Want to create a simple showcase website with PrestaShop? It's possible! Although this CMS is best known for its e-commerce features, you can disable the shopping cart and other online selling options to use PrestaShop for the creation of your showcase website.
Your website then becomes a catalogue to showcase your products and new collections. Visitors will get all the information about your offerings, as well as details on how to find your products and services. Of course, your PrestaShop showcase site will also allow them to contact you directly if needed.
How can you use PrestaShop to manage your showcase site? Why do it? All the answers are in this article!
What is PrestaShop?
Before fully answering the question “how to make a showcase website with PrestaShop?”, let’s remember that this open-source solution is primarily designed to build and grow an online store.
In fact, according to PrestaShop, more than 300,000 merchants use the CMS to run their e-commerce. With its 300 built-in features for adding payment methods, controlling shipping, managing inventory, optimizing product listings, and improving relationships with suppliers or customers, this solution has a lot to offer!
PrestaShop is one of the most powerful e-commerce site builders on the market: it offers a user-friendly interface to manage your online activity.
Furthermore: this CMS can also let you create a “simple” showcase website and display your catalogue to prospects, along with advice and blog articles. For example, Bonne Gueule’s PrestaShop showcase greets visitors with a webzine full of useful information:
What’s the benefit? That’s what we’ll explore in the rest of this article!
Why create a PrestaShop showcase site?
PrestaShop is a CMS first and foremost! It’s possible to disable e-commerce-related features and use it simply to create a showcase site. And the advantages are numerous…
Create an intuitive catalog
PrestaShop’s native options make it an ideal solution for displaying an intuitive digital catalogue. Visitors will have the chance to get to know your products better, browse your offers, and be won over by your proposals. They’ll always have a reference tool for their orders or to discover your new arrivals.
Your PrestaShop showcase site will both promote your goods and services to a new audience and help retain your existing customers. Two birds with one stone!
Make your brand and values known
You’ll be able to create pages that summarize your commitments and introduce your company and teams. This helps humanize your brand and build a closer connection with your visitors.
Here is an example of a PrestaShop showcase site where the “Who are we?” page is particularly well constructed:
Improve your business's visibility
Creating a showcase website with PrestaShop means taking advantage of advanced SEO features! This CMS lets you build SEO-friendly URLs and optimize title tags, the meta title, the meta description and all attributes related to SEO.
Essential settings to position your product catalog for relevant queries.
Drive foot traffic to your physical location
Thanks to organizing product pages into categories and subcategories, you streamline navigation through your offerings. You can link each item to a detail page to give visitors information…and encourage them to contact you or check your list of distributors to visit a store.
If you have your own points of sale, you can also display them on your pages and attract foot traffic to your stores, as in this example of a PrestaShop showcase site:
Take advantage of an international presence
PrestaShop supports more than 75 languages worldwide and can geolocate each visitor to show them the correct translation. To do this, the CMS offers language packs that translate your pages without changing the code.
Easily convert your PrestaShop showcase site into an e-commerce site
Building a showcase site with PrestaShop is a long-term decision. Today you may only need a catalog, but in a few months or years you might want to evolve it into an e-commerce site. With PrestaShop, that can be done quickly and easily!
Better understand your consumers
PrestaShop provides a dashboard that delivers more than 20 reports on the number of visitors to your showcase site, their profiles, their behavior and conversion points. You get relevant data to better understand your buyers, identify their needs and improve your company's growth strategy.
Drawbacks of PrestaShop for a showcase site
Because PrestaShop is specifically designed for e-commerce, using it for a showcase site can have some drawbacks. It's essential to know these before choosing this CMS.
Few free features
Although downloading and installing PrestaShop remains free, many themes, features and add-ons are paid.
However, the free version is still sufficient for a showcase site for small or medium businesses that don't need advanced modules. Those available on the marketplace are mainly aimed at e-commerce.
You can still create pricing pages, contact pages or even a blog section and a photo gallery at low cost.
A rather static design
PrestaShop comes with a fairly up-to-date design to manage a free or low-budget showcase site. Nevertheless, the design offered by the CMS lacks a modern, dynamic touch, even though it provides the basic functions.
As a result, a PrestaShop showcase site is not well suited to portfolios for creators, web designers or photographers, for example.
Lack of official support
Unlike other website management solutions, PrestaShop does not have official support teams to help you with bugs or technical challenges. You will need to pay for an additional plan to get assistance from the platform's experts.
However, there is an active community of 700,000 users ready to help, along with detailed documentation and support pages on Facebook and Twitter. The only drawback is that these resources mainly address questions related to online selling and using PrestaShop to manage a store.
How to create a PrestaShop showcase site?
Are you convinced and want to use PrestaShop for a showcase site? Here are the steps to follow.
1. Reserve a domain name and hosting
To build a PrestaShop showcase site, you will need a domain name (DN)
and a hosting provider. We have already published many articles on these topics on the blog. If you need help choosing your domain name, you can consult our guide « 6 best practices for registering the ideal domain name ».
As for hosting, we recommend reading our 2022 comparison of the best web hosts to find the one that matches your needs.
2. Download PrestaShop
As an open-source CMS, PrestaShop provides the files needed to install your showcase site. They are available on the PrestaShop website.
You will then need to install them on a local server or directly with your hosting provider.
We recommend hiring a web developer on Codeur if you are a beginner. You’ll be guaranteed an operational PrestaShop showcase site, ready to be customized!
3. Disable e-commerce features
A PrestaShop showcase site does not require e-commerce features. You will therefore need to disable several settings to avoid bugs and prevent hindering the user experience.
Among the elements to disable are:
- The checkout funnel : choice of payment method, delivery, order tracking emails, etc.;
- The add-to-cart button: very important to avoid frustrating users who would spend time filling their cart… only to be unable to place an order!
- Order management and inventory management modules: they bloat your site for no reason;
- Automated emails : for reminders and customer follow-ups;
- Sales statistics and revenue: to simplify your dashboard.
4. Ensure important settings are activated for a PrestaShop showcase site
Depending on your objectives, your WordPress showcase site will require certain features that are available by default:
- The ability for visitors to download PDF documents such as user guides or your product catalog;
- The option to search and filter results on pages;
- The classification of your products or services into categories and subcategories;
- Integration of a contact page with a form to collect contact details, pre-sales or after-sales support questions, and quote requests;
- The activation of pages presenting your activities and your company's partners;
- Personalization of your catalogs according to the visitor's profile (B2B or B2C, for example, or by company size, gender, or any other criterion related to your qualification strategy).
5. Customize your showcase site
Here we go! It's time to choose a PrestaShop theme and customize it with your brand identity. Very intuitive, the CMS lets you create a tailor-made catalog, add unique pages, and offer a smooth user experience.
The goal is to draw visitors into your world, build a connection with them (and their values), and encourage them to choose your products.
Our tip
Creating a showcase site with PrestaShop can be difficult for a beginner. While the tool offers many features and lets you consider using the e-commerce function in the future, it's not always easy to get to grips with. To help you, post a job on Codeur.com and find a PrestaShop developer who can support you in creating an operational showcase site from A to Z!
