In this two-part article, we’ll address 7 major fears customers have about shopping online, and give you some ideas about how to address them all from first click to final sale.

1. It’s not a real store.

Don’t let your shop be mistaken for a hollow storefront hiding a mail fraud scheme. Reassure your customers that there is a healthy business behind your homepage with the following tips:

- Invest in good design. Gaudy colors and a 15-font graphic chart have been out of style since Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace. Good design is worth the investment. Not only does it make navigating your website and finding products (and purchasing them) easier, it shows you care about your business. After all, if you don’t care about your shop, why should your customers?

Azalea’s simple, modern design is easy on the eyes–and easy to navigate.

- List a physical address. You must have an address for receiving professional mail, even if it’s just a post office box, so include it on your “Contact” or “About” page. If you have a physical store or headquarters, you can add a Google Maps locator for added credibility.

Starcow’s physical address is discreet, but visible, at the top of their homepage.

- Show real photos. Stock photos maybe be cheap and easy to come by, but they do your business no favors. A “Team” or “About” page with a nice photo of yourself or your team members gives you a simple way to connect with your customers and show off your company’s unique personality.

The owners of What Goes Around Comes Around used an authentic photo to complement their brand story.

- Tell a story. You’re not like all the other stores out there are you? Let your customers know what makes you different. In addition to a photo or two of you and your VP of Operations (aka your pitbull Greg), give your customers a little back story. Who are you? Why did you start this business? And what makes your store the best place to go for the products you sell? Letting your customers into your world is a great way to build trust.

The Tea Guys use a fun drawing a very personable writing style to connect with customers.

- Publish testimonials. There is nothing more precious than a word-of-mouth recommendation. If other actual human beings have bought your products and told you how happy they were, put it front and center! Don’t edit out all the less-than-stellar reviews–no one is perfect 100% of the time. Responding to negative feedback publicly shows you’re on top of things in addition to proving you actually exist.

- Showcase media mentions. Similarly to customer testimonials, mention in media of any kind adds to your credibility.

Gretel home puts heavy-hitting media showcases front and center.

2. My credit card information is going to get stolen.

Ecommerce has its good guys and bad guys, like any other industry. Credit card and identity theft are real threats that your customers expect you to protect them from–it’s your responsibility as an online merchant. Here are a few ways to make sure your customers know you’re with the good guys:

- Display identifiable trustmarks. Customers might not recognize your logo on their first visit to your site, but they’re probably familiar with the trusty red McAfee shield, the Better Business Bureau’s sturdy torch and Paypal’s reassuring double-P logo. Choose to work with recognized partners and let their trustworthy reputation rub off on your business.

- Buy an SSL certificate. SSL is a cryptographic protocol that secures data sent across pages with a cryptographic key. It’s used to protect credit card transactions and sensitive data like login details, or personal information. In PrestaShop, the back office login, front office account pages and orders can be secured with SSL by default. Once you’ve bought and installed your SSL certificate, your customers will recognize your concern for their safety by the reassuring green https–not the unprotected http–before your website name.

The green lock and https before Mirenesse’s address indicate that the site is secure.

- Give customers payment options. Some people just aren’t into paying by credit card. By giving the option to pay using Paypal, by check or simply on delivery, you show that you’re flexible and willing to adapt to your customers’ needs.

In addition to directly addressing payment security, Headict displays trusted payment partners on a dedicated page.

3. They’ll sell my personal information.

In this era of big data, everyone wants to know what’s going to happen once they give up their email, phone number, date of birth and favorite color. Having and displaying a complete privacy policy should be one of the first things you add to your site. Make sure it answers the questions:

What information is collected?
How is the information used?
How is the information shared?
What choices do customers have for sharing information?
How can customers access and modify their personal information?
How is the information protected?

Here’s an example to follow:

Target’s privacy policy leaves no question unanswered.

What other customer fears have you encountered? Let us know in the comments. And stayed tuned for part 2! Ready to start an online business customers can trust? Create your online store with PrestaShop today.

The post Part 1: 7 customer fears and how to address them appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

Just as your website design and products give your website character, the words you choose for your CTA buttons can give your site an edge. Making subtle changes to your Call to Action text can impact your shop’s effectiveness.Today we’re sharing 30 call to action verbs to liven up your online store.

CTAs for adding an item to the shopping cart

The most common call to action button is one that prompts customers to add items to their carts. The default text on PrestaShop stores, is “Add to Cart”. While this makes it crystal clear what you want your customers to do, there are a few other ways to deliver the same message:

1. Shop
2. Buy
3. Get
4. Purchase
5. Order
6. I want this!
7. Add to… Tote / Basket / Luggage / Box (or anything related to your business)

CTAs for purchasing digital products

A growing segment in ecommerce is the sale of digital products. You can use the same CTAs as your would for traditional merchandise, or you can customize them for digital products. Depending on what you’re selling, try the following:

8. Download
9. Watch
10. Read
11. Reserve
12. Schedule
13. Book

CTAs for requesting additional details

Whether customers are browsing your home, category or product page, you should always lead them towards a conversion. For customers who aren’t quite ready to make the purchase, sway their decision by providing more information about the product. Consider using:

14. Request
15. Find
16. Uncover
17. Learn
18. Discover
19. Explore
20. Browse
21. Compare
22. See more

CTAs for engagement

Sometimes you just want customers to join your community. Whether they subscribe to your newsletters or become your fan on social media, each action helps you reach potential customers. For these CTA’s, your goal is to get customers to want to interact with you. It’s why you want these CTA’s to be very clear and specific. Include one or many of the verbs listed below:

23. Call
24. Ask
25. Live Chat
26. Subscribe
27. Contact us
28. Register
29. Sign Up
30. Like, Tweet, Follow (any other social media verbs)

No matter what action you’re trying to entice customers to complete, remember that each button should resonate with the reader. By aligning the verb you choose with the action and your customers place in your conversion funnel, you increase your chances for converting them.

Are you ready to refine your online shop with our list of call to action verbs? Edit your call to action text directly from your back office.

1. Click Localization > Translations.
2. Under the “Modify Translations” tab, select “Front-office translations”, your theme, and the language you’d like to work on, and then click “Modify”.

Want more ideas for improving your call to action buttons? Check out our list of 15 examples of CTA’s that drive conversions for online stores.
Not an online merchant yet? Get started today with PrestaShop Cloud for a fully-hosted online shop – for free! What are you waiting for?

The post 30 Call to Action Verbs for your online store appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

Today technical blogger specializing in PrestaShop and ecommerce consultant, Amelia Johns shares her beginner’s guide to designing lead magnets. Read on to learn more.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is the (free) offer you make on your website in exchange for visitors’ email addresses. Since we all hesitate to provide information on the internet, you must gain your customers trust by offering them something in return.

The goal of a lead magnet is to maximize the number of targeted leads you receive in exchange for an offer and can be considered the first step in your customer value optimization process.

Why Use Lead Magnets?

Lead magnets are sales catalysts. Driving traffic to your website is not enough to have a positive impact on your business. In order for those visitors to provide any value to your company, they need to become subscribers, leads or customers through your website. Lead magnets capitalize on specific incentives offered on your lead generation or ‘landing’ page to convert visitors into customers.

“Potential” becomes “profitable” as your customer base expands rapidly and extensively. When you offer your users something that makes them super-excited, you get the job done easily–the trick is to combine usefulness with interest.

Examples of great Lead Magnets:

Moz offers a free 30-day trial to get more daily signups.

Robbie Richards uses a beautiful call to action, ‘Let’s Do This!’, to encourage visitors to sign up for his newsletter offering advice on how to increase website traffic.

Another great example from Robbie, offering ebook downloads as a lead magnet.

The Math behind Lead Magnets

A strong Lead Magnet will boost your revenue generation stream by minimizing missed opportunities. The following table provides a quick overview of the figures that prove the necessity of having a good magnet in place.

Different Kinds of Lead Magnets

The kind of lead magnets you offer will vary depending on if you’re providing a service or selling physical products. While the form may differ, in both cases the more valuable your lead magnet is to your ideal customer, the more likely they will be to use it. There are many different lead magnets to choose from, so avoid copy-pasting. Identify what you want to achieve and choose your lead magnet accordingly. Here are some examples of popular lead magnets:

• Offer free software downloads or a trial version.Anyone who wants to see the product in action enters their email address. Then they are immediately taken through an interactive demo of how the tool works.
• Checklists and handouts. They are generally very short (one page or so) and cut straight to an ultra-specific point and they can be delivered as checklists, mind maps or templates. They help customers work through a complicated project without missing any key pieces.
• Quiz or Survey. This can be a very engaging way to generate new leads by sending the quiz results via email. Quiz building tools like Interact make it easy to generate fun, entertaining quizzes.
• Video trainings or webinars. These can be excellent tools if you feel they’re aligned with your business offering and you have development resources. Video can be a very effective way to deliver a lead magnet; simple screen cast tools like Camtasia or Screenflow make delivery easy.
• Free Shipping and Bonus Offers. Provide customers with one or more offers to join your email newsletter (or any other subscription list) with the promise of coupons and special deals like seasonal discounts or members’ only sales.
• Toolkits are one of those lead magnet examples that has worked to get massive results with seemingly little effort. It is a super simple landing page offering visitors a free PDF report with a super simple list of tools. That is it! Visitors arrive on the page and read the sales copy with the offer. Then they decide to enter their email to get the report delivered to their inbox, or not.
• Free Consultation or Buying Guides or Sales materials. The most desired piece of information for the market is pricing and descriptions of products or services. Often in their look out for the best deal out there, users will be willing to provide their email address for securing such treasured information for existing deals, and for the future.
• Free eBooks or Reportsare another popular type of lead magnets. You offer value in news, best practices, or advice, and visitors must fill out the form to opt-in and receive the free PDF via email.

Building an Attractive Lead Magnet

Lead Magnets do not have to be lengthy. Or complex. Or time-intensive to create. The key is to build a tool that solves a specific problem with a specific solution for a specific segment of your market. In order for your lead magnet to be effective, it has to be consumed by the consumer. The perfect Lead Magnet will offer tremendous value within 5 minutes of the opt-in. Just ask yourself the following questions:

• What offers will I make to new leads?
• How well do these offers convert?
• How much is a visit to my lead magnet landing page worth?
• How much is a new lead worth?
• How much is a new sale worth?

With the right Lead Magnet in place and systematically defined support processes behind it, your business will become a lead and sales generating machine.

Takeaways

Here are a few points to keep in mind when you get ready to develop lead magnets:

• Understand what your ‘ideal’ prospect really wants
• A good lead magnet creates ‘aha’ moments
• Don’t go with the flow. Be contrarian. Dare to be disruptive.
• Specificity: Offer something that clearly leads to your product or solution
• Offer something that helps makes prospects a buying decision
• The perceived value of the magnet should surpass the reluctance of a mildly interested browser in giving up their personal information
• Emphasize on the ‘shareability’ of the magnet
• Be simplistic. Do not let superfluous ingenuity compromise the value creation of the magnet

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Which lead magnet are you looking forward to trying out? Tell us in the comments below. Not selling online yet? Launch your online store with PrestaShop Cloud – our still free and hosted version!

The post A beginner’s guide to designing lead magnets appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

The five tips presented in today’s post should give you food for thought for building your next sales campaign.

1/ Understand your audience

Before you start scheduling an email campaign or drafting popups for your homepage, take some to think about who you’re targeting and what you want to achieve. You’ve probably got a diverse customer base, so if you haven’t already, identify different segments and create appropriate customer personas.

Ask yourself: what are my customers’ needs? What do they expect from my product?

The answers are likely to be different for each segment. Keep them in mind as you create tailored content that resonates with your target audience.

Also, think about what results you want to achieve.

• Are you purely after an increase in sales and traffic?
• Are you just trying to clear slow-moving inventory?
• Or are you also interested in strengthening your lead base? (If so, you’ll need to integrate a method of collecting emails and other customer information into your campaign.)

2/ Choose your moment

Sales campaigns often revolve around a major holiday or event, such as the back-to-school season or Christmas. You can also set up flash sales or special offers to reward customers on a more personalized basis. If you’re not sure where to start, you’ll want to check out what your competitors are doing. Then ask:

• Will you be overlapping a similar campaign?
• Can you differentiate yourself with a more compelling offer?
• What does their campaign look like visually and can you be more engaging?
• Now is also the time to think about budget and resources.
• Can you create all your marketing materials yourself?
• Do you need to call on the skills of a graphic designer or photographer?
• Do you have time to manage the emailing portion of your campaign?

3/ Make a plan

Once you’ve decided who you want to target and when you want to launch your campaign, you can start mapping out your calendar. If you’re running a holiday-specific campaign, you’ll want to get content together ahead of time. This way you can start teasing customers with deals and product guides several weeks in advance—in other words, don’t wait until February 1st to start thinking about Valentine’s Day promotions. Ask yourself these questions as you put together your plan:

• What incentive will you offer your customers?
• How often will you communicate with them over the length of the promotion?

Use your customer personas to create personalized messages that you can promote across communication channels.

4/ Harmonize across channels

To maximize the impact of your promotion, consider how you’ll push it through your various communication channels, adapting the message to each outlet, i.e. website, email, social media, traditional media. You may want to roll out your campaign in different phases, teasing on social media and sending targeted emails with highly-perishable discount offers that communicate a sense of urgency and compel customers to respond to your call to action. Consistency is key to communicating reliability and credibility, which will also have an impact on how customers see your brand in the long run.

5/ Track, test, improve

Use analytics tools to gather data about how your campaign performed with different customer segments. You can use A/B testing to try out variations on elements like emails, landing page and calls to action. Be prepared to spend some time on this and don’t worry if it takes a while to get the performance you expect. The only way you can find out what’s working is to gather the data and compare the impact of changes you make. Also be sure to set a timeframe for your promotion. This will allow you to evaluate the impact of duration and seasonality when you look at your tracked data.

Got a tip for successful sales campaigns you don’t see here? Share with the community in the comments. Ready to start your own successful ecommerce store? Get PrestaShop today.

The post 5 tips for a successful sales campaign appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

• What information is essential for my customers?
• Where and how can I position this information?

In this post, we outline the essential elements of any online store’s homepage. Adapt them to your needs to design a homepage that increases sales and strengthens your brand image.

Before we begin, keep in mind that: in most cases, the order of the information on the page depends on its importance and how it will be used. To understand what information your customers need, define your ideal customer.

Search bar

Make products easier to find with a highly visible search bar located in the center or top left-hand corner of your page. Many of your customers already know what they want so you just have to help them find it.

On the mobile version of your website, try to position the search bar as close to the top of the page as possible: just after the logo and, ideally, next to the menu icon.

Bonus: From the results page, let customers add the product directly into the shopping cart.

Shopping cart or basket

Adding products to a cart can be fun and even addictive! Use emotional design techniques to transform the shopping experience into something enjoyable and memorable.

If your brand allows, adapt the tone of voice and word choice of your shopping cart buttons and calls to action to match the category of your products, seasons, campaigns, etc.

Try using humor in your status bars and notifications — but remember to avoid offending your target customer. If you apply humor to your text, don’t forget to keep the design of your buttons and links consistent so you don’t confuse customers.

Bonus: Leverage gamification to encourage users to add more products to the cart. For example, indicate the amount remaining to obtain a free delivery in a progress bar or attract customer to unlock ‘levels’ based on the products (e.g., fan, handyman, expert).

Slider

Ideally a slider should include one fixed slide, and never more than three rotating slides. Use these slider to display seasonal promotions, new items and product selections or, even better, selections of discounted products adapted to a seasonal campaign (Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, back to school, etc.).

Customer should always be able to know what you sell directly from the slider. Display your products in a setting with an attractive background image that fills the space and an interesting text and call to action, adapted to the spirit of the promotion.

Bonus: Discover some of the best examples of full-screen slider images in our article, 5 E-commerce design trends for 2015.

Menu

Most merchants think that the menu is the first thing that customers should see when they visit your website… but it doesn’t have to be.

If the customers are browsing your site from a mobile device, it may be better to offer a search option and put the menu in an attractive drop-down. On larger screens, it is easier to browse and there is enough space to show all menu elements. But don’t get carried away and stuff the menu: it should contain at least 3 but no more than 7 elements.

Focus on showing your product’s main categories:

e.g., MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN.

If you notice a specific product drawing a lot of traffic to your store, don’t hesitate to add it to your menu. SHOES, SCARVES and BAGS are examples of subcategories that you could use in your main menu. GIFTS, VACATION or NEW YEAR’S EVE can also appear in your menu depending on the time of year. The name of your campaign or current collection could also be used.

Try to keep the menu items as short as possible: two words are fine, but one is better.

If you have a blog, we suggest inserting it in the menu.

In PrestaShop 1.6, you can configure rich drop-down submenus to display products included in the category as well as promotional banners.

Bonus: ‘About us’, ‘company’, ‘history’ and similar pages should be kept out of the menu. We suggest placing them in the footer instead, because it’s where visitors expect to find them.

Filter options

Filters are normally used on the category and product pages, but they can also be used on the homepage.

Let customers filter by size, color, season, occasion, use, or even cooking technique, among other things. Add all the filters that are helpful for customers shopping for your product. Sometimes it is better to refer to product uses than the object itself. For example:

Frying pans -> for Frying
Pots -> for Boiling

Listen to your users to get the best filters for your product.

With regards placement, it’s generally better to have drop-down filters. If the screen is large, you can display them permanently on the right side of the screen, in browse mode.

Bonus: By default, place a filter on the homepage when the width of the shopper’s screen is greater than 1280 pixels.

Products on the homepage

Display the most interesting products on your homepage whenever there is a reason to do so. It is a good idea to have two points of entry (from the menu and homepage) to your product pages.

It is important to tell customers – with a small title or label – why the product is on the homepage. Good examples of labels include: new items, best-selling items, discounts, last units in stock, etc. Always highlight the exclusive nature of the group of products or the limited amount of time that the products will be available.

Bonus: Display a maximum of 10 products and activate the ‘Product quick view’ option to help customers browse products with few clicks. Users will add these products to their carts without realizing!

Categories

Continuing with the two points of entry or double entry strategy, include a block that shows off your categories with images or icons.

Bonus: Select your most important categories or subcategories and, whenever possible, update them with promotions or product selections.

Social Media

Before the footer, include a section or several sections where customers can verify that you can be trusted; there is no better way than reading and seeing what customers say about you.

Include images from social media, stories or any other content created by your customers.

For example, a section can show photos with the hashtag of your last campaign combined with photos from the official brand book or photos of the recipes that you recommend in your blog and cooked by your users with your appliances.

Make use of everything that you can think of to show that you have an audience and that others love you, and so they should too.

Footer

Here, insert your contact options and links to your social media. This section must visibly contain your website’s terms and conditions, particularly those related to shipping and returns.

You can also include a newsletter field so users can receive news by Email and, if possible, specify how often the Newsletter is sent.

Finally, use this space to discretely mention your security and trusted systems. If possible, include badges in black and white so you don’t distract customers from your page.

Conclusion

Customers form an initial impression of your brand and entire website just by looking at the design and organization of your homepage. Make sure that your website looks smart and professional because it is a great opportunity to gain visibility and trust and decrease your bounce rate.

If you decide to redesign your online store yourself, follow this guide. In the next article, you will be able to learn more about designing an online store as we will look at the structure of the category pages and product pages.

For more options for dressing, check out some of the templates available for PrestaShop. If you want a custom developed design, any of our associated web design agencies will be happy to help.

The post Online store web design: homepage structure appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

It’s easy to lose perspective when you’re juggling so many priorities: is your site design drawing customers or chasing them away? Are you giving customers a memorable shopping experience that will keep them coming back or losing them before they hit checkout?

The beginning of the year is a great time to step back and take a look at your site, before summer sales and the back-to-school season descend upon us (they’ll be here before you know it!). To help give you perspective, we’ve launched an Ecommerce Evaluation of the Month project.

Each month, one lucky business owner will get a thorough site evaluation by our in-house ecommerce experts, who will identify what’s working well and what could be tweaked to attract more customers and build a healthy long-term online business. The store will be featured on our blog.

Here are just a few of the things our evaluation will address:

• Traffic
• Conversions
• User experience
• Images
• Customer loyalty

We’ll publish the evaluations on our blog so everyone in our community can learn from one another and benefit from seeing best practices in action.

Ready to get personalized advice for your ecommerce store and learn from other stores?
Email us at ecommerce-evaluation@prestashop.com to enter for a chance to get your free online store evaluation.

The post Get your free ecommerce store evaluation appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

Come on and explore #PrestaShopHQ with us!

The building was impossible to miss: an enormous banner waved a welcome to teams on opening day. (We’re still wondering how they got it up there…)

Once over the threshold, PrestaShop’s unique working philosophy is evident.

The airy, open plan offices are set up to encourage communication between teams.

The break room is a central meeting point for PrestaShop teams. The walls are colorfully adorned with tags and artwork created specially for PrestaShop by Parisian street artists. © tacks and nix

Who do we have here? We’d like to introduce you to Preston, the latest PrestaShop recruit! He’s now an irreplacable member of the family.

He loves to change things up and can be found throughout the office sporting many different outfits.

Attention, you are entering an intensive fun zone! This is where teams take a break for a game of foosball or a round of MarioKart before getting back to work. ©kuhuru

For those who prefer a bit of calm to recharge, there’s a room dedicated to afternoon cat naps.

Speaking of cats…meet Puff Daddy, our newest resident! He’ll be living and working alongside the PrestaShop teams too.

This is just a glimpse of how we work at PrestaShop. For a better idea of what it’s like to work for PrestaShop, head on over to Pinterest and take a look at our Working at PrestaShop board or follow us on Instagram @prestacrew.

Want to join our team? Check out our Careers page and send us your application today!

The post A guided visit of PrestaShop’s new Paris headquarters appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

Mommypreneur and PrestaShop Merchant Abby Kellett decided she wanted to take part in her daughters Beatrice and Josephine’s lives, even if it meant leaving her career. This choice allowed Abby to spend time with both her daughters and watch them grow. But Abby soon realized that the enjoyment she got from being a mom couldn’t replace her passion for interior design. So she searched for opportunities that would allow her to be a mother and work in interior design at the same time. The perfect compromise was to launch Gretel Home, an online interior design store, with PrestaShop. Read on to hear all about Abby’s mommypreneur story.

Becoming an online entrepreneur

Opening an online store allowed Abby to both be a mommy and pursue her professional passion. Abby shares, “I was always passionate about design, I studied interior design then worked as a stylist at Elle Decoration in London.” She draws on her interior design background to hand-pick home goods for her online shop. Running an online business gives her the flexibility to work from anywhere, anytime.

From launch to ecommerce success

Abby, a non-technical entrepreneur, hired a freelancer to set up Gretel Home. PrestaShop came highly recommended because of its flexibility and low-cost maintenance. Even as Abby continues to grow her business, her shop can be scaled to accommodate more customers and products. Another perk: Abby was able to customize her shop’s look to make it feel warm and homey. She decorated with a touch of floral and peach, then crafted welcoming text throughout her website.

Nine months after Abby decided to go it on her own, she launched her PrestaShop store. She hand picks each piece of houseware sold on Gretel Home is for its crafty, yet modern look. Whether it’s a blanket from a historic hill-top mill in Norway or whimsical baby chew toys made in Morocco, they each add a little bit of character to their eventual homes.

For these pieces to find a home, Abby’s online store needs website visits. To drive traffic, Abby attended art festivals; including the Miami Art Basel, where she passed out business cards with links to Gretel Home. For an extra boost of visibility, she reached out to major design magazines for feature opportunities. Gretel Home’s housewares have been featured in T Magazine by Times Magazine, Real Simple Magazine, Martha Stewart Living and Elle Decor, among others. “Once a piece is featured; the product sells out on Gretel Home. It’s obvious that people love these designs; they just need to be able to find my shop,” says Abby, from Gretel Home.

Ecommerce versus Brick and Mortar

A year after launching her online business, Abby considered opening a physical retail store. It would have been a great opportunity to grow Gretel Home’s presence in Miami. But although it was tempting, Abby remembered the reason she had initially started selling online: having the freedom to spend time with her children.

Unlike her online store, a brick and mortar shop would have required her to be on site during opening hours. It would also require a large financial commitment — leasing a storefront and keeping it staffed.

Having a unique online presence has benefits of its own. Gretel Home welcomes customers from all over the world to shop hand-selected designs. Abby jokes, “My knowledge of US geography has vastly improved.” Since launching her shop, Gretel Home goods have arrived in homes in major cities like New York City and Tokyo to small towns in North Dakota.

From a passion for interior design to a successful business

It’s now been five years since Gretel Home first launched. Abby turned her passion for beautiful interiors into a full-fledged successful business. Abby currently employs a team of 5 stylists and graphic designers that assist her in freelance styling jobs, styling Gretel Home sponsored events and day-to-day ecommerce operations.

Having a career and a family too!

Abby is more than a PrestaShop merchant–she’s an inspiration to all mommies considering starting their online store. She’s living proof that being both a mom and an entrepreneur is possible. By having the courage to make her children a priority, she gave herself the opportunity to transform her passion into a successful online store.

Catch Abby and PrestaShop CMO, Leah Anathan, on The Balancing Act airing on Lifetime Television® as they share how you can become a mommypreneur.

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Now it’s your turn. Are you a mommy inspired to launch your own online store? Get started selling online with PrestaShop Cloud. We’re making it simple to start by providing a free shopping cart software hosted at no cost, with no monthly fee or commissions on your sales.

The post A mom and an entrepreneur? Gretel Home’s mommypreneur is living proof it’s possible appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

Fast forward to the present. Guillaume currently employs 15 people at Leslipfrancais.fr and earned €1.5 million in revenue in 2014.

I had a chance to speak with Clément Coignac, Web Manager at Le Slip Français, who told me this exciting story about men’s briefs.

Ambitious First Steps

After his bet, Guillaume had 600 pairs of briefs made in a small factory in Dordogne. He brought them back to Paris in the trunk of his car. To sell them, he created his first e-commerce site by himself. He used the PrestaShop platform because “it’s simple, flexible, let me launch alone at first, and it was quick to set up.”

The first order came the day the site launched. These briefs were on a path to success!

The Briefs Take Off

The spotlight started to shine on Le Slip Français during the 2012 Presidential Campaign. At first it was difficult to see the connection. But it was there!

The “Made in France” issue was one of the central themes of the campaign. By creatively altering the campaign posters of several candidates in the election, Guillaume’s underwear stole the spotlight from politicians. The media immediately picked up on this unusual marketing campaign, and Le Slip Français was soon featured on all of the major national media outlets, from the “20 heures” evening news program on TF1 to Le Figaro and Canal +.

A Huge Boost in Sales and an Expanded Product Line

By Christmas, Le Slip Français had become a victim of its own success. “On December 10, our inventory was practically down to zero. Our brand works very well for gifts: Christmas, Father’s Day, and Valentine’s Day all have a very big impact on our sales. We make a quarter of our sales in November and December alone.”

Guillaume gradually decided to expand his product line while staying with the typically French basics that brought him his success: briefs, boxers, socks, and T-shirts, as well as slippers, espadrilles, and pétanque balls. In 2013, he launched a swimsuit collection that sold out in just one week.

Today, the company works with about 15 suppliers, including the original factory. The majority of production is now in Lille, “in a factory that’s able to keep up the pace,” Clément explains.

“Everything we distribute is Made in France, including the packaging for our products. We’re also proud to offer products that come from partnerships with major brands and famous designers like Saint James, Agnès B, and Princesse Tam-Tam.”

From an Online Store to Brick and Mortar, With the Help of the “Slip Truck”

It took less than three years for Le Slip Français to find a home with over sixty retailers, including the emblematic Galeries Lafayette in Paris.

In July 2014, the company set off to conquer the beaches of France with its Slip Truck, a van offering made-in-France briefs and swimsuits to vacationing tourists. The truck was one of the first steps Le Slip Français took towards brick-and-mortar commerce.

In October 2014, while the company was migrating to PrestaShop 1.6 for the third version of its site, it opened its first physical store in Paris.

The Recipe for Success: PrestaShop 1.6, Helping Le Slip Français Succeed

When I asked Clément for the recipe for success for Le Slip Français, PrestaShop was the first ingredient he mentioned: “We’ve always relied on the PrestaShop platform, from Guillaume’s first steps and our major media campaigns to where we are today. The platform has been with our business as we’ve grown in terms of design and features, and is very capable of handling spikes in traffic.“For its recent migration to PrestaShop 1.6, the Le Slip team worked with NewQuest, a PrestaShop-certified agency. This new version has brought lots of new features and optimizations to the online store. “We’re very happy to have upgraded to PrestaShop version 1.6. The change in interfaces is incredible,” Clement says.

Whenever the brand appears on TV or is mentioned in a national newspaper, there can be a major increase in traffic. After their appearance on the TF1 evening newscast in September 2012, there were more than 5,000 simultaneous connections to the site, and around 15,000 connections in the 5 minutes following the broadcast of the report.

Yann Costes, founder of NewQuest, explains: “PrestaShop naturally manages traffic spikes. In the case of Le Slip Français, its store and database are hosted on different servers, which allows them to handle a large increase in traffic at any time. We can also add additional servers and a load balancer to guarantee 100% site uptime for special promotions on major media outlets.”

Upgrading from PrestaShop 1.3 to 1.6 also helped the brand implement a number of new features. In addition to a mobile version of the site and emails (which led to more than a 10% increase in sales in that channel), abandoned cart reminders, and automatic promotions for customer birthdays, NewQuest made several customizations that are unique to the store.

CMS page management was adapted to fit as closely as possible to the brand’s needs. Pages like “The History of Briefs” and “100% Made in France” were custom created, then the CMS interfaces of the PrestaShop back office were adapted to the content.

Another feature unique to Le Slip Français is how photos from social networks can be shared directly to the product page in question. By associating a unique hashtag with each product, the team at Le Slip Français can monitor posts and share content from them on product pages. This helps strengthen the brand’s sense of community and presents the products in another light.
For email campaigns, the store is connected to MailChimp. Customers who sign up for the newsletter are automatically segmented by profile and purchases. It’s basically the age-old question: “Boxers or briefs?”

Le Slip Français uses Be2Bill and PayPal for its online payments. Logistics, which had initially been managed in Guillaume’s garage, are now completely outsourced with Logtex using EDI to send and track orders, and connected to Fastmag ERP software for inventory management.

The company doesn’t run many AdWords or retargeting campaigns. Thanks to PrestaShop’s natural SEO, the brand is number one in France for the keyword “briefs” (remember Madame Choup and her aprons, 4-pieds and their chairs, and the Archiduchesse’s socks…?).

Thanks to its strong values, the brand now has over 50,000 fans and nearly 10,000 followers. “Our community is like our playground,” Clément explains. “It’s incredibly supportive. Our crowdfunding campaign for “briefs that smell good” brought in more than €22,000 instead of the €10,000 we had hoped for!” The company is doing an excellent job of capitalizing on the buzz. Its “Surprise du Chef” (“Chef’s Surprise”) video has nearly one million views on YouTube, and even made the front page of Yahoo Japan!

The Future of Le Slip: International Expansion

Le Slip has quite a few plans in the works with PrestaShop. The first is conquering international markets.

“Le Slip Français has already had some success in Western Europe (Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and Asia. 2015 will be our year for international growth. Soon our site will be translated into German and Chinese. These versions will use PrestaShop’s multistore feature, which will give us completely localized front offices with specific domain names,” Clément says.

They plan to use PrestaShop 1.6′s shared inventory feature to centralize inventories between the physical and online stores.

Finally, there’s also a WordPress blog interfaced with PrestaShop in the works: product pages will link to articles that mention them, and vice-versa.

Much more can be said about the success of Le Slip Français… check out the key figures in this infographic!

The post Le Slip Français: From Friendly Bet to International Success appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.

It might be a bit tough to swallow, but as an ecommerce merchant, you don’t really have a choice anymore; you must be mobile compatible. While the stakes are high, the investment doesn’t have to be. Here’s what you need to do.

If you worked with an agency to set up your site, get in touch with them. Tell them you want to switch to a mobile-compatible theme.
If you’re on your own or don’t have the budget for an agency, you can change your theme yourself, but you’ll need to factor in a little extra time. But trust me, it’s time that will pay off.

1. Browse the PrestaShop mobile-responsive themes on the Addons marketplace.
2. Buy and install your new theme.
3. Test your site. Check to see that images are the right size and resolution, and that everything displays nicely on various mobile devices.
4. Take advantage of Mcommerce!

If you still have doubts, do this test (before it’s no longer possible): using your smartphone or tablet, search for any product keyword online. Visit sites that are mobile responsive and others that aren’t. The difference in quality should be enough to prove why sites that aren’t mobile responsive are going the way of the dodo.

For a full selection of mobile-responsive templates, visit the Addons Marketplace. Our partner agencies are more than happy to consult with you as well.
Have you upgraded to a mobile-responsive theme? How did it go? Do you have any recommendations for other merchants? Let us know in the comments. Ready to launch your own mobile-responsive ecommerce store? Create your online store now with PrestaShop today.

The post Is your ecommerce store ready for Google’s mobile-friendly update? appeared first on EN - Ecommerce blog by PrestaShop.