X-Cart Mod #1: Follow-up Autoresponder for X-Cart by Magnetic One

Did you know it cost 6 times as much to sell something to a new customer than a current one?   Did you also know that 68% of all business lost is lost from apathy after the sale?

The follow-up autoresponder prevents you from becoming victim of those statistics and helps boost your profits in several ways.

WHAT IT DOES:

The follow-up autoresponder allows you to send pre-written e-mails, automatically, to your customers “X” number of days after they place a sale, fill out a contact form, or completes a custom action you define.

There are all types of macros available at your disposal including the item(s) they ordered, customer information (name, address, etc) and even recommendations based on what the customer already ordered.

HOW THIS BENEFITS YOU:

In addition to increased sales there can be other key benefits: testimonials & customer feedback.

Many times customers will respond to your e-mails because if designed correctly, they should look and feel like a personal e-mail written directly by you.

These responses are invaluable in their use as testimonials (ask permission first), better customer inisight, and the opportunity to amend a problem that they might have never contacted you about (or used your business again!).

Example:

Let’s say you are selling laptops.  With the follow-up responder you can create a campaign (this should tie into your Marketing Plan) along the lines of:

Email 1: Thank You
Email 2: Checking in & Software Recommendation
Email 3: 10 Laptop Tips & Ram Upgrade Recommendation

Here you have a three touch follow-up.  The first e-mail you send goes out 15 days after their order is shipped and expresses your genuine thanks for their business and ordering “laptop” (which the follow-up responder will enter the exact laptop they ordered).  You can also state that you hope their expectations were met and if they need anything not to hesitate in contacting you.  Finally you will want to add a note that you will check in on them in two weeks (or three, etc).  For bigger impact the signature should be from the president if possible.

The second e-mail is where you again thank them for their business and check in on their satisfaction.  In this e-mail you can lightly suggest that other customers who bought “laptop” also enjoyed the following software items to greatly increase their productivity so I thought I’d share them with you.

Your final e-mail should include some relevant, HELPFUL content about their new laptop and then possibly recommend a RAM upgrade if they are looking for more performance (or maybe a new mouse, etc).

As you can see the ability to highly target and speak directly to your customers opens the revolving door of profitable, repeat business.  Some planning coupled with the power of technology goes a long way.

X-Cart Mod#2: Multiple Product Templates Package for X-Cart

Testing, testing, testing.  I’m sure you have heard of the value of testing important elements throughout your site with something like Google Website Optimizer. The Multiple Product Templates package for X-Cart is a great mod for making integration much easier.  It also allows you display your product(s) in their best possible vantage point.

WHAT IT DOES:

The Muliple Product Templates Packages for X-Cart lets you create different layouts for each of your products and categories.  This is done by allowing multiple “product.tpl”‘ files for each product you want a custom template for.  Same thing with categories.

HOW THIS BENEFITS YOU:

As mentioned above this mod is the trick to using Google Website Optimizer successfully.  In addition you get to present your product(s) in the best way possible instead of having them all squeeze into one “template” for a more personal experience with your customers.

Example:

Let’s continue with the computer store from above.  Perhaps they have a ‘Desktops’ category and a ‘Laptop’ Category.  For the desktops they want to display products in a 3 column format and for laptops, their site specialty, they want the single column format with the short description.  Multiple Product Templates Package makes this possible.  They could also use different size thumbnails on the desktops category and laptop category.

As you can see the range is quite broad at both the category level and product level.  This customization allows you to answer the individual questions your customers have about each product group and category, without over-cluttering your product pages by having them on the same “product.tpl” file.

I think the reason many people may not have this mod is its difficulty to explain properly – especially if you are not doing the web designing aspect of X-Cart yourself.  WebsiteCm has a 14 day return policy so you can try it out first hand to get a better picture if needed.

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Misconception#1: Google AdWords tracking and Google Analytics tracking are the same thing.

Both Google AdWords and Google Analytics use two DIFFERENT methods of capturing and reporting conversions – each which require their own special tracking script installed on your receipt / thank you page.

The Google AdWords Conversion Script (installation instructions available here) is used for reporting conversions in your AdWords Dashboard. The information your AdWords Conversion Script can report is simply:

a.) If there was a sale
b.) Amount of the sale (viewable in your AdWords Reports)

This is important when evaluating your AdWords account performance and will help you build on campaigns that are successful while optimizing or trimming down those that are not.

Google Analytics e-commerce tracking is a powerful reporting script that captures more relevant data – product name(s), shipping revenue, category, product revenue & integrates it throughout your reports. This information is the backbone of your analytics reporting and should be used when evaluating any website or online marketing decisions.

Misconception#2: Successful conversion tracking depends on the X-Cart order status

Google AdWords and Analytics tracking are completely independent of x-carts order processing system. Changing your order status from ‘Processed’ to ‘Complete’ does not update or modify the conversion information for Google AdWords or Analytics.

In order for a conversion to be successfully recorded your visitor MUST visit the ‘Receipt / Thank You’ page since that is where the tracking scripts are stored on your site. If a visitor leaves your site (say to a 3rd party payment processor like PayPal), completes the order – but DOES NOT return to the receipt page of your store after paying that sale will not be counted as a conversion.

For Paypal there is a way to automatically send your customers to the receipt page after completing a transaction. This will help you capture more transactions via Google Analytics (assuming it is properly configured – which it is not out of the box).

To enable this do the following:

1. Login to PayPal and click My Account -> Profile

2. In the right hand column click ‘Website Payment Preferences’

3. Turn on the first option ‘Auto Return’ and in the Return URL place

http://www.YOURDOMAINHERE.com/cart.php?mode=order_message&orderids=

That’s it. Place a test order to verify.

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Tracking your internal site search engine is a great way to optimize your e-commerce store. The standard X-Cart reporting of site search does very little in helping you better analyze your visitor patterns.

You can uncover more actionable data by including Site Search in your Google Analytics reports. For more help on actionable data checkout the Top 5 Actionable Analytics Reports For X-Cart post.

To accurately track internal site search for X-cart (using X-Cart’s standard search engine) you must follow two steps.

NOTE: If you are using Altered Carts Smart Search module you can skip to step 2.

Installation

1. First we must modify the code.

Navigate to skin1/modules/Google_Analytics/ga_code.tpl and replace those contents with the following tpl:

X-Cart ga_code.tpl for Google Analytics Site Search

Be sure to replace UA-XXXXXX-X with your actual Analytics account number.

Save the new file and upload it over the old (after backing up).

2. Now login to your Google Analytics account

• Click the ‘Edit’ link next to your profile and on the next page in the first box click the upper right corner that says ‘Edit’

Adjust your Site Search settings so they match below

All set! To view your new Site Search data navigate to Content->Site Search inside your profile

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