With figures like 150,000 live stores and an active community of 500,000 members it is needless to say that Prestahop is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms today. 7 years in the market and Prestashop has achieved a global acceptance by demonstrating constant evolution, from being a newbie to becoming a dominantly popular and one of the fastest growing open source ecommerce platforms. It is being used by merchants of 163 countries for its fastness, reliability, scalability and ease of use.

They will be releasing their most anticipated version Prestashop 1.6 this year end. Few of the already disclosed feature enhancements have already started to make us believe that it will redefine how we do eBusiness. From back office interface to front end theme, Prestashop has been completely revamped and redefined in this upcoming version.

Here’s a sneak peak of the what’s new in Prestashop 1.6 :

Front end Innovations:

A completely new responsive Front office template has been introduced in Prestashop 1.6.

• The drop-down menu has been enriched and small banners or thumbnails can now be placed in it. The cart has been improved to show thumbnails in a more visually pleasant way.

• Quick view feature has been very nicely provided in the new template. On clicking on featured products a new layer opens up with product information and enlarged image.

• In the new version you can see the product attributes (color, size, manufacturer etc.), choose to see in grid or list view the product category pages, and also if the item is in stock.

• The Product page information has been more logically arranged with the call to action – Add to Cart button placed more prominently. This will definitely help in Conversion Rate Optimization.

• Previously on clicking on Add to Cart button, the item just used to get added to the cart but no as such notification was shown. Then, if you wished to continue you could easily do that but if you needed to checkout you would have had to click on the cart icon. But in Prestashop 1.6 as soon as you click on the Add to Cart button, a layered pop up comes up showing the item you have added and the option to continue shopping or proceed with checking out. Also in addition you can configure to show cross selling items in the pop up.

Back End Innovation:

For the first time a responsive backend has been introduced in Prestashop 1.6 with revamped dashboards and highlighted KPIs.

• The new backend of Prestashop 1.6 has been designed to embrace the kind of UI pattern that mobile users prefer. A vertical navigational menu has been introduced and the back end is now completely responsive. Some key metrics has also been introduced to measure the store’s performance e.g Conversion rate, AOV, Abandoned shopping carts etc. The dashboard has also been equipped with more detailed reports to provide you in-depth stats and a bird’s eye view of all the activities in the store. Real time notifications has been shown in the new Prestashop in a very decently arranged manner.