

In this article we will look at just that.

How much does development cost for PrestaShop?

If you want to start your business in the right direction and create a functional E-Commerce, you will need a professional team of developers, with knowledge and experience. In addition, it is essential to hire people who are responsible for the visual aspect of the store, as this is certainly a fundamental aspect to improve sales.

The hourly rate of qualified professionals may vary depending on the country.

So let’s see an overview of the cost of development services for PrestaShop, as far as professionals are concerned.

In the United States, we can observe the highest price – $ 120-125.
In the UK, developments earn around $ 65-70.
In European countries, prices vary by region – around $ 60-80.
If we talk about lower development rates, we can find them in South America (around $ 15-20) and in Asia (around $ 35).

The hourly rate of the agencies, on the other hand, is higher and this is because they have a more professional approach and are more reliable.

Prices in US agencies are around $ 20-50.
In the UK, prices range from $ 20 to 130 depending on the customer’s needs.
In South America, prices are significantly lower: $ 5-20.
In Asia, customers should pay around $ 10-20.

These prices, of course, can vary depending on the scale and difficulty of the client’s projects. The hourly rate of the agencies will be different in each region. So, in case you need a highly skilled job, choose a reputable development company.

How much do PrestaShop themes and extensions cost?

A large variety of modules and templates can be found in the PrestaShop marketplace . You will see that the navigation is quite simple and thanks to a menu and the sidebar of the filter, you can immediately find what you are looking for.

PrestaShop add-ons

The official PrestaShop marketplace – PrestaShop Addons – offers more than 5,000 modules and themes that help you customize your online store.

This way, you can increase traffic, improve conversion rates and build customer loyalty. In fact, there are many possibilities that PrestaShop with its modules can offer you.

The modules are divided into 10 categories. Examples of categories are:

Product page
Design and navigation
Promotions and marketing
Traffic and markets
Payment
Shipping and logistics
Administration
Clients
Facebook and social networks
Specialized platforms

PrestaShop template

The design of your store is a fundamental aspect for your customers, because it gives professionalism to your store.

There are more than 1300 free and paid PrestaShop themes. To choose the one that best suits your business, you can use the useful filters by category, color, rating, extended functionality, style and version of the platform.

The main categories for the themes are:

Premium models
Fashion and shoes
Electronics and computers
Food and restaurant
Drinks and tobacco
House & Garden
Jewelery and accessories
Health & Beauty

Prices vary and the cheapest cost between 45-60 €. The more complex ones, on the other hand, can even reach up to € 300.

How much does a hosting for PrestaShop cost?

Clearly if you decide to use PrestaShop, you will also have to choose a hosting where to stay your site. The prices for hosting vary depending on the characteristics of the latter.

Prices can start from a minimum of € 25 and up, it all depends on the type of plan.

If you want information about our hosting plans for PrestaShop, contact us!

How much does PrestaShop support cost?

PrestaShop offers several support plans for open source at additional costs. Plus, you have access to useful resources like PrestaShop forum, community, documentation, FAQ, YouTube tutorials.

We describe the main assistance plans and discover the main features:

Conclusion

So, is PrestaShop actually the right solution for you? Does it have more advantages or disadvantages? Can it make your business profitable? Let’s talk about the pros and cons.

Advantages of PrestaShop

A free e-commerce solution.
You can get support from the open source community.
A large number of features (over 600) such as item tracking and out of stock alerts
Lots of different themes and modules to expand your store and make it unique.
Awesome features
The ability to manage your online store internationally
PrestaShop is translated into over 25 languages
Advanced SEO features – management of meta titles, descriptions and URLs
Large selection of payment options: PayPal Standard and Pro, Skrill, Stripe, WorldPay, offline processing, etc.

Disadvantages of PrestaShop

There are additional costs beyond the software itself
Several add-ons can be very expensive, and some of them can be incompatible
The developer’s knowledge and experience may be required and it will cost a lot

All in all, PrestaShop is a good solution with a lot of advantages if you need to create an online store with a lot of customization options. But there are some drawbacks, such as the additional costs. if you are looking for an all-in-one solution, PrestaShop is not for you.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

If you are also wondering “What is PrestaShop and why you should use it for your E-Commerce”, you have come to the right place!

When deciding to embark on a path related to online sales, the main question is: which platform do I use?

In this article we will go to the discovery of Prestashop, seeing in detail what it is and why it is chosen by many to sell online.

The creation of an online store can in fact be scary at first, especially when you are not very familiar with the available platforms and their level of functionality.

But what you need to understand is that all eCommerce platforms have their own set of features, ease of use, and level of flexibility. You just need to choose the one that comes closest to your needs. The choice, however, must be aware, since it is not possible to switch so easily to switch from one E-Commerce platform to another.

This is the reason for these guides of ours. We will try to help you in the conscious choice of the right platform. In the specific case today we will talk about PrestaShop, so that you can understand if it is good for your needs or not.

What is PrestaShop?

PrestaShop is a freely accessible open source E-Commerce platform . It boasts many ready-to-use features, which still make it really appealing to all E-merchants. It works on PHP and from a merchant’s point of view it’s pretty straightforward and you can build complete E-Commerce websites along with great features.

There are many stores created with this platform and just as many are the realities that work there. In fact, thanks to its incredibly intuitive interface, it has certainly conquered a good slice of the market. Not to mention that the offer linked to modules and extensions, to expand functionality, is certainly very wide.

Some amazing features of PrestaShop such as advanced backup schemes, high reliability and easy accessibility allow users to have an optimal capacity site.

PrestaShop features

As I told you, PrestaShop has over three hundred built-in features that allow you to manage payment methods, shipping, product listing, suppliers and buyers.

You can also customize your site, thanks to the numerous templates available.

1. Ease of use

The only slightly more technical part of PrestaShop is the installation, which we will see in one of our next guides anyway. Otherwise, the use of this platform is rather easy . It is indeed very intuitive.

For the moment you can see a demo of the platform, to be able to understand the back-end and the front-end and understand a bit how it is structured. PrestaShop is able to provide you with a perfectly responsive online shop, which therefore adapts perfectly to display on all devices, both fixed and mobile.

2. Free and open source

PrestaShop is a totally free and open source platform . You will be able to create a personalized and customizable E-Commerce, quickly and easily. Basically, PrestaShop makes eCommerce website development much easier and more accessible. This CMS is present in over 65 countries and boasts a beautiful community with over one million active members. Thanks to the Community, many improvements to the platform have been possible.

3. Payment gateway

Clearly, if you have an E-Commerce site, one of the fundamental aspects is certainly that linked to payments . With PrestaShop, you can take advantage of different payment gateways such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, Worldpay, Discover Global Network, First Data and Authorize.Net. Furthermore, there are more than 250 payment service providers as add-ons.

4. Marketing Tools

But since an E-Commerce is nothing if it doesn’t have a good marketing strategy, PrestaShop offers you the possibility to add customized features. Among these we find many marketing tools, such as: discount mode, free shipping, special offers, email marketing, affiliate programming, gift wrapping, coupon codes and many others.

In fact, this aspect is fundamental for customer loyalty. A cuddle, which can be a reserved offer, a discount, a gift box, are all strategies that can make the customer come back to buy on our E-Commerce.

5. Easy customization

As I told you, marketing activities are essential for the success of a site. With PrestaShop, you will be able to take advantage of a large variety of modules, which allow you to implement its features. Among these, we find modules such as:

cross-selling
Subscribe to the newsletter
offers and discounts

which can be activated with a single click. These modules can help you customize the site according to your needs.

You will find all modules in the PrestaShop marketplace

6. SEO-friendly

SEO is the most important thing for any E-Commerce business, because a site can be beautiful and functional, but if no one finds it, it surely won’t sell.

PrestaShop makes it easy to develop SEO-friendly URLs. If you have a basic understanding of search engine optimization, PrestaShop allows you to easily edit your title tags, meta title, meta description and other SEO related attributes.

7. Internationality

If you want to extend your market internationally , you must work to ensure that the customer can read the content on your site in their own language.

PrestaShop supports more than 75 languages worldwide and allows you to edit the site translation. It also allows you to download language packs for different countries to meet the needs of your target audience.

8. Analysis and statistics

Analysis and statistics play a fundamental role in understanding the progress of your sales activity. Thanks to these, in fact, we can understand where to act and change our strategy.

Prestashop helps to keep track of our website visitors and their conversion point. Thanks to these activities, we can actually modulate our strategy, perhaps offering discounts or personalized offers.

In PrestaShop troverai una dashboard molto utile che include più di 20 formati di report di stato che possono aiutare a decidere una strategia di crescita aziendale. Nel marketplace sono disponibili gratuitamente anche altri addon per analisi e statistiche.

9. Piattaforma PrestaShop in costante miglioramento

PrestaShop è una piattaforma volta al miglioramento continuo. In questi anni infatti, è cambiato molto, adattandosi a quelle che erano le richieste dei clienti e del mercato.

Se infatti osserviamo il suo percorso, vediamo che la piattaforma si è evoluta molto e continua a rilasciare nuovi aggiornamenti.

PrestaShop ha prestato particolare attenzione al suo marketplace dove troverai molti moduli ed estensioni per migliorare il tuo E-Commerce.

Conclusion

We have seen the general characteristics of PrestaShop and why it is one of the most used platforms.

Its maintenance and prices are much cheaper than other platforms , not to mention that it allows even a non-technical person to work with it and customize it. Then, in case you are looking for custom solutions, you can always hire PrestaShop developers to help you.

PrestaShop is multilingual and multi-currency software that allows you to launch your site internationally. Not to mention that the platform is constantly improving and what’s better than a large community that extends its support in all types of PrestaShop development services.

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All separate CSS files and JavaScript files can be merged into one file which helps to optimize your site and reduce page load time. After merging, a merged CSS file or script file will be displayed without line breaks and you will not be allowed to modify the file.

To enable Merge CSS, JavaScript in Magento 2 you can follow some simple steps mentioned below.

How to enable Merge CSS, JavaScript in Magento 2

Merge CSS file in Magento 2
Merge JavaScript in Magento 2

Merge CSS file in Magento 2

In the Admin Panel, click on Shops . In the Settings section , select Configuration .
Select Developer in the Advanced section in the left panel
Open the CSS Settings section and continue with the following:

In the Merge CSS File field , select Yes
When finished, click Save config .

Merge Javascript files in Magento 2

In the Admin Panel, click on Shops . In the Settings section , select Configuration .
Select Developer in the advanced section in the left panel
Open the JavaScript Settings section and continue with the following:

In the Merge JavaScript File field , select Yes
When finished, click Save config .

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To have a site safe from external attacks, it is essential to always keep it updated. When it comes to E-Commerce, this operation becomes a fundamental routine to follow, in order to protect your customers.

Magento has recently released its Magento 2.4 version with related patches.

The latest version available includes tons of new features and bug fixes, with multiple security changes, 7 test cycles, 12 packages and extensions, as well as support for Php 7.4

But what are the technology stacks that this new version requires? Let’s see them together.

Magento technological requirements 2.4

The table below shows the software versions that have been officially tested and supported at the time of the release of the Magento version. Newer versions of the required software may work but have not been tested.

Various

This section describes support and compatibility for all other required and optional software types.

Email server

Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) or an SMTP server

Operating systems (Linux x86-64)

Linux distributions, such as RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian and the like. Magento is not supported on Microsoft Windows and macOS.

PHP extensions

ext-bcmath
ext-ctype
ext-curl
ext-dom
ext-gd
ext-hash
ext-iconv
ext-intl
ext-mbstring
ext-openssl
ext-pdo_mysql
ext-simplexml
ext-soap
ext-xsl
ext-zip
ext-sockets

For installation details, you can refer to the official PHP documentation

PHP OPcache

You should always check that PHP OPcache is enabled for performance reasons. OPcache is enabled in many PHP distributions. To check if it is installed, consult the Magento PHP documentation .

If you need to install it separately, consult the PHP OPcache documentation .

PHP Settings

You are better off using particular PHP configuration settings, such as memory_limit , which can avoid common problems when using Magento.

For more information, see Required PHP Settings .

PHPUnit

PHPUnit (as a command line tool) 9.0.0

RAM

Updating Magento applications and extensions obtained from Magento Marketplace and other sources may require up to 2GB of RAM. If you are using a system with less than 2GB of RAM, we recommend that you create a swap file ; otherwise, the update may fail.

System dependencies

Magento requires the following system tools for some of its operations:

SSL

A valid security certificate is required for HTTPS.
Self-signed SSL certificates are not supported.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) Requirement: PayPal and repo.magento.com both require TLS 1.2 or later.

Supported browsers

Storefront and Admin:

Microsoft Edge, newer – 1
Firefox Newest, Newest-1 (any OS)
Chrome Newest, Newest-1 (any OS)
Latest, latest Safari – 1 (Mac OS only)
Mobile Safari for iPad 2, iPad Mini, iPad with Retina display (iOS 12 or later), for desktop showcase
Mobile Safari for iPhone 6 or later; iOS 12 or later, for the mobile showcase
Latest mobile Chrome – 1 (Android 4 or later) for mobile showcase

Xdebug

p hp_xdebug 2.5.x or later (development environments only; can have a negative effect on performance)

There is a known issue with xdebug which can affect Magento installations or access to Magento storefront or admin after installation. For details, you can see the info on the Magento guide.

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The Progressive Web App (PWA) are a very hot item in the current development scene. Many people who work in the IT branch are actually studying and thinking about them. But the fact is, there aren’t many real cases yet to adequately show the technology.

This is particularly true of the European retail market. Therefore, it is worth putting the spotlight on Progressive Web Apps and their possible benefits.

But actually, what are PWAs? And what extra opportunities and features does this new technology have in store for online stores using Magento?

What is a PWA?

You’ve probably heard of the many qualities that Progressive Web Apps possess. Many tech savvy people believe they have the potential to advance the mobile web and help mobile developers reach more users, beyond the confines of traditional app stores. Sounds great, but what exactly are Progressive Web Apps?

“PWAs are mobile-centric apps that use cutting-edge web capabilities to deliver an app-like user experience.” This is how Google defines this relatively new phenomenon. You may not always notice this, but the native apps you buy in the app store are very versatile. Sending push notifications, working offline, uploading to the home screen, these are just a couple of important tasks they perform. Mobile web apps accessed in a mobile browser, by comparison, have always been more limited when it comes to the number and complexity of features available.

This is where Progressive Web Apps come in. These carry the functionality traditionally associated with native apps into the mobile browser experience. To do this, they use standards-based technologies and run in a secure container accessible to anyone on the web. Powerful users of the Progressive Web Apps service enhance offline functionality, send notifications, update content in the background, and regulate content caching. PWAs are launched from your web browser, but can be stored on your smartphone. Also, there is no need to download them. Therefore PWAs always remain up to date.

How do PWAs work?

PWAs work practically like traditional web applications, but are enhanced with modern web features and technologies. Hence the adjective “progressive”. PWA technology is based on open source standards and is based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. When you install PWAs, applications will get their own window or link on the taskbar, if you are using Windows 10 or Chrome. If you are an Android user, the PWA will appear as an icon on the home screen.

Progressive Web App and Magento Stores

Magento recognized PWA as an interesting web solution. The company believes PWAs have the potential to change the e-commerce landscape, a revolution that could be similar in scope to the transition from conventional desktop sites to websites that rely heavily on responsive web design years ago. Magento has developed their own PWA which is called PWA studio.

Main advantages of PWAs

The enthusiasm for PWAs that Magento and companies like Google (who coined the term PWA) show is fueled by some important potential benefits these web applications bring to the development playing field.

Progressive Web Applications come with APIs, which allow you to run JavaScript in the background. This innovation is very useful when it comes to improving features such as preloading content, synchronizing and receiving data, and sending push notifications.

In essence, PWAs:

allow you to speed up and reduce app development. Currently, you often have to develop separate versions for Android and iOS. Progressive Web Applications are designed to work anytime, anywhere.
they are not only suitable for mobile devices, but also for desktops.
they are SEO-friendly. Google will likely favor PWAs in future ranking algorithms.
improve the performance of your Magento store.
provide smoother page scrolling and transition. This largely eliminates the need to reload pages.

PWA hosting requirements

But how are Magento Progressive Web Apps hosted? The main requirement is that the PWA is served by a valid and secure HTTPS connection. To take full advantage of background service workers, the PWA specification requires it to be hosted over HTTPS. In addition to this fundamental aspect, there are other requirements for implementing Progressive Web Applications.

You need to make minor changes to your server configuration to make PWA hosting possible. You can easily do this yourself when using an unmanaged VPS, but this is often not the case if your Magento PWA is to be run in a managed hosting environment.

It’s not a hosting requirement, but PWA does require browsers to support service workers. This tool is responsible for key tasks and features such as file caching, push notifications, content updates, and data management. All the most commonly used browsers like Chrome and Safari do this.

This is a small introduction to what PWAs are, what they work for and what requirements they need. PWAs are now the future, because they allow you to have functionality that the normal design either does not have or becomes complicated to obtain.