It’s no scoop that mobile traffic has been overtaking PC traffic for some years now.
For e-commerce traffic alone, it’s estimated that between 55% and 75% of all traffic comes from mobile.
As such, knowing how to optimize an e-commerce site on mobile first seems essential, given the market share at stake.
However, it’s important to understand why many e-commerce store designers, and even the design platforms themselves, such as Prestashop, are still reluctant to give priority to this type of interface. 
Favoring the mobile interface to optimize your e-commerce site: not so easy…
Structural reluctance on the part of both cms and designers to optimize for mobile use
While current e-commerce traffic figures should encourage store designers and creation platforms alike to give strong priority to mobile versions, we’re still seeing pc interfaces being maintained as “basic” models, from which we can eventually optimize our ecommerce site on a secondary mobile version.
This phenomenon is structural, and in many respects even cultural (because yes, there is a real e-commerce culture!).
As mobile’s greater share of traffic is still recent, the structures employed by creation platforms have not yet changed to the point of reversing the order of configuration of an e-commerce store (first on PC, then on mobile if you have the time).
We’re therefore ahead of the trend in terms of e-commerce media and products, as PC configuration remains the norm in terms of visuals, ergonomics and usable modules.
Beyond these structural and cultural aspects alone, there is also a certain fear of a shift from horizontal to vertical for websites, and this for entirely practical reasons.
Additional User Experience constraints hamper mobile e-commerce site optimization
Switching from PC to mobile to optimize an ecommerce site doesn’t just mean rethinking the classic Internet site layouts we have in mind. From a purely technical point of view, it makes sense to favor a PC version over a mobile version for a seller.
It’s easier to organize a store and visual communication on a horizontal resolution of 1280×1024 pixels than on a vertical resolution of 360×800 pixels.
On mobile, the designer of a store, themes, visual communication tools etc. will have to make an extra effort in terms of UX and UI (User Experience and User Interface).
There’s much less space available for information, options and other visuals, so you have to get to the essentials and be as intuitive as possible without losing your brand identity and positioning (especially for B2C, which accounts for the bulk of mobile e-commerce traffic).
But you also have to be careful not to force visitors to scroll too much to view an entire page, as their attention span is even shorter than on a PC, not to mention the SEO problems that can arise as a result of reduced text on the site… In short, it can quickly become a real headache, but fortunately a few best practices exist to optimize your ecommerce site on mobile in the right way.
Optimization tips for a successful mobile e-commerce site with Prestashop
Knowing why it’s important to optimize your Prestashop e-commerce site on mobile is one thing, but knowing how to go about it is another – and a far more interesting one for us! 
How to optimize a mobile ecommerce site: Favour a practical, streamlined structure
As we’ve already mentioned, good UX and UI practices are essential for optimizing an e-commerce site on mobile.
In particular, this will involve a general page design that is much cleaner and more intuitive than for a PC version.
The aim here is to give greater prominence to the offers themselves (products and services), while reducing the use of non-essential elements such as carousels, videos or non-clickable images in general.
We want to be more “practical” than “beautiful”.
The design elements that will give the store its identity and positioning can therefore be colors, typefaces, symbols, display effects and other similar elements, evocative without being “cumbersome”.
For content you want to keep on a mobile version, particularly images, the state of the art suggests 360×800 or 390×844 pixel resolutions, which are best suited to most mobile displays.
You should also systematically reduce the weight of embedded images, using tools such as TinyPNG.
People are even more reluctant to accept slower displays on mobiles than on PCs, especially as mobile device performance is generally not as good as on PCs.
A fluid, responsive site is therefore essential on mobile (you can get a clear idea of the display speed of your e-commerce store using tools like GTmetrix, for example).
How to optimize a mobile ecommerce site: Previewing the mobile site on multiple devices
Previewing your site on mobile, as offered on the Prestashop interface, is sometimes not enough to see the final rendering as it will appear on most mobile devices.
It may therefore be worthwhile to actually test on the mobile devices in question.
Rest assured, you don’t need to buy the 5 or 10 most widely used mobile devices to do this!
Tools such as BrowserStack enable realistic simulations on a range of media (not just mobile, by the way).
Clean, test and clean again: these are the secrets of a mobile-optimized e-commerce site!
The basic principle for understanding how to optimize your ecommerce site for the mobile medium is simple: remove as many non-essential elements as possible, while giving pride of place to the site’s offers and fluidity.
You don’t have to strip your website bare, but a good clean-up that focuses on the user experience can only be a good thing.
It can also bring a fresh look to PC interfaces, with a focus on clear, intuitive structures, free from unnecessary and/or intrusive options.
Finally, it’s worth stressing that creating mobile-optimized e-commerce sites is not an exact science.
As with SEO, it’s important to test regularly and keep up to date with best practices to find out what works best in terms of results.
I’ve been an e-commerce expert on Prestashop for 15 years, and can help you create and optimize your e-commerce store, on both PC and mobile.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss your needs.
