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Introduction > X-Cart Key Features > Storefront |
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Design and Layout
X-Cart design is 100% template-based. All the templates are grouped into folders. The templates are very easy to edit using any text editor you would use for HTML. There is also a built-in Template editor in X-Cart that allows you to customize templates without even leaving the store.
X-Cart has undergone a comprehensive template overhaul and is now fully compliant with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional W3C standard.
X-Cart is software with open source code. Its template-based structure and optimized programming code enable you to customize your online store, making it exactly what you want it to be.
X-Cart's navigation system is intuitive, convenient and easy to use, which allows you and your customers to access the desired information in almost no time at all.
X-Cart has a built-in template editor that allows you to edit and preview the templates from which your store is built. Using this editor you can change the look and feel of your store in whatever way you like.
All text elements that appear in X-Cart's user interface (option field names, notes and messages) are stored in language variables. The way text elements are stored in X-Cart allows you to edit them without having to edit X-Cart's PHP code or templates. Editing of selected language variable values can be done through X-Cart's "Languages" section; however, editing through the "Languages" section is not convenient enough if you want to edit not just a couple of phrases, but most or all of the text that appears in your store. X-Cart provides an elegant solution for this problem - Webmaster mode. It is a mode that allows you to edit the text elements of X-Cart's user interface in WYSIWYG. In this mode, you simply click the word or phrase that you wish to edit and it appears in a small pop-up window where you can edit it. After you finish editing the selected word or phrase and save the changes, they become available for viewing immediately.
X-Cart supports CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). All X-Cart's styles are stored in one configuration file used by X-Cart's template engine. You can modify this file and change the colors and other properties affecting the look of your store.
X-Cart's Debugging console is a tool that you can use to find out the template structure of any page in your store. It may be useful when you edit the look and feel of certain pages and need to know which templates need to be edited. When enabled, the Debugging console appears in the form of a pop-up window displaying the tree of templates of the current page. As you move from one page to another, the information in the Debugging console window is refreshed to show the template structure of the page being displayed.
If necessary, you can create your own HTML pages and add them to your X-Cart-based store. Two types of pages are supported: root level pages and embedded pages. Root level pages are fully independent HTML files. They exist in X-Cart root (the directory where your X-Cart store is installed), hence the name. Embedded pages are pages that are placed inside standard X-Cart pages. Their look depends on the design of your store in general, as you create only the page content (no <HTML>, <HEAD> or <BODY> tags are used). The content of embedded pages is displayed in your store's Information column (corresponds to the widest column in any X-Cart's standard template scheme). Links to embedded pages appear in the Help menu box. X-Cart provides a section that allows you to create and manage pages of both these types.
You can configure a set of shortcuts to the most important pages of your store to be displayed at the top of your store's customer front-end. Such shortcuts can simplify site navigation for the visitors of your store.
Email notifications and newslist messages can be sent by X-Cart as plain text or as HTML mail. You can use X-Cart's built-in template editor to create professionally looking HTML emails.
An advanced (WYSIWYG) editor is provided for product/category/manufacturer descriptions, language variables, static pages, Webmaster mode.
X-Cart supports right-to-left direction for displaying text (may be useful for languages like Hebrew or Arabic).
Product Catalog
The number of products and categories that can be created in an X-Cart-based store is not limited. There is also no limitation on category nesting. However, the number of categories and products affects the performance of your store. X-Cart is optimized for smooth performance with up to 20 000 products. You should be aware that the actual number of categories and products that you will be able to have will depend on the performance of your server. The more products you wish to have, the better and more powerful server you will need to hire.
If necessary, you can limit access of customers to some categories in your store by customer membership. Any category can be made members-only (visible only to the customers with a certain membership). Ordinary customers will not be able to see such a category on the storefront, nor to find/view/order products from it.
X-Cart provides a way to bring your customers' attention to featured items and seasonal products in your store by putting information about them on display in the Featured products box displayed at the top of the page. You can control which products are displayed in the Featured products box, as well as in which order they are displayed. It is possible to adjust the contents of the Featured products box for the Customer zone main page and for each of your product categories.
X-Cart provides you with the ability to inform your customers what products in your store sell best. X-Cart's Bestsellers module can automatically generate a list of your store's best selling products in a special Bestsellers box on the store-front. Products enter this list based on the results of sales analysis. While there have been no sales (right after the store has been launched), the contents of the Bestsellers list is formed of the products that get the most views.
You can multiply your profits by using X-Cart's module "Upselling products". This module enables up-selling and cross-selling by allowing you to provide links between different products at your store so that customers who are about to buy a certain product are offered additional products that go well with it. Upsold products are displayed in a "Related products" section on the Product details page of the product to which they are related.
In addition to the simple "Search" input field, X-Cart provides your customers with a link to an advanced search form. This form allows your customers to fine-tune product search by specifying exact search parameters. Your customers can perform searches by a fragment of the product title or description, by SKU, by the contents of the product's custom extra field, by category, by manufacturer and by price/weight range (The named search parameters can be used independently or in combination).
If you specify a manufacturer/brand name for each of your products, your products will be automatically sorted by manufacturer/brand name in X-Cart's Manufacturers menu. This menu will let your customers access the items produced by a certain manufacturer more easily.
The contents of the products list can be sorted by SKU, product title and price. A customer only needs to click the appropriate sorting link at the top of the products list area so the products are rotated and displayed in the necessary order (for example, clicking the Price link results in that the products in the list are displayed according to the decrease of their prices). Clicking the same link once again reverses the order of the products in the list. The original sorting order can be restored at any moment by clicking on the Default sorting link.
Fast Lane Checkout module provides a more user-friendly and intuitive checkout procedure in X-Cart.
X-Magnifier add-on module that you can purchase for your X-Cart store provides a Flash-based viewer that allows the visitors of your store to view large, high-resolution images (GIFs, JPEGs and PNGs up to 2000 px size) in much detail and, possibly, even to save some time and traffic while doing so. While viewing an image, your store visitors can freely zoom in and out on any area of an image, as well as drag the image around in the viewer work area to examine every detail of the item displayed. No quality loss occurs during magnification, so your customers are provided the ultimate viewing experience at any level of image magnification.
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