X-Cart FAQ
I'm often asked to answer the following questions:
- What measures are necessary to optimize the layout and make X-Cart more search engine friendly?
- My online store is based on X-Cart. I'd like to allow my customers to place phone order. What's the best way to do this?
- Is there a Russian interface for X-Cart?
- I need some tools for X-Cart to compare and pick products basing on their parameters. Can you recommend any solution?
- Is it possible to define related products for a particular product and list them on a product page?
- How can I optimize X-Cart to increase the performance and the speed of pages generation?
- Are table-based layout and built-in JavaScript codes bad for search engine spiders?
What measures are necessary to optimize the layout and make X-Cart more search engine friendly?
Such measures are aimed at three main targets:
- The increase of useful content ratio against the whole page code size as a result of decreasing the formatting code size;
- The increase of keywords weight as a result of using extra tags attributes and URL optimization;
- The increase of internal links weight as a result of excluding the unnecessary ones from indexing.
Therefore, it is necessary to:
- Move style definitions into separate CSS files;
- Convert large table codes into compact div-based layout (where possible);
- Move JavaScript codes into separate files;
- Rename product images using relevant keywords (e. g. some-key-words.jpg);
- Get rid of unnecessary self-links on all pages;
- Use noindex and nofollow attributes for links not pointing to important pages;
- Use keyword-rich phrases in ALT attributes for images used in website layout;
- Convert all relative links into absolute (full URLs);
- Setup both regular and XML sitemaps (not a layout issue, it's still a very important factor for indexing);
- Use other non-standard methods.
My online store is based on X-Cart. I'd like to allow my customers to place phone order. What's the best way to do this?
Phone orders can be enabled in two ways:
- Using "Phone order" payment method which allows a customer to complete an order through online shop and then just call and settle payment details with you. This feature is available in X-Cart by default. All you need to do is activate the corresponding payment method within the administration back-end.
- Another option is when a client calls directly to the office and the operators creates an order (for management and statistics) himself using the administration area.
For this purpose, you may use a ready-made module for order editing/management, X-AOM, which comes directly from X-Cart makers, or develop your own interface (in case some special adapted forms are needed to optimize and speedup order processing).
Is there a Russian interface for X-Cart?
At present, a well-thought Russian interface is only available for the front-end (customer area). However, I'm working hard on a translation of administration area and it is planed to make in available in a couple of months.
I need some tools for X-Cart to compare and pick products basing on their parameters. Can you recommend any solution?
There is a ready-made add-on module from X-Cart called . Please, check .
Is it possible to define related products for a particular product and list them on a product page?
Yes, it is possible to do so.
How can I optimize X-Cart to increase the performance and the speed of pages generation?
- Be sure to use the static HTML catalog;
- It's possible to perform a site audit and find queries producing the heaviest load in order to optimize them;
- It's also possible to implement a simple caching system for generated pages;
- In case of very high server load it's necessary to optimize server-side configuration and setup a database caching system (memcache, for example).
Are table-based layout and built-in JavaScript codes bad for search engine spiders?
A part of search engine responsible for scanning is, overall, a syntax and semantic page analyzer. It means that this part processed information located on a web page in accordance with some algorhytm.
It can throw out the information which is not interesting for him and index only the data it considers important.
Scripts built into layout are not important for a search robot and, therefore, they will be ignored. But the thing is that search engines use some internal rules allowing them to save time on page processing.
And if a page is hard to analyze (by some parameter), the engine just stops the process and leaves a page. Therefore, we can say that building JavaScripts directly into code/layout does not make a web page more clear but, on the contrary, makes it harder for processing.
However, if a number of inclusions is not high, they won't affect the possibility of not indexing too much. So if a JavaScript code has to be used on a web pages, it can be, but your should minimize the number of inclusions and localize them in external files.
P. S. Thank you for your attention
P.S. SEO summary: I can offer you X-Cart modification, X-Cart adaptation and X-Cart customization.
P.P.S. Related wrong searches: "x cart", x cart, as x cart.