Smart X Cart Skins Can Propel Your Store to the Next Level
The secret is out - good design normally enhances the visitor's experience. Everything else being equal (price, selection, etc.) - this can lead directly to more conversion. Sales, sign up, brand awareness - whatever your goal is.
Good X Cart design usually means a well-planned X-Cart skin
Layout, navigation, color selection, fonts, smart use of white space, location of key elements - all these factors have direct effect on the visit of your shopper. The principles of good design are known for quite some time and yet you still probably run into sites which are hard to navigate, provide no focal point, coherent message, or identified branding altogether.
Your store needs to be different
Leave the bad the design to others and work with a qualified team to bring the best in your brand forward while enhancing your shopper (and later your customer) experience. Good design tends to bring your visitors again for more browsing, searches, and eventually sales.
What is a good XCart skin worth to you?
You can decide to stick with the plain vanilla Xcart skins (plus some minor modifications like changing the logo and tagline). Or you can purchase a ready made template from a growing number of template-selling sites. Yes, it is a step above the original skin. At the same time you do not get exclusivity and your visitor may well run into other stores featuring this or similar designs. Differentiation? Not here.
Finally there is the custom skin approach. It normally involves 2 steps.
- Creating a look (comp) by a creative graphic designer which will give your store the unique image you are trying to bring about
- Converting the comp into an X-Cart skin by a skilled X-Cart programmer
This combination of skills enable your store to stand out from the competition, while enabling all the rich functionality of X Cart into this new design.
The result?
A store which attracts shoppers, gives them a memorable experience, entice them to complete the sale, and then - come back again and again for more.
The question is not whether you can afford one, but rather if in this age of increased competition can you afford not to have one?
Sounds simple? Maybe
While X-cart is excellent in terms of feature set and capabilities, it is rather challenging for developers. It takes an experienced PHP programmer to work in this environment for a while to know how to a. make the required modifications and b. not destroy by mistake working parts of the program. Done right - the results can be remarkable. Hand it to the wrong developer, and you can agonize over that decision for a long time.
Our X-cart skin services
Real X Cart have creative designers and highly experienced X-Cart programmers and developers that design and implement your next-generation store image. We can help you on several levels, based on your budget and vision.
- Modify your existing skin to better meet your brand. These are commonly light weight changes that can be done fairly quickly and inexpensively. May not give you that unique look but still could be better than a bland appearance.
- Customize a purchased template. To the extent they allow it, pre-made template can be somewhat modified to fit your store desired color scheme, fonts, and other design elements. IT can be assessed on a case-by-case basis and frequeently changes that seem straightforward are, well, not so simple to implement under the constraints of X-Cart. Furhter, as mentioned before you are likely not to get exclusive look to the extent you want since the same template can be sold to other stores.
- Have one of our designer-programmer teams create a unique skin - just for your store. That's the most desired objecive, although admittedly the costlier of the three. The dividends you reap, though, can surpass that cost many times over and relatively quickly.
Final words
Find someone else or do it with Real X Cart, our recommendation is to dress up your store with a custom skin. Yes, it is not cheap, but if your plans are more than just short term, this investment can be one of the bertter decisions (apart from choosing XCart) you've made for your online business.
We can be reached here, or by filling our online Quote Form.