Product Descriptions in PrestaShop 1.6

When adding a product in PrestaShop 1.6, there are fields available to type in a Short description and a Description (long description).

Question:
How do you know what to type into the short description and what to type in the long description?

Answer:
Knowing where short descriptions and long descriptions are used within your store will help you decide what you want to enter for each of the fields.

In this article, we will review where and how a product’s short and long descriptions are used within PrestaShop 1.6.

Where do the product descriptions show?

Search results (short description)

When products are searched for within your PrestaShop 1.6 store, a picture along with a name and description of the product is shown for each search result. The description used in search results is the Short description entered for the product.

Top Sellers (short description – truncated)

If you use a module in the sidebar of your site, such as Top Sellers, the Short description of the product is used. In our testing, the short description is truncated – only the first 70 characters are shown.

Product Page (short and long description)

When shoppers reach the page dedicated to a single product, i.e. the product’s page, they will see both the Short description and the Long description.

Short description

The Short description is very prominent on the product page because it is shown towards the top of the page and next to the product’s image.

Long description

The Long description is shown towards the very bottom of the product page. It’s actually the 2nd to last thing listed on the page, only above product reviews.