Your homepage is rarely your most important page, for most PrestaShop stores, the pages that actually close sales are product pages, and a large slice of traffic from Google lands directly on categories and products, skipping the homepage entirely. But the homepage is your most visible page: it's where brand-name searches land, where ads point, where word-of-mouth visitors arrive, and where returning customers start. Its job is narrow and specific. Answer "what is this store and where do I go next?" fast enough that the visitor keeps moving instead of leaving. This guide is about building that homepage in PrestaShop specifically: which modules and hooks the platform actually gives you, where to configure them in the back office, and which default behaviours quietly cost you.
Last updated: June 2026.
This is the homepage-specific piece in our navigation cluster. The structure that sits behind the homepage, how categories nest, how customers browse and search, has its own dedicated guides, and we link to them at each point rather than half-cover them here.
How a PrestaShop homepage is actually built
This trips up merchants coming from WordPress or a page-builder background: in PrestaShop, the homepage is not a page you edit in one place. The front controller is the index controller (IndexController), and what it renders into the page body is whatever modules are hooked into displayHome, the main homepage content hook in Classic/default setups. Around it sit the site-wide layout hooks every page shares, chiefly displayTop (the header) and the footer hooks. Each block on the homepage is a separate module's output, stacked in displayHome hook order.
On the default Classic theme, a clean PrestaShop install hooks these into displayHome out of the box:
- ps_imageslider, the rotating image carousel at the top.
- ps_banner, a single static banner image.
- ps_featuredproducts, the "Popular Products" grid pulling from your "Home" category.
- ps_customtext. An editable HTML/text block (this is the "Custom text block" you see at the bottom of a fresh install).
You control the order and presence of every one of these under Design → Positions in the back office: find the displayHome hook, and drag the module blocks into the sequence you want, or unhook ones you don't. This is the single most useful thing to understand about a PrestaShop homepage. There is no "homepage editor", there is a stack of hooked modules, and rearranging that stack is how you redesign it without touching a theme file.
Above the fold: what those first pixels must say
"Above the fold" is everything on screen before the visitor scrolls, roughly the first 600–700px on desktop, less on a phone. In that space your homepage has to communicate three things, and vague brand poetry communicates none of them:
- What you sell. "Luxury walk-in shower systems" or "Handmade leather bags from Florence", not "quality products for modern living", which tells a visitor nothing about whether they're in the right shop. This belongs in a real, visible H1, not buried in an image. In PrestaShop the homepage H1 is usually defined by your theme's home template or the top content block, and it's frequently missing or empty on default installs, worth checking.
- Why you're different. Free shipping over a threshold, a warranty, made-to-order, next-day dispatch, your one real reason to buy here rather than from Amazon.
- What to do next. One clear call to action that beats "browse": "Shop the collection", "See new arrivals", "Find your size".
A cheap test: show the homepage to someone who's never seen it for three seconds, then close it and ask "what does this store sell?" If they can't answer, the above-the-fold content is failing, and no amount of design polish lower down the page fixes a confusing first screen.
The slider question: ps_imageslider and why the default hurts you
PrestaShop ships ps_imageslider hooked into the homepage by default, so the platform itself nudges you toward a rotating carousel. The usability research has pointed the other way for years: Nielsen Norman Group's work found that very few users interact with carousel slides at all, and of those who do, the overwhelming majority only ever engage with the first slide; auto-rotating banners also trigger "banner blindness", where visitors ignore anything that looks like an ad. Treat those as directional findings, not guarantees for your specific store, but the mechanism is sound, and the costs are concrete:
- Competing messages dilute each other. Five slides with five offers means the visitor processes none of them.
- Performance. ps_imageslider loads multiple full-width images plus the slider JavaScript on your most-visited page, the page where Core Web Vitals (LCP in particular) matter most, because the first slide image is usually the largest contentful paint element.
- Mobile gesture conflict. A swipeable carousel competes with the natural vertical scroll, causing accidental swipes.
The practical move on PrestaShop: either trim ps_imageslider to a single slide, or unhook it under Design → Positions and replace it with one strong static hero, a single image, one headline, one button. If you genuinely run several campaigns, use a static grid of two or three banner cards below the hero so visitors scan all options at once instead of waiting for a rotation. Building responsive hero banners and promo grids without editing theme files is exactly what our banner module is for: a visual editor for banners with overlay text, countdown timers and mobile-specific layouts, configured from the back office. So what does that get you? You replace the default carousel with a focused, fast hero without a developer and without forking your theme, so it survives the next PrestaShop upgrade.
Routing visitors onward: category highlights
Once the hero has said what you are, the next block answers "where do I go from here?", and on a homepage that means category entry points, not your full menu. Show the 4–8 top-level categories that cover most of your sales, each as a tappable image card with a clear human label ("Walk-In Showers", not "Category 1"; "Women's Boots", not "Footwear F/W"). A visual grid is reliably more clickable than a text list.
How those categories are structured underneath, how deep they nest, how they're named for both customers and Google, is its own discipline, and getting it wrong on the homepage usually means it's wrong everywhere. We cover the structure itself in PrestaShop category structure for SEO-optimized navigation, and the related point that a category's on-page heading shouldn't blindly echo its name in why your category H1 shouldn't be your category name.
The homepage grid is also not your primary navigation. The persistent menu, the mega menu most stores want for a deep catalogue, is a separate decision with its own trade-offs; we treat it fully in building a PrestaShop mega menu that converts and, for the browse-experience angle, making your categories easy to browse.
Featured products: curate, don't dump
By default ps_featuredproducts shows products from your "Home" category, and its count is configurable. Go to Modules → Module Manager, find "Featured products on the homepage", and set the number to display (8–12 is the sweet spot for one or two clean rows). More than that and the homepage turns into a category page, which defeats the point of a curated entry.
What to feature: best-sellers (already-proven converters that reassure first-time visitors), new arrivals with a "New" badge to give returning customers a reason to come back, and a spread of price points so the page signals your range. Avoid featuring anything out of stock, discontinued, or on clearance. The homepage should show the store at its best. Note one mechanical detail: ps_featuredproducts pulls by category assignment ("Home"), so "featuring" a product means assigning it to that category, not flagging it individually.
A homepage row is a curated shortcut, not a discovery tool. When a visitor knows roughly what they want but not exactly, the work happens in category filtering and search. Both deeper than a homepage can be. For large catalogues, layered filtering is the difference between finding a product and giving up: see helping customers find products in large catalogs and, for the page those filters live on, category pages that convert. When visitors type instead of browse, PrestaShop's default search is often the weak link, we cover fixing that in smart search for PrestaShop.
Social proof: trust without saying "trust us"
Social proof is any evidence that other people have bought from you and were happy. The forms that earn their place above or near the fold:
- Aggregate ratings, a star rating and review count establish credibility instantly. If you use Trustpilot, Google Reviews, or a PrestaShop product-reviews module, surface the widget rather than hiding it in the footer.
- Concrete counts, "shipped 50,000+ orders" beats "trusted by many". Only use numbers you can actually stand behind.
- "As seen in" logos, press or marketplace mentions, especially valuable for newer stores.
- Trust badges, accepted payment logos, SSL/secure-payment indicators, guarantee icons, in a tidy horizontal strip.
In PrestaShop these typically live in a ps_customtext block or a custom HTML block hooked into displayHome, so you can position the strip exactly where you want it relative to the hero and product grid.
Content blocks: story, differentiators, and homepage SEO
Below the product sections, a few content blocks do double duty. They tell visitors who you are (conversion) and they give the homepage real indexable text (SEO). Keep them short and scannable: a two-to-three-sentence brand story (not your whole About page), an icon-plus-text row of differentiators ("Free shipping over €50", "5-year warranty", "Dispatch before 2 PM"), and optionally a preview of your two or three latest articles to signal freshness.
That last point connects to a common PrestaShop gap: the platform has no built-in blog, so a "latest articles" homepage block needs a content module behind it. If you don't yet publish on-site, that's covered in a built-in blog for PrestaShop without WordPress.
On the SEO side, the homepage's title tag and meta description are set in the back office under Shop Parameters → Traffic & SEO → SEO & URLs (edit the "Index" / "pagenotfound"-style page entry named index), not in a theme file. Aim for a title that pairs your brand with your primary category ("BrandName, Walk-In Shower Systems"), a meta description that leads with the value proposition, a visible keyword-bearing H1, and roughly 200–400 words of natural homepage copy (your brand story and differentiator blocks usually supply it). For arranging all of this, flexible HTML content positioned by hook, with separate desktop and mobile visibility, our HTML blocks module lets you create and place custom blocks across PrestaShop pages from the back office, per-device. The benefit: you compose the homepage's content sections without editing .tpl files, and you can show a leaner block set on phones.
The mobile homepage is a different page
More than half of storefront sessions now happen on a phone, and a 375px screen is not a narrowed 1920px monitor, it's a different layout. PrestaShop's hook-and-module model helps here, because our HTML blocks and banner module support per-device visibility, so you can hide or swap blocks for mobile rather than cramming the desktop stack onto a phone, though for native home modules, mobile variants generally require theme or module support:
- Hero: overlay text must be large enough to read small; if your desktop hero uses fine text over a busy image, ship a separate, simpler mobile version.
- Category grid: two columns maximum, with large touch targets.
- Featured products: a horizontally scrollable row with the next item peeking from the edge usually beats a cramped grid.
- Social proof: consolidate reviews, counts and badges into one compact strip instead of several stacked sections.
Mobile is a deep enough topic that it deserves its own treatment beyond the homepage. The full picture is in mobile commerce: your store on a phone.
What not to put on your PrestaShop homepage
- Your full catalogue. The homepage is a gateway, not a warehouse, curate.
- Auto-playing video. It slows the page, burns mobile data, and most visitors never watch it.
- A pop-up on arrival. A newsletter modal that fires before the visitor has seen a single product reads as desperation and spikes your bounce rate. Pop-ups can work, but on timing and intent, not on page-load. The strategy (and how to set it up properly in PrestaShop) is in PrestaShop pop-ups that convert, and the welcome-specific case in welcome pop-ups done right.
- Walls of text. Nobody reads paragraphs on a homepage, short, scannable, heading-led.
- Embedded social feeds. They pull in third-party JavaScript that drags page speed and distracts from your products. Link to your profiles in the footer instead.
Measuring whether your homepage works
The homepage has one primary job, routing visitors onward, so measure that before anything else. Don't judge on three days of data; watch the trend over a meaningful window. The numbers worth tracking:
| Metric | What it tells you | Rough read |
|---|---|---|
| Click-through to category/product | Whether the homepage is doing its actual job | If well under half of homepage visitors click through anywhere, the hero, grid or navigation is failing. |
| Bounce rate | Visitors leaving without interacting | Consistently very high suggests the first screen doesn't match what they expected. |
| Time on page | Engagement vs. confusion | Healthy is a short, purposeful visit; near-zero means instant bounce, very long can mean they're hunting for navigation. |
| Homepage-entrant conversion vs. site average | How well the homepage qualifies traffic | If homepage entrants convert far below visitors who land on products, the homepage isn't routing the right people to the right place. |
Frequently asked questions
Where do I actually edit the PrestaShop homepage?
There's no single "homepage editor." The front controller is the index controller, and the page body is whatever modules are hooked into displayHome. You rearrange, add or remove those blocks under Design → Positions by finding the displayHome hook and dragging the module blocks into the order you want. Text and SEO live elsewhere: the homepage title tag and meta description are under Shop Parameters → Traffic & SEO → SEO & URLs (the index page entry).
Should I keep the default ps_imageslider carousel?
Usually trim or replace it. Usability research (Nielsen Norman Group among others) consistently finds very few users interact with carousel slides, most who do engage only with the first, and auto-rotating banners trigger banner blindness. The slider also loads multiple full-width images plus JavaScript on your most-visited page, hurting LCP. Either cut it to a single slide or unhook it under Design → Positions and replace it with one focused static hero.
How do I change how many featured products show on the homepage?
Go to Modules → Module Manager, find "Featured products on the homepage" (ps_featuredproducts), and set the number to display. 8&Ndash;12 is the sweet spot for one or two clean rows. Note the mechanism: the block pulls products by assignment to the "Home" category, so "featuring" a product means assigning it to that category, not flagging it individually.
Why is my homepage H1 missing or empty?
On default installs the homepage H1 is defined by the theme's home template or the top content block, and it's frequently empty or absent. That's a real SEO gap. Your most visible page should carry a clear, keyword-bearing H1 stating what you sell. Check it after any theme edit, and set it via your content block or theme home template rather than leaving it blank.
Can I show a different homepage layout on mobile?
For native home modules, mobile variants generally need theme or module support, PrestaShop won't swap blocks per device on its own. Our HTML blocks and banner modules add per-device visibility, so you can hide or swap blocks for phones (a simpler hero, a two-column category grid, a single consolidated trust strip) rather than cramming the desktop stack onto a 375px screen.
The throughline for a PrestaShop homepage: it's a routing device, assembled from modules hooked into displayHome and arranged under Design → Positions, not a page you write once and forget. Say what you sell in the first screen, trade the default carousel for a focused hero, send visitors to well-structured categories and a search that actually works, prove you're trustworthy, and strip everything that gets in the way, then watch your click-through, not your gut, to tell you whether it's working.