The way your customers will see products and add them to the shopping cart on the storefront will depend on the settings specified in the Customer Zone Settings section of the "Cart & Checkout" page in the Admin area (Store Setup > Cart & Checkout, General tab):

The settings that you can configure in this section are as follows:

This setting allows you to specify whether out-of-stock products should be visible to customers on the storefront.

The following options are available:

This setting is used for stores with the Check payment method set up. It defines whether the payment information form provided to the customer who has chosen to pay by check should include a field for check number or not.
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This setting defines the way subcategories will display on the category pages in the storefront. Available formats are as follows:

This setting does not apply to root (top-level) categories. A store admin can adjust the appearance of the root categories on the store’s Home page via the option Root category listings format on the Content > Frontpage page of your store Admin area.

This setting allows you to control the default display order for the products within a category.

The following formats are available:

This setting specifies the default sort order for products displayed in a search results list in the storefront.

If your store uses the default X-Cart product search feature, the list of available options here is the same as for the above setting "Default order to sort products within a category."

If CloudSearch powers your store’s search, you do not need to adjust this option because CloudSearch automatically sets the default sort order for search results to relevance.

This setting allows you to set the default display mode for category products' listing on a related category page in the storefront (does NOT affect bestsellers, featured products, etc.):

Be warned that the new value will automatically display for the new customers only (both registered and anonymous). However, if a customer has already visited a category listing page, the original display mode is saved in session data and will remain unchanged.

If you want to check the changes you have made, open the storefront in your browser's incognito mode.

This setting allows you to specify the number of products displayed on a category page by default. Store visitors will be able to change the number of products displayed per page if they wish. The option allows you to set the number of products they see initially before making any changes.

For example, if we set this to 3, your online store will display only three products per page by default. For the rest of the products, the list pagination will be provided:

This setting allows you to limit the maximum number of products that can display on a category page.

For the grid view, the value should exceed the exponential growth of the value of "Products per category listing page" at least by one. If the value is less than multiple, a user will not be able to change the limit.

For example, if we set the value to 7, a user cannot change the number of products displayed per page to a number larger than 6.

See the screenshot below: The number of products currently displayed on a category page is 3. A user can switch this to 6, which is less than 7, but cannot switch it to 7 or more.

This setting allows you to set the minimum order amount a shopper must reach before being allowed to check out.

This setting allows you to set the maximum order amount. A shopper will be allowed to check out only if their order subtotal amount is less than this value.

This setting allows limiting the number of product units a buyer can order at a time. If a buyer attempts to add to the cart more product units than specified here, your online store will add only the allowed quantity.

This setting affects the add-to-cart behavior for products with product options or variants.

When this option is enabled, after adding a product to the cart, a shopper is redirected to the cart page to see the item they just added.

When the option is disabled, the shopper remains on the same page after adding a product to the cart.

This setting is not compatible with X-Cart’s add-on Add to Cart PopUp.

This setting defines whether the "Add to cart" buttons should display for products in a grid view or not.

The screenshot below demonstrates products in grid view with the “Add to cart” buttons enabled:

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The setting affects only the grid view and has no impact on the list and table modes. For the latter, the "Add to cart" button displays for all products regardless of the value of this setting.

If this option is enabled, a not signed in shopper will see a page with an option to sign in to their account or to create a new one when clicking the “Checkout” button:

When this option is disabled, the page does not display, and the shopper goes straight to the store’s checkout page.

The system recognizes a user who attempts to check out with an email address already existing in the database based on their email address and prompts them to sign in if they wish to.

Your online store allows customers to accept the store's terms and conditions agreement explicitly (clickwrap) and implicitly (browsewrap). The "Terms and conditions agreement type" field allows a store admin to determine how customers accept the store's service policy.

If you set the field value as clickwrap, customers in your online store will require to express manifestation of assent to the terms of service by ticking a checkbox before placing an order.

Browsewrap agreement adds a special note to the store's checkout page and does not require an action from a customer to affirm their consent.

The field specifies a relative URL of the static page with your store’s "Terms and conditions" page (enabled by the Simple CMS module).

If the field is empty (for example, if the Simple CMS add-on is not installed), the system will use the default text of "Terms and conditions" stored in a language variable ?target=terms. The text will display in a popup at checkout. This functionality goes out-of-the-box, and the Simple CMS add-on is not required.

This field allows increasing the order number starting from which orders in your store will be numbered.

For example, if your store has just gone into production and does not yet have many orders, your first customers may be scared off by the order numbers they get. A business with order numbers like #1 or #2 may not seem trustworthy enough for new customers. To generate more trust, you can set this field, for example, to 103. Your next order will then be #103, and after that, you will get the order numbers #104, #105, etc.

In practice, you can set this value to any number. The only requirement is that this number must be greater than the latest order in your database.

When a new visitor comes to an X-Cart-based store for the first time, a “cart” is created for them in the store’s database. Since many visitors will leave the store without creating an account, it’s no use to store their carts forever. The setting “Cart TTL (days)” allows you to limit the time period for which anonymous shopping carts (carts of visitors who do not have an account) should be stored in the database. Anonymous carts older than the number of days specified here will be considered old (expired) and scheduled for deletion by the internal cron service (see the setting below).

The “cart” is stored for the respective user account's lifetime for visitors who become registered customers.

This setting allows you to enable/disable the use of your store’s internal cron service. This service schedules the run of certain maintenance tasks required to keep your store running smoothly and problem-free (like removing the expired shopping carts of visitors who do not have an account with your store or performing other tasks implemented via X-Cart modules) at the periodicity of once per 100 user sessions (i.e., every time after your store gets 100 unique visitors). Your store’s internal cron service is not related to console.php and does not require any external setup of the crontab on your system. If using the internal cron service causes performance problems for your store, we recommend disabling this option and using an external cron setup to run console.php.

This setting can be enabled to add a membership signup box on the customer profile details page. If a customer wishes to join a membership group, they will use that box to specify the member group they wish to join. After the customer’s profile details with the specified membership are saved, your online store will submit a membership signup request to the store administrator via an email notification. The administrator can then choose whether to approve or decline it.

Starting from X-Cart 5.4.0.x, the following setting is also available in this section:

This setting defines the lifespan of the “recent_login” cookie set by the store on a customer’s computer when they log in. While being stored, the cookie allows the customer to return to the store without re-entering their user authentication details (username and password).

Related pages: