What To Expect From Version 6.0 of K.ecom, the ERP-Integrated Ecommerce Solution

For over 20 years, k-ecommerce has delivered class-leading ERP-integrated ecommerce solutions to small and midsize businesses around the world.

Built specifically for B2B and D2C businesses, K.ecom integrates seamlessly with existing ERP implementations to offer easy-to-use ecommerce functionality that decreases operational costs while increasing online revenue.

With the launch of its latest version, K.ecom offers enhanced usability and performance to ensure your customers enjoy the best online shopping experience. Here’s what you should know about version 6.0:

• What Was the Objective of Creating Version 6.0?
• What Do These Improvements Mean for Users?
• K.ecom 6.0 Audit Validation
• K.ecom 6.0 Audit Results
• Final Thoughts: K.ecom 6.0 — the Latest ERP-Integrated Ecommerce Solution

What Was the Objective of Creating Version 6.0?

Now more than ever, there are constantly evolving standards for online interface usability on different devices. We believe it only makes sense that users should feel comfortable using online stores for B2B, even though they may be visiting a website for the first time.

That’s why we designed this new version of K.ecom specifically to enhance the user experience (UX) by providing a superior user interface and a modernized appearance across different screen sizes.

In addition to a visual appearance update, we also focused on ensuring compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA (WCAG) standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed these standards so that people living with a wide range of disabilities can effectively access websites, mobile apps, and other forms of digital media.

We focused on three key areas to achieve these objectives:

• Mobile interface
• UX improvements
• Code improvements

Mobile Interface

For K.ecom version 6.0, we used the latest release of Bootstrap, one of the most popular front-end web development toolkits.

Bootstrap is an open-source framework with a mobile-first approach to website building. In other words, website content is first designed to fit the screens of mobile devices and then adapted for larger screens.

Given the popularity of mobile devices as a medium for accessing the internet (over 55% of global internet traffic), the Design team updated the code all over the front end of the k-ecommerce web store to use Bootstrap 5 as its foundation. This is in contrast to design principles in the past, where interfaces were designed for larger screens first and then adapted for mobile.

As a result, the design is much more modern, with significant improvements to mobile usability and accessibility. Again, this is important because it makes users feel at home and comfortable since it matches what they are used to every day.

UX Improvements

Version 6.0 also has various interface and back-end improvements to enhance UX. These include improvements to navigational elements, improved layout designs, cleaner user interfaces, and several brand-new themes.

These updates bring K.ecom up to speed with the latest trends in usability design and will ensure a great user experience on your ecommerce website.

Code Improvements

In addition to rebuilding the front-end code with Bootstrap, we have also revamped our back-end code to be more efficient. These changes focus on improving the speed and responsiveness of K.ecom across all platforms.

While building this update, we incorporated web accessibility and performance optimization test tools. These tools ensured that we delivered better Google PageSpeed and Lighthouse scores for ecommerce websites, as well as WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance.

What Do These Improvements Mean for Users?

While the interface will remain familiar to existing users, everything is more modern and responsive with version 6.0. These usability improvements apply to both K.ecom clients managing their operations from the back end and their customers, who will be interacting with the ecommerce interface.

Let’s not forget that one of the most significant parts of the 6.0 version is under the hood. This invisible improvement ensures accessibility for users regardless of their restrictions. Multiple accessibility regulations have been drafted lately, so we are preparing for the future.

Although this coding process takes time now, it will allow users to experience a huge performance boost when interacting with the platform. Also, using custom variables will enable us to maintain and improve the k-ecommerce store more easily, with an emphasis on best coding practices.

K.ecom 6.0 Audit Validation

As part of the preparations for this release, k-ecommerce mandated a UX audit with Baymard Institute, an independent UX research body. This audit aimed to analyze all aspects of the K.ecom online user experience across mobile and desktop devices on this new release.

The results of the analysis have helped us identify, from an external perspective, the areas where K.ecom is meeting or exceeding UX best practices. They also have shown us what we can improve in a future version of K.ecom.

During the audit, the Baymard Institute investigated three types of goals:

Corporate Goals

• Identify sections of the ecommerce functionality and user experience that can benefit from tweaks and improvements.
• Introduce checks to the design and development process to avoid going down the wrong path.
• Prioritize available resources to determine how they are spent on UX improvements.
• Speed up the process of validating design decisions.

Customer Goals

• Obtain reliable and realistic representations of our key audience segments’ user journeys.
• Have a clear picture of user expectations for the platform and how they will likely use it.
• Determine which design patterns frequently cause usability issues and how to fix them.

Competitor Goals

• Benchmark our UX performance.
• Compare our UX performance to that of leading competitors.
• Determine what changes are needed to create an interface that outperforms our competitors.
• Establish the gap between our UX performance and that of leading competitors.

K.ecom 6.0 Audit Results

Here are some examples of areas where K.ecom performed well on this audit:

• Listing: The platform’s “list layout and loading” has a “perfect” UX. This is a crucial area, as it’s where customers begin evaluating and comparing products.
• Product page layout: Users can gain a solid understanding of your products via detailed and well-titled content, as well as well-structured alternate products and their associated content. Our solution offers several product sheets, allowing you to use the one that suits your business best.
• Cross-Sell/Cross-Navigation: K.ecom makes it easy for customers to see recently viewed items while browsing an online store. This feature simplifies the process of navigating back to a product that might still be part of their decision set. Alternatively, the platform presents substitute or complementary products if an item is no longer available. That way, the sales process doesn’t end there.

Final Thoughts: K.ecom 6.0 — the Latest ERP-Integrated Ecommerce Solution

With version 6.0, K.ecom improves on an already excellent platform. The UX, accessibility, and code quality improvements will ensure that your customers enjoy a modern ecommerce experience regardless of what platform they use for their online shopping.

In addition to these enhancements, K.ecom 6.0 also provides access to key features, PCI-certified hosting, an embedded payment gateway, and seamless integration with ERP platforms from Microsoft, SAP, and Acumatica.

Get in touch today to unlock new business opportunities and unleash the full potential of your ERP with K.ecom.