Archive for month: April, 2024

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/top-ux-tools-for-designers/

User Experience (UX) is one of the most important fields of design, so it should come as no surprise that there are a multitude of tools available to help UX designers succeed.

Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/ikas-review

Although finding a suitable ecommerce platform for your business is essential, it can also be time-consuming. There are so many popular solutions out there – Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Wix, to name a few!

However, there are also emerging platforms worth considering for their unique offers, and this review does precisely that.

We’re zoning in on one such ecommerce solution designed to suit businesses of all sizes: ikas.

In this ikas review, I’ll discuss the features, pros, cons, and prices of this platform and then provide a step-by-step guide for using it.

That’s a ton of information to get through, so let’s make a start on this ikas review!

ikas Review: My Bottom Line Upfront

If you haven’t got time to read through my entire ikas review, here’s a quick summary:

ikas is an ecommerce platform suitable for all business sizes, but it places particular emphasis on small and medium-sized businesses and solopreneurs.

Users can create online stores within minutes without any technical knowledge or expertise with ikas. You can sell physical and digital products on your ikas store and manage omnichannel selling on various marketplaces, including Amazon (all from the convenience of a single dashboard).

It’s worth noting that your marketplace inventory automatically updates when you make a sale on your ecommerce website.

ikas offers a free 7-day trial and three price plans after that. Each plan includes a generous number of features, including free customer support, 16 contemporary website themes, an SSL certificate, unlimited product uploads, site traffic, and web space.

Themes are customizable and can be modified using the ikas drag-and-drop theme editor. ikas also offers a range of marketing and automation features on each price plan.

Abandoned cart reminders and marketing promotions (e.g., 3 for the price of 2) are available on all plans.

What is ikas?

Founded in 2017, ikas has offices in Berlin and Aalen, Germany, as well as Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. It’s primarily aimed at European and Turkish eCommerce entrepreneurs and companies, and at the time of writing, 6,000 businesses use it to fuel their websites.

Its website has testimonials from some of its prominent customers, including OzNatur ,LSTNR clothing, and Hofkueche.

ikas’s site tells us that you can “easily build your eCommerce website in three straightforward steps” and boost sales using its marketing automation features. We’ll explore this in more detail below.

Every aspect of your e-commerce site is managed from a single dashboard, and you don’t need any technical knowledge to use the platform.

Selling products from your ikas e-commerce store is seamless, and omnichannel selling is just as easy – this includes physical stores and online marketplaces such as Amazon and Zalando.

You can sell physical and digital products using ikas, and it’s also worth highlighting that ikas is powered by AWS servers across Europe.

Each price plan includes a free SSL certificate, PCI-secure payments, and unlimited product, traffic, and web space.

ikas Features

Now we’ve covered the basics, let’s turn our attention to ikas’s core features:

Website Themes: There are 16 image-led, contemporary, and attractively designed themes to choose from.

One-Page Checkout: Each ikas theme offers a one-page checkout, i.e., customers can complete purchases from the convenience of one page. This includes adding their name, address, shipping method, and payment.

Theme Editor: You can customize these themes using ikas’s drag-and-drop template editor. More specifically, you can edit images, text, videos, and other content to suit your brand. You can also SEO-optimize themes (i.e., add meta tags, titles, and descriptions).

ikas App Store: Accessible via your ikas dashboard, Integrations are split into the following categories:

Fulfillment and Logistics: integrates with SendCloud

Accounting: integrates with Zero and PDF Invoices

Marketplace: integrates with Printful

International Commerce: ikas integrates with UPS, OPLOG, Navlungo, and Sendcloud. This lets you provide customers with localized product prices, website translation, and currencies. You can also offer shoppers the following payment options: Stripe, PayPal, and Klarna.

Digital Marketing Integrations: With just a few clicks, you can integrate your ikas store with Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, and Universal Analytics. You can also add your TikTok Pixel and Facebook Pixels to your store. Plus, you have access to conversion APIs.

Dashboard: From the convenience of your dashboard, you can manage all your Amazon and Zalando orders, as well as your eCommerce website and physical stores. Every sale you make is automatically logged on the dashboard. So, if you make a sale via your ikas eCommerce site, your Amazon and Zalando inventory is automatically updated.

Reports: From your dashboard, you can create 36 different reports, including conversion reports over various periods, products frequently bought together, best-selling product categories, and more.

Unlimited Product Uploads: You can upload and sell as many products as you want. Simply add products via your dashboard and import products via a CSV or XLSX file. You can add products as a single product upload or as variant products (i.e., multiple products with different attributes such as color and size).

Marketing and Automation: The cart reminder feature automatically generates targeted SMS and email campaigns if customers abandon their carts. These campaigns can include discount codes and encourage shoppers to return to their carts to complete their purchases. There are also ikas’s cross-selling and up-selling options, which allow you to offer discounted and non-discounted products on your checkout page.

Advanced Product Search: Among other search settings, you can create filters to help customers find products easily on your online store. You can also set keywords for products you wish to highlight when customers search.

Wish Lists: You can allow customers to create wish lists of products for future browsing and possible purchase.

SEO Optimization via Meta Title and Description Length Checker: See if your meta tags, meta product titles, and meta descriptions are the ideal length (50 to 60 characters for a tag and 120-158 for a description). Simply type in your proposed meta title and description, and the tool will show it in red if it’s too short and green if it’s an acceptable length. You can also see what your meta titles and descriptions look like on Google Desktop View and Google Mobile View.

Unlimited Site Traffic: ikas doesn’t impose bandwidth restrictions, allowing you to drive as much traffic as you want to your site (including on busy eCommerce holidays such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday).

Unlimited Web Space: There aren’t any limitations on the number or size of the website files you can store on ikas’s data centers.

ikas Pricing

Aside from its free seven-day trial, ikas offers three pricing plans. All prices are in euros, including VAT, and can be paid using Stripe or PayPal:

Starter: €25/mo paid annually or €35/mo month-to-month

Hero: €69/mo paid annually or €99/mo month-to-month (this is the most popular plan)

All-in-One: €199/mo paid annually or €299/mo month-to-month

All plans offer the following:

A “lightning-fast” e-commerce storefront

Free customer support

FreeSSL certificate

SEO optimization

Sales reports

Unlimited product uploads/sales, site visitors, and web space

16 website themes to choose from

One-page checkouts

Cart reminder campaigns

Wish lists

Product reviews

Access to digital marketing and online marketplace integrations

Returns management

You can sell physical and digital products worldwide

You can set shipping zones based on postcodes

Sell and manage in-store products

You can create pricing and shipping offers

Access to inventory management

However, the following features are per plan:

Starter Plan

Access all the above and:

5 employee accounts

3 stock locations (stores and warehouses)

Hero Plan

All the above and:

10 employee accounts

Several online shops

Send automated abandoned cart reminders (these can include discount codes) via email, SMS, and Whatsapp messages (Whatsapp is optional)

Product reviews – (customers can include photos)

Optional cross-selling and upselling features

Social login (customers can log into your website with their Google and Facebook accounts)

You can offer customizable products (i.e., customers can customize these products with their brand’s texts and graphics)

Extended campaign management

You can offer customers the option to ‘Click and collect.’

You can offer local delivery from your store during opening hours.

Amongst other things, you can send SMS notifications to customers about their order status.

Manage up to six stock locations (your warehouses and stores)

All-in-One Plan

You benefit from all of the above features, plus:

15 employee accounts

AI-fuelled product recommendations

Cart reminders via WhatsApp

10 stock locations

Advanced cross-selling and upselling

Extended product reviews

Advanced product search

Extended sales reports

Multicurrency online stores

B2B functions and tools

Lastly, ikas Premium is also an option. Prices aren’t available for this plan; instead, you have to complete a form with your details, and the ikas team will call you to negotiate a custom plan.

It offers everything in the ‘All-in-One’ plan, a dedicated Customer Account Manager, and the following perks:

Search result options: Create custom listing arrangements for search results according to your preferences.

Product bundles: Use AI to recommend product bundles that generate a higher purchase value

Advanced cross-selling: Suggest additional products to customers who have already completed a purchase

Advanced reports: Generate advanced conversion and inventory reports using more than 30 data points, including traffic sources, orders, addresses, sales channels, campaigns, and more.

Advanced integrations: These are available via the ikas App Store. Advanced integrations include Etsy, MailChimp, and Klaviyo.

ikas Pros and Cons

No ikas review would be complete without a quick pro-cons list:

Pros 👍
Cons 👎

Pros 👍

You can sell physical and digital products and, on some plans, in-store products.
You get lots of features for your money, even on the Starter plan
There are no limits to how many products you can sell
Omnichannel selling is easy
ikas’s templates (albeit a small list) are customizable, code-free, and attractive.
There’s a 7-day free trial.
You benefit from unlimited web space and website traffic.

Cons 👎

ikas’s website is light on information and self-help resources.
There’s a bit of a learning curve

Reviews and Support

As previously stated, ikas offers free support across all its plans, accessible via phone, and email. In addition, ikas users receive a free one-hour onboarding session with a member of the ikas customer care team.

However, self-help resources are almost non-existent; no video tutorials or guides exist. That said, there’s a blog with posts organized into categories, including Digital Commerce, E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship, and Social Media.

Plus, each feature page offers an FAQ section, which helps address common questions.

As for user reviews, I headed to a range of review platforms to see what people are saying about ikas:

G2 reviewers give ikas an overall rating of 4.4 out of five stars. Users praise that there aren’t any hidden fees, ikas’s speed, and its multilingual capabilities.

However, reviewers were less optimistic about the limited number of integrations and ikas’s prices.

Elsewhere, Capterra users give ikas a resounding 4.8 stars out of 5, liking its 365 days, 8am-10pm customer support, ease of use, and ikas’s wide range of features.

The negatives primarily revolve around the limited choice of templates and “lack of website management customization.”

Half Time Summary

Ding-ding! We’re halfway through my ikas review.

To summarize, ikas is a good contender for anyone looking for an alternative eCommerce platform to some of the bigger players like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix.

Its lowest-paid plan offers a good range of features and a seven-day free trial.

That said, template options and integrations are limited. Also, as there’s a lack of self-help resources, newbies may find ikas’s learning curve steeper than competing platforms like Wix or Shopify.

However, although ikas’s templates lack in number, the 16 available are attractive, code-free, and easily customizable, allowing you to create a beautiful storefront.

In addition, its dashboard is relatively easy to navigate, and I like that you can manage your eCommerce store, marketplace, and in-person sales in one place.

ikas User Guide

Moving on to the second half of my ikas review. I decided to try ikas to see if its assertion that you can set up “your very own online store” in “just three simple steps” was accurate.

These three steps are as follows:

Design your eCommerce website

Upload products to your website

Complete your eCommerce website

Obviously, you need to perform several additional actions within each step, not least setting up an account first!

ikas’s pricing page also states, “Setting up an ikas shop usually takes 1 to 3 days. The required duration depends on the number of products and the selected package.”

With that in mind, let’s take a look:

Setting up an Account

This part was easy. From ikas’s home page, click the “Start Free Trial” button and type in your:

First name

Last name

Store name

Email address

Phone number

Create a password

After which, click the purple “Create My Trial Store” button. ikas then asks a few more supplementary questions about the type of store you want to create (but you can skip these for now).

Then it’s straight to the ikas dashboard (as pictured below):

The left-side menu allows you to access all aspects of setting up and managing your store. Alternatively, you can click the purple store icon at the bottom of the left-side menu just above the “settings” icon.

Now, you need to complete the remaining four steps pictured above (the last being – make a sale!). So, with that said, let’s explore how to do that:

Add First Product/Import

Click the “Import” button on your dashboard. You’re then taken to a page where you can import products via CSV and XLSX files.

Alternatively, you can add products by clicking the “Add a Product button.” This populates two options: ‘Simple Product’ (i.e., you can add a product as a single item) or ‘Variant Product’ (i.e., you can add multiple products with different attributes, such as size and color).

In each instance, you’re taken to a page where you can add the necessary product information, including product title and type, price, image and/or video, description, SEO, and more.

Once done, you can move on to the next step.

Choose Your Theme and Edit Your Website

From your dashboard’s homepage, select the “Choose Your Theme and Edit” bar.

You’ll be taken to a theme customization page. Here, ikas shows a theme that might suit your store. If you don’t like it, click the “Add Theme” button to see the complete list of themes ikas offers.

Select a theme you like. You’ll then be asked to give the theme a name. Click “save,” and the theme will be installed and saved on your dashboard, from which you can start customizing it.

From the dashboard, click the “Customize the Theme” button.

You’re then taken to the editor. From the left-side toolbar, you can select various customization options, including editing the following:

Add text

Footers

Headers

Product slider

Email address

Banner

…And more.

You’ll also see an SEO button at the top right of the left-side menu. Click that to add SEO titles and descriptions. With each action you perform, remember to click the purple “Save” button in the top left-hand corner.

Once you’ve edited your themes and are happy with them, you can return to your dashboard homepage.

To access your themes at any time, click on your store icon in the left-hand menu of your dashboard and then click on “My Themes”.

Configure Payment Settings

Click the “Configure Payment Settings” bar from your dashboard’s homepage.

Then, click the “Add Payment Method” button.

You can then add the payment methods you wish to offer customers. You can choose from the following:

PayPal

Stripe

Payment on delivery (cash)

Pay on delivery (credit card)

EFT

Mollie

United Payment TR

Payriff AZ

Paratika TR

Sipay TR

Klarna

Apcopay MALTA

Param

Please update the image, wedon’t have adyen anymore

In each instance, click on the payment method(s) you plan to offer. You’re then taken to a page to connect your account with your preferred payment gateway with your ikas account (as illustrated in the screenshot below). In this instance, we selected Stripe:

Other Settings Worth Noting

In addition to the core steps listed above, you’ll likely need to do a few other things to get your store up and running.

Although these steps aren’t included in ikas’s quick guide on your dashboard’s homepage, you’ll still likely need to complete the following:

Customer Settings

From your dashboard’s homepage, select the “Choose Your Theme and Edit” bar.

From the left-side menu, click “Customer Settings.”

From here, you can edit your checkout page settings. For example, you can specify what customers have to fill out on your checkout page and make specific fields mandatory, such as inputting a contact mobile number or their postcode.

On this page, you can also offer customers the choice to:

Have their order gift packaged

Add a coupon code

Checkout as a guest

Accept your terms and conditions

Set up Shipping Settings

Again, select the “Choose Your Theme and Edit” bar from your dashboard’s homepage.

From the left-side menu, click “Shipping Settings.” Here, you can add your stock locations. You can also customize your “Shipping Rules”. This includes:

Which countries you will ship from

Which delivery methods you’ll offer (either standard shipping or fast delivery

Shipping rules (For example, automatically offering free delivery after a customer spends over a set amount. Or setting paid delivery if the customer spends less than the limit you’ve set)

Once you’ve created your shipping rules, they’re visible on the main shipping page of your dashboard.

You can also manage customer returns by configuring your “Return Settings”. Click “Edit Refund Settings” to create rules for accepting returns.

Automations

Again, select the “Choose Your Theme and Edit” bar from your dashboard’s homepage.

From the left-side menu, click on “Automations.” From here, you can set up your:

Abandoned cart settings: To re-engage with shoppers via email when they leave their checkout before completing the payment/

Back-in-stock alerts: Notify customers by email when their desired product is back in stock.

Product reviews: Email customers post-purchase to ask them to evaluate your products

Money transfer reminders: Email customers to remind them to settle their unpaid orders

Notifications

You guessed it: from your dashboard’s homepage, select the “Choose Your Theme and Edit” bar.

Then, from the left-side menu, select “Notifications.”

From here, you can customize all your email settings and notifications:

Starting with Email Settings:

Click on “Edit Email Settings,” there, you can add the email addresses to which order and return requests are sent. You can also select your language preference (English, Turkish, or German).

Click “Save” once done.

Returning to the “Notifications” page (illustrated above), you can customize emails with your own branding and content when sending customers notifications relating to:

Orders

Shipment

Refunds

Customers

Automations

(Within each of the above categories, you’ll see a list of all the various emails you can send to customers)

For example, under orders, there are ten different types of emails you can customize and send to customers, including:

Order canceled

Order created

Order delivered

Payment approved

…And so on.

With Shipping notifications, there are three email drafts you can customize:

Order ready for shipment

Order fulfilled

Order tracking information

With refund notifications, there are four email drafts you can customize:

Order refunded

Order refund request

Order refund request approved

Order refund request rejected

With customer notifications, there are two email drafts you can customize:

Reset password

The customer’s welcome message when they create an account

With automations, there are four email drafts you can customize:

Abandoned checkout

Customer review

Product back in stock reminder

Money transfer reminder

All you need to do is click on the edit icon for the email type you’re interested in. You’ll be taken to the customization page for that email.

From here, you can customize the emails, as shown in the example below:

Once you’ve finished customizing your email, click the purple “Save” button at the top right corner of the screen.

Manage Settings

From your dashboard’s homepage, click the “Settings” icon at the bottom of the left-hand menu.

This takes you to what’s essentially your store’s back office. From this page, you can edit the following:

Merchant Settings: You can edit settings your store’s settings, including your address, preferred currency, and time zone, and define order number and currency formatting rules.

Stock Locations: You can define multiple stock locations. Your price plan, however, limits you to the number of locations it allows.

Tax Settings: You can define country-based tax rates and specify whether product pages include or exclude taxes.

Filters and Search: Among other settings, customize the filters customers see on your online store’s search function.

Staff Members: When you add new staff members to your store, you can assign different permissions to these accounts.

Store Activity History: View and filter the actions performed by staff members or applications.

Shipping Template: Customize your shipping label’s information and paper size.

Languages and Translations: You can add a new language to your store and perform bulk or individual translations for said language.

Customer Attributes: Customize the fields used in your registration form to gather more customer information.

Email Domain Settings: Use your own domain to increase email deliverability.

Store Transfer Settings: Import your customers and products from other platforms like Wix.

Managing Orders

All order management can be done from the left-side toolbar on your dashboard’s homepage. Just click “Orders.”

From here, you can submit orders, collect payments, and check the status of your orders.

Under the “Orders” tab, you’ll see a sub-menu listing the following options:

Drafts

Abandoned Cart

Tags: Create order tags to help you manage orders; for example, mark orders as urgent

Managing Customers

From the left-sidebar on your dashboard’s homepage, click “Customers.”

Here, you can manage all of your customers’ information, including their name, address, email contact details, phone number, and order history. Customers will automatically appear here when they have ordered from your store.

You can also add customers by either clicking:

Import: (Add customers via a CSV or XLSX file)

Add New Customer: (Manually add the aforementioned customer details for individual customers).

In addition, you can add and manage customer groups. These are great for targeting specific customers with tailored marketing campaigns, sending bulk emails, and running more granular reports:

Under the “Customers” tab on the left-side menu, click “Customer Groups.”

Click on the purple “Add Customer Group” button. You can then perform one of two actions:

Manually add customers to a group.

Create a dynamic customer group by automatically grouping customers who meet specific criteria (e.g., their preferred language, their spending limit, and so on).

Blog

Last but not least, you can also add a blog to your eCommerce store.

From your dashboard’s homepage, select the “Choose Your Theme and Edit” bar.

Click the “Blog” button at the bottom of the left-side bar.

Select the purple “New Blog post” button. From here, you’re taken to a page where you can add your post’s content and your:

Blog title

A short description of the blog post

Image

Author name

Category

Tag

Language

SEO titles and descriptions

Once done, click “Save.”

Extensions

To add the extensions mentioned above (Google Analytics et al.), click “Extensions” in the left-side menu of your dashboard. You can add any or all of the extensions to your store.

Install Apps and Sales Channels

From the left side toolbar of your dashboard’s homepage, click “App Store.” You’ll see the apps we referred to earlier that ikas integrates with. Each has an “install” button.

Alternatively, to integrate with other sales channels, return to the left toolbar of your dashboard’s homepage and click on the + next to “Sales Channels.” You can then add the following:

POS (point of sale) for your physical store

B2B Wholesale (Online) Store: Set unique prices for customers or customer groups and allow only authorized users to see your products or prices.

ikas Review: My Final Thoughts

That brings us to the end of my ikas review! Hopefully, my ikas review has provided plenty of food for thought about ikasIkas’s offerings, prices, features, and, importantly, how it works.

Although ikasIkas is less well-known, it offers subscribers many features, even on its cheapest plan.

In addition, the dashboard is easy to navigate, and ikas’s themes are attractive and straightforward to customize with no coding experience needed.

The users generally praise the platform on review sites, and it’s certainly positive that there are no hidden fees.

So, can you really set up your own online ikas store in “just three simple steps?” In theory, yes.

But in practice, as our guide has just demonstrated, you’ll likely have to go through several more hoops to get up and running.

Where it falls is its lack of information, particularly since there are no instructions or videos that walk you through your store setup, which may be a deal breaker for newbies.

On the other hand, you do get a one-to-one hour-long onboarding session when you sign up.

As with all our reviews, I recommend using the 7-day free trial before committing your hard-earned cash. This is the best way to see whether this platform is right for your business.

Are you considering joining the 6,000+ businesses already using ikas? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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