We’re glad you chose X-Cart! Let’s get your new store up and running.

Whether you’re moving online from a physical shop or just starting your business, launching your automotive eCommerce site with X-Cart is easier than you might think.

This guide will walk you through the key steps to get started. We recommend focusing on these priorities first — they’ll unlock features and tools to help you and your team get the most out of X-Cart.

Some steps will link to detailed articles — don’t forget to return here after each one to keep moving forward.

Now, buckle up — it’s time to shift your business into high gear 🏎️💨!

After you sign up with X-Cart, our team will send you a link to your website along with your login and password. Use these to access your X-Cart Admin.

After logging in and exploring your store, you can replace the temporary address (example.x-shops.com) with your own domain (example.com) to give your store a more professional appearance.

You can skip this step for now and update it anytime later.

Each X-Cart store comes with a set of demo data (products, categories, orders, etc.) for testing purposes. Before adding your own products, we recommend deleting this demo data.

Once you're ready, start adding the products you want to sell and organizing them into categories. Depending on how many products you offer, this may be the most time-consuming part of setting up your X-Cart store.

You have three main options for adding products:

You can also combine these methods depending on your business model and preferences.

X-Cart offers core functionality out of the box, with additional features provided through installable add-ons. You can expand your store’s capabilities with add-ons for payments, marketing, shipping, fraud prevention, and more.

All available add-ons can be browsed, installed, and managed right from your store’s admin. If you’re unsure which ones you’ll need now, you can easily install them later when you better understand your needs.

The way your store looks shapes the first impression customers have of your brand.

Start by picking a built-in themes or explore more design templates in our App Store. From there, make it your own:

To preview your storefront, click View in the top-left corner of your X-Cart admin.

Add key details about your business in your Store Profile — like your company name, email, website, address, and phone number. This information helps customers reach you for support and is automatically added to invoices.

To start collecting payments, connect at least one payment method to your store.

X-Cart supports a variety of offline and online payment methods including X-Cart Pay, Stripe, PayPal, Square, and others.

To get started, go to the Payments section in your X-Cart Admin and choose the provider that works best for you.

Next up — taxes. To stay compliant with regional laws, you’ll need to set up the correct tax rates.

You can add them manually or use an add-on like Avalara or TaxJar to automate everything. Check out our guides to see what works best for you.

Next, choose how you want to ship your products.

You can set flat rates or connect with postal or delivery services like FedEx, UPS, and DHL to display real-time shipping rates at checkout. Learn more about shipping.

Before going live, make sure your store is ready for customers. Use this checklist to catch common issues:

It’s better to get a second opinion not to overlook any detail. Ask your friends or family to look with a fresh eye on your store, place an order and give you the feedback.

After you’ve confirmed your store’s appearance and functionality, ensure that your storefront is visible to external visitors by setting the “Storefront is” toggle in the Admin area header to On.