X-Cart 5.5.1 Beta Release: Storefront API and More Features to Power Your Web Store
With new web standards regularly appearing in the eCommerce world, employing the latest features and practices is crucial for a sustainable website performance. With 20+ years of experience in eCommerce, the X-Cart team knows the importance of keeping up with the technologies.
We are glad to announce the new X-Cart 5.5.1.x beta release with the newly-launched and upgraded features to enhance your eCommerce website functionality and optimize your online store for conversions.
What’s New in X-Cart 5.5.1.x?
In this release, we looked harder at the ability to deliver flexible API-driven experiences for boosting your eCommerce website performance. The new X-Cart version comes with PHP 8.2 support, new Storefront API, accelerated product import, regular bug fixes and cleanups, and account and catalog management improvements.
The new X-Cart 5.5.1 release is now in beta testing. The stable version is expected to come out after the necessary testing and some more functionality updates to ensure the maximum reliability and a consistent customer experience.
As we add new features to the X-Cart functionality, we announce them in our Developer Changelog.
PHP 8.0-8.2 Support
X-Cart 5.5.1.x is fully compatible with PHP 8.0 and introduces support for the PHP 8.1- 8.2 versions for faster website performance, better compatibility with third-party apps, and enhanced security of your business’s web assets.
X-Cart Storefront API
The X-Cart Storefront API is designed to help business owners create a custom storefront, adding more room for creativity and allowing for adjusting the online store interface to their customers’ needs how and when they see fit.
Our Storefront API allows for using the latest and most appropriate frontend technology stack, which gives businesses more opportunities for functional extensibility achieved at lower development costs.
Why is it important?
The best thing about X-Cart Storefront API is that it allows for creating unique storefronts without being tied to one particular frontend framework. This opens up more opportunities for developers to use the stack of technologies that would deliver better outcomes with less input. As a result, business owners will get greater control over their website’s frontend side to craft a customer-centric and functional online store interface while also reducing development costs.
Furthermore, websites developed with the Storefront API show better page load time and deliver a smoother customer experience, which makes the online store more SEO-friendly and ensures higher Google rankings.
The crucial benefits of an eCommerce website built based on the Storefront API include the following:
- cost-efficient extensibility
- optimized page speed loads
- higher website performance
- flexible user experience
In a nutshell: X-Cart Storefront API will give your eCommerce business the desired flexibility to design and adjust an appealing storefront while dominating Google rankings and reining in the development costs.
X-Cart Frontapp
To demonstrate the X-Cart Storefront API capabilities, we’ve created our X-Cart Frontapp. This is a demo storefront based on the Next.js 13 application framework, which gives the Frontapp the look and feel of a web app. The smooth performance helps the X-Cart Frontapp have consistently healthy core web vital scores. Powered by the PWA technology it can also be loaded to mobile devices and used as a regular mobile application.
Side note: X-Cart Frontapp can be used as a starter template for designing your own custom storefront
Improved Import Performance
X-Cart users will now have two import options. In addition to the data import via the admin panel, sellers can now use a new import option via the web server console. Let’s look at both methods to determine the best option in your particular case.
For small and middle-sized catalogs, online sellers can use the traditional trusted interface import, which is reliable, user-friendly, and quite familiar to them. However, while uploading millions of SKUs from external sources, the data transfer through the admin panel may lack speed and convenience. This is where the new console import comes into play.
The maximized performance of this import method is achieved by dispatching the file to several workers operating in parallel, which accelerates the data transfer.
With the new X-Cart parallel import option, you can accelerate product data upload by 700% compared to the time it would have taken to transfer products via interface import. This is paramount when importing large complex catalogs.
Other Improvements
On top of regular fixes and cleanups come some functionality improvements, such as:
- image upload widget with SVG support, allowing sellers to safely upload SVG files to their website’s media library and use them like any other image
- new phone number input that converts a phone number into the international format, and the validation introduced for the phone number field prevents potential billing errors
- enhancements to admin area that include a new header design and new table styles
Bottomline
With every X-Cart release, our eCommerce solution becomes more advanced in core code, security, and performance. With the API-driven architecture, updated PHP libraries, and UX enhancements, we are working to create maximum growth opportunities for your eCommerce business. Stay tuned for more features and updates in the stable version coming soon.