X-cart is a shopping cart software program that allows you to manage an online store. It was designed to work with MySQL database system. It’s a commercial program, so you need to pay if you want to get it. The cost at the time of writing this is $115. However, if you have the money, it’s worth the investment. It offers customer support for the beginner and plenty of features for the advanced user.
Like many shopping cart programs, it has modules which you can install separately to add functions to your website. Despite what many people think, modules vary from one shopping cart software to another, with X-cart modules having one of the widest ranges of features in the market. Let’s see some types of X-cart modules that people often find advantageous.
- Customer features modules. This is one of the areas where X-cart modules shine, specially against open source shopping carts. There are modules for customer testimonials, featured products, glossaries, images and image enlarging, mini –carts, newsletter, news, polls, popular products, printer friendly mode, etc. All of these add something extra to the purchasing experience of the client, although their number and placement should be planned in order to avoid overwhelming the page with features and making it confusing.
- Customer reward modules. Customer loyalty should be rewarded in order to make customers feel not only important, but that every time they buy they are advancing to a bigger target. X-cart modules allow you to incorporate the following features: coupons, gift certificates, membership to the website including membership areas and products, discounts, reward points, and many, many types of special offers.
- Administration modules. It’s not only about the customer, but also for making things easy for the owner/administrator of the site as well. Such modules allow for the importing and exporting of products, creation of different types of statistics, and information on the state of the stocks.
Of course, those are just the most important X-cart modules. There are many others that make life easier for the administrator as well as give more options to the buyer. For example, X-cart has compatibility with every single payment gateway, so a customer can always pay regardless of his or her method of payment. It also offers every single type of security feature, making your transactions as safe as possible and reducing the risk of fraud to a minimum (there isn’t anything that’s 100% sure on the Internet).
If you plan to have an online presence on the long term, you should consider buying X-cart. It will cost you, but it will be worth it in the long run.
