Many XCart Templates to Choose From. Which One?

Does the look of X Cart really matter?

It is the age-old question of form versus function. What is more important?  Well,with the recent emergence of products from Apple: the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, this question seems to have been settled.  They are both important. And customers are opting not only for the great functionality such devices offer, but also the way the feel in their hands, their look,and how they fit in their overall collection of objects.

E-commerce is no different

Try to offer your visitors lots of functionality but a lousy looks and they hardly even bother going through your store.  Show them a great design but a with poor shopping experience and are likely to click away to the nearest competitor.  And so store owners need both.

One side of the equation has been solved

X cart comes out-of-the-box with functionality and features set that meet the needs of the majority of Web store owners. For the other 10%, X cart comes with open source which allows skilled developers to customize and modify the cart to any specific requirement.

Similarly, X-cart is based on a template model which allows to modify the looks of the site in creative and imaginative ways.

It takes two

Like most things in nature (pro)creation requires the cooperation and coordination of 2 living beings.  In the X-cart world they are a creative graphic designer and a proficient X-Cart programmer.  The first one is responsible to design the look which wows visitors into the store; the latter is necessary to fit that design into the X-Cart templating system.  They are both needed to breathe life into an otherwise boring X cart-based store.

What are my options?

• Stay with the plain-vanilla X-Cart skins that come with the software.  The risk is that your store would like like many other stores out there.  Not good.
• Buy a ready-made template.  There are several template sites out there that will sell a pre-made templates.  Some can be lightly modified (like changing your logo) but unless you buy the template exclusively, other shop owners can buy the exact-same template to be used in their store.
• Have a designer create a theme for your store, then have a professional X-Cart programmer convert it to a skin.  That's one of the best choices, as you can get a unique look for your store.  The negative in that approach might be that the designer needs to know a few things about X-Cart and the programmer needs to know a few things about graphic design.
• Have the design and the conversion to skin handled by one team who is already experienced with X-Cart template design.  That's the best you can get as any issues in the conversion process are minimal due to the team already experience working together and working on X-Cart.