Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I'm continuing to work on this as it's not live yet, and will change the buttons eventually
Another thing about the x-cart checkout process that's frustrating, is during checkout when they login they get put back into the cart, and essentially a step backwards in the checkout process, as opposed to a step forward. I've fixed that so they get moved forward. Considering checkout is one of the most important factors in determining a sale or a non-sale, this really is essential, and I'd be surprised if we didn't see this in a future version of x-cart