Adding an audio version to a PrestaShop site

PrestaShop powers a great many European shops, and it shares one trait with other e-commerce platforms: it thinks of the catalogue first and editorial content second. So when you want to make a PrestaShop site listenable, the first thing to settle is not technical but editorial: what to narrate. Once that is decided, adding the player is simple and needs no theme rebuild. Here is how to go about it, and where audio genuinely serves a shop.

First, what to make listenable

A product page is short, factual content you scan with your eyes: price, sizes, availability, a few photos. Nobody listens to a list of specifications, they skim it to compare. Narrating your product pages would force a slow format onto information people consume fast, and the result disappoints. Audio earns its place where there is text to follow: buying guides, advice features, blog articles, brand pages that tell a story or explain a choice. This content runs to several hundred words, read by people mid-decision, often on mobile, on the commute or in the evening. Those are exactly the moments when listening takes over from reading. So the right target on PrestaShop is the blog and the CMS pages, not the product page.

The player: a block in your child theme

PrestaShop renders its pages through a theme, and it is strongly advised to work in a child theme so you do not lose your changes at the next update. The audio player is added with a single line of script, placed in the template of the blog page or CMS page, wherever you want it to appear (just under the title, before the first paragraph, as you prefer):

``
<script src="https://wedispatch.fr/player.js"
data-article="ARTICLE_ID" defer></script>
``

Because it lives in the template and not in each piece of content, you paste it only once. Every future page of the same type inherits the player. You touch neither the PrestaShop core nor your product pages, and a shop update does not wipe it out, since it sits in the child theme. It is the same logic as on other platforms: the player slots in without changing the theme, so nothing breaks at the next maintenance.

Three ways to generate the audio

Showing the player is not enough: you have to produce the file. On PrestaShop, three routes exist, from the simplest to the most automated.

The RSS feed is the most direct. The blog module you use (the recent native blog, or a module many shops install) usually exposes a feed of articles. You send us that address, new articles are detected as they publish, the text is extracted and the audio generated with no action from you. The detail of this path is described on the RSS feed page.

The sitemap approach works on the same principle if your blog does not expose its own feed: you point to your sitemap and the editorial pages are picked up.

Finally, if you want control over the whole chain (generating at a set moment, choosing the voice, handling corrections), the API stays open. A PrestaShop site can trigger a call through a webhook or an automation tool at publish time. That is more work upfront, but it gives full control.

The multilingual question

Many PrestaShop shops sell in several languages, and that is worth anticipating. Each language wants its own voice: French content read by a French voice, English content by an English voice. The setting is made per language, once, and then applies to that language's content. This avoids the classic mistake of a French voice tripping over an English text, or the reverse, which loses the listener in a single sentence. Reading quality is the real stake here: it is the stance of our tool, which would rather read one language well than thirty badly. You can set the same up on a WordPress blog if your shop runs alongside one.

When content changes

On a shop, a buying guide gets updated as collections change. If you go through the RSS feed, detection spots the change and marks the audio as due for regeneration: you relaunch it once the text is stable, and successive corrections are never rebilled. If you go through the API, you simply send the same identifier with the corrected text. In both cases, the audio already online keeps being served until you relaunch, so no page ends up without a player.

Where to start

For a PrestaShop shop, the fastest route is the RSS feed combined with the script in the child theme: around fifteen minutes to set up, and every new advice article ships with its audio version. Pick three pieces (your best buying guide, an advice feature, a brand article), turn on audio, check the pronunciation of product and brand names, and share the links. You will quickly see whether the format finds its audience, with no rebuild and no commitment.

Make your shop's advice content listenable with WeDispatch

The player and synced transcript switch on in minutes over your guides and blog pages, for free. Run the test on your best buying guide and judge for yourself.

Read next

• Libraries and media centres: audio in the service of reading accessibility
• Integrating schema.org markup for a narrated article: using AudioObject well
• Audio, ADHD and attention: what the format actually helps with