Which products to improve first when you can't fix them all
Which products should you improve first? The ones already earning money. Sort products by revenue over the last 90 days, take roughly the top fifth of the list and check their pages: images, description, short description, Google title, stock. Improving a best seller reaches the most customers, and the polish on the rest can wait.
Author: The TellMyShop team. A guide for PrestaShop store owners: the cause, the manual fix and the same work in a chat conversation.
Last updated: · 6 min read
Why not improve products in order?
Because the order in the admin has nothing to do with money. The list in Catalog → Products starts with the oldest or newest items. You fix the first hundred, and a best seller added four years ago still has the wholesaler's description and a single image.
In many stores a small part of the range brings in most of the revenue. This is the so-called 80/20 rule, or the Pareto principle. Shopify's guide points out that the split doesn't have to be exactly 80 to 20 and doesn't hold in every situation. So we don't guess: you take the numbers from your own orders.
How to find best sellers in PrestaShop
The simplest way is the Stats menu, in the best-selling products report. According to the PrestaShop 8 statistics documentation, the report shows turnover, average daily sales, page views and stock for each product. Stats depend on the statistics modules, so if the report is empty, check that they're enabled.
The 80/20 method step by step:
- Choose a period. The last 90 days. In a seasonal store, add the same period last year.
- Sort by net revenue. Units tell you what moves, but revenue tells you what keeps the store going. With cheap small items, the two lists differ a lot.
- Cut off the top of the list. Add up revenue from the top and stop when you reach about 80% of the total. Note how many products that is and what share of the range.
- Add the products just below the line. A few items just under the cut-off often have a weak page and the most to gain.
- Assess those products' pages. Using the table below.
- Pick three fixes for this week. Not thirty. In a month, compare sales with the period before the change.
What to check on a best seller's page
Use the same checklist for every product at the top of the ranking. Note briefly what's missing.
| Element | What to check | Typical problem |
|---|---|---|
| Images | how many, whether detail and scale are visible | one image from the manufacturer's catalogue |
| Short description | whether the customer sees, next to the price, who it's for and what sets it apart | empty or copied from the description |
| Description | materials, dimensions, use, answers to common questions | wholesaler text, same as the competition |
| Google title and description | length, product name first | missing, or just the store name |
| Features | material, size, colour filled in | empty, so the product drops out of filters |
| Stock and availability | whether it's in stock, what the customer sees when it's not | zero stock with no restock information |
| Images without alt text | whether images have descriptions | empty alts after an import |
Google's guide for ecommerce sites stresses clear product data and content that helps customers choose. A best seller with a complete page is exactly that.
What this method won't tell you
The ranking shows what already sells. It won't tell you why a product is stuck or whether a new one has potential. A few cases are worth assessing separately:
- New products. A product added a month ago has no chance in a 90-day ranking. Judge it by views and first orders.
- Drops. A product that was near the top and fell this quarter. Compare periods before you change the description: the cause is often being out of stock or the price.
- Products with many views and few sales. Customers look but don't buy. The cause is often the price, a missing variant or a weak page. A good candidate to fix right after the best sellers.
- Products with no sales. A separate decision: improve, discount or withdraw. We cover it in the guide to products with no sales in PrestaShop.
How to build the priority list with the chat
With the TellMyShop module you ask for it in one sentence. Your chat (Claude or ChatGPT) calculates sales from valid orders, without customer data, and then matches them with gaps in the product pages. This works in TellMyShop Free, because sales, gap finding and the SEO audit are available there in read-only mode.
You: Which 30 products earned the most in the last 90 days, and which of them have weak pages? Give me three things for this week.
Your chat: The top 30 products bring in 71% of net revenue for the period. Of these, 9 have one image, 7 have no short description and 12 have no meta description. My suggestion for this week:
1. A short description for the 7 best sellers that lack one.
2. A meta description for the 12 products on the list.
3. Images for the Kula solar lamp 20 cm: second by revenue, one image.
You: Start with the short descriptions. One product first, so I can see the style.
Your chat: Preview for the Kula solar lamp 20 cm:
Save? (yes / no)
Card status: waiting for your “yes”old version: (no short description)
new version: A solar lamp for the garden and terrace, it charges by day and glows after dark. 20 cm diameter.
The numbers in this conversation are examples. The ranking and the list of gaps work in Free. Saving fixes is TellMyShop Pro: it saves descriptions, Google titles, images and features straight after licence activation, without switches. You see each change in a preview, approve it yourself, and in the change history you can undo most changes with one request. Pro also adds the Consultant, who explains with each piece of advice why a fix matters to the customer.
The chat doesn't add facts that aren't in the product data. When a material or a dimension is missing, it collects the questions in one message.
Ready-made requests are in the use cases priorities by sales, improving best-seller pages and comparing sales with the previous period. What a good page looks like is in the post about the product page in PrestaShop, and fixing descriptions in batches is in the guide to bulk editing descriptions.
You can make the priority list today in TellMyShop Free. Plans that save changes are on the pricing page.
Questions and answers
Does the 80/20 rule always hold?
Not to the exact number. It's a rule of thumb: in many stores a small share of products brings in most of the revenue, but the split can differ, for example 70/30. What matters is the direction, and you check the actual split on your own data.
What period should I take sales from?
Usually the last 90 days. A seasonal store should also compare the same period a year earlier, because jacket sales in July say very little. For new products the period is too short, so assess them separately.
Is it better to improve best sellers or products that don't sell?
Best sellers and the products just behind them first, because every fix reaches the most customers. Products with no sales are a separate decision: improve, discount or withdraw. We cover it in a separate guide.
Do I need access to customer data for this analysis?
No. The product ranking is calculated from orders: units, revenue, number of orders. Customers' names, addresses and emails aren't needed, and TellMyShop doesn't show them in this report.
Can TellMyShop Free make this list?
Yes. TellMyShop Free reads sales and gaps in product pages, so it can put together a priority list. It won't save fixes; TellMyShop Pro does that after you approve the preview.
PrestaShop is a registered trademark of PrestaShop SA. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic PBC. ChatGPT and OpenAI are trademarks of OpenAI. TellMyShop is not affiliated with these companies.