Browsing the front-office
A shop's front-office is what customers constantly see when browsing it. It's the interface, the products, the pictures, the description, the whole transaction process, etc.
As a customer, this is all you'll see of a shop during your browsing and buying experience, from start to finish.
As a shop owner, you should know your front-office like the back of your hand, not only because you owe it to yourself to know your shop in and out, but also because you need to understand what your customers face, the number of pages and clicks they go through during a typical buying sessions, where they might get stuck and how to help them out, etc.
The default theme
PrestaShop comes with a default theme, which uses shades of gray on a white background. This simple design was purposefully done in order to be adaptable to just about any line of business: cars, photography, antiques... anything! It was design to be easy to browser, ergonomic and standard-compliant. It is complete, has been heavily tested by thousands of shops, and has proven its value.
If you installed PrestaShop with its sample data, you will see Apple products.
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While the shop owner can change the front-office time anytime, thanks to the wealth of themes that are available on the PrestaShop Addons website, we will base this chapter on the default theme only.
Navigating the shop
Whether he arrives on the front page by typing the shop web addresses or lands on a sub-page through a search engine, the customer will always have many options to navigate through the catalog.
The header
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The header is thin bar of content, accessible from any of the front-office pages. It contains some essential tools and links, that apply to the whole shop:
- The shop logo. A click on the logo brings the customer back to the front page, from anywhere in the shop.
- The currency block. The customer can choose the currency in which the shop should display apps. This is great in order to compare prices with other international shops.
- Contact and Sitemap. These two links take the customer to specific pages, out of the shopping context: contacting the shop administrators, or viewing a complete list of all the pages that are publicly accessible.
- Bookmark. This is not a link per-se, but a JavaScript action: when clicked, it will trigger the customer browser to add the shop as a bookmark. The customer can then choose to complete the action or not.
- The search engine. Many customers prefer to look for a specific item through the search engine rather than browsing through categories after categories of products.
- Welcome, XXX. An invitation for the customer to connect to the shop by entering their credentials. If connected, this will display "Welcome, firstname".
- "Your account". A link to the user account, or if not connected, to the authentication/registration page.
- "Cart: (empty)*. A quick reminder of the current status of the customer's cart. Sometimes customers select items while browsing and forget about them after a few pages. It is therefore essential to give them a way to keep these products in mind.
The header hardly ever changes throughout the whole buying experience.
The left column
The right column
The middle section
The front page
The default front page gives the customer a broad overview of the shop and its possibilities.