Introduction
eCommerce is definitely the next big thing in the online market and the push given to it by big names like Amazon, Etsy, Ebay etc. is just proof of the big wave that is beginning to form in the online world. It would be unwise for any business to stay away from the online business in the coming few years. But if you are a small business, it is quite difficult to move your focus to the online market just yet and invest time and money into an online shop. What you need right now is a simple solution that lets you set up an e-shop quickly and not bother much about maintaining it, while still letting you make money off your online sales. Dokan is the solution that addresses these needs perfectly.
Developed by a young team of developers, based out of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dokan is a multivendor market place for the WordPress platform. The company, weDevs has been developing WordPress plugins for almost a decade and are now leveraging their experience and talent to take up more ambitious projects. Along with Dokan (eCommerce), weDevs also has a number of WordPress plugins for Project Management, Enterprises and for medical applications.
Dokan is built for beginners as well as experts in the eCommerce space. Using the platform is extremely easy and as a vendor, there is hardly anything for you to do, except keep track of your orders. Built for the popular blogging platform, WordPress, Dokan lets bloggers and other website owners leverage their market position to sell products or services without asking them to go through the learning curve of eCommerce as well. Setting up an online shop and selling has been made extremely simple by Dokan and you can get started in a day or less.
What’s On Offer?
To set up a shop, all one needs to do is signup with an account and follows instructions which include uploading suitable pictures for your products and their prices, shipping charges etc. Once this is done, your shop is ready to start selling. Everything else, such as discounts, coupons, support, reviews that you commonly see on an ecommerce site can be managed on the front ended dashboard by you.
If you are worried about how the front end of your shop may appear to your visitors, let me assure you that Dokan is compatible with over 100 ecommerce themes available on WooCommerce and more than 17 themes on ThemeForest. Add to them, the most trending features of marketplace design from Dokan, makes your upcoming ecommerce site a real winner in terms of design quality and user experience.
The best part about Dokan is its support for multiple product types. Unlike some popular ecommerce sites that are geared towards selling electronic gadgets or artsy stuff, Dokan supports downloadable, bookable, virtual products and even subscription services on its platform along with the standard product types giving you full flexibility to set up your shop.
For every account that you setup, Dokan gives you detailed reports of sales and account statements. Additionally, you can also create coupons for your products and track their popularity within your sales. Your Dokan account also serves as a tool for tracking your deliverables and the various stages they are in. You can mark progress made on the order to update your customers and even quickly find out shipping addresses for your orders, all if one place.
Dokan also allows you to collect user reviews and display them on your store for potential customers to see. Also, the information you would like to share through the store is completely customizable with the addition of social media links and buttons allowing you to make cross sales or even gather a following on social media. Dokan’s stores also support Search Engine Optimization (SEO) making it more visible to the search engines and showing up more frequently in search results as your popularity grows.
Managing payments is also easier on Dokan since you can not only set up your payment preferences but also withdrawal thresholds that will automatically withdraw your cash, once it reaches a certain limit. Any refunds for customers can also be handled via the storefront. Dokan also supports over 100 payment options along with popular ones like PayPal and Stripe with the benefit of built in tax rates, allowing you to sell freely in any country without worrying about tax rates to be applied.
Needless to say, when you sign up for Dokan, you get complete support and all the updates for free from the young and enthusiastic team during the license period. Additionally, the weDevs team has also created extensive documentation for the platform for you to access and utilise, as and when need it.
Offering At Its Best – The Marketplace Feature
An additional benefit of using Dokan is the option of setting up a store of your own and adding individual vendors for your own shop. Not only can you allow each of your vendors to set up his/herown individual shop using their own unique design, you get the benefit of earning a commission from each of their sales. You can also see profile completeness for each of the vendors you assign and ensure quality of the vendors being listed on your site.
Dokan has a multi step setup Wizard that will walk you through all the steps needed to set up your shop. In our experience, there are very few eCommerce vendors that have such a wizard for admin users, something that sets Dokan apart from the rest and makes it even more likable.
Any changes you would like to make for your vendors can be communicated using the Announcements option, saving you some precious time and ensuring that information reaches one and all. As an admin, complete control over vendors listing and selling rights remains with you, so you can begin your journey towards becoming the next Amazon or Alibaba through Dokan.
Dokan Vs Competitors
Any review would be incomplete without a comparison to similar existing products. So, we compared Dokan with other such offerings such as WC Vendors, WC MarketPlace and some more. A long list of features was compared and we found that Dokan is currently the sole provider of seller statement reports for vendors and offers a setup wizard for setting up a shop. It is also one of the few marketplaces that supports store specific SEO and Frontend Shipping tracking as well.
Even with their Pro versions, most eCommerce platforms do not offer such a wide variety of features to all its customers on an all inclusive basis. You either have to pay for a feature you want or simply port to the new platform for the feature. By offering such a large array of features, Dokan becomes the only eCommerce platform you will need, whether you are setting up a single shop, many shops or simply run a marketplace.
The Versions, The Pricing And The Conclusion
Dokan is available in a Lite version to help small businesses get into the online space as well as give you the option to try it out before deciding to go Pro. The Pro version comes with all the features listed above plus many more and is priced at $199. For the Lite version, you cannot manage coupons or make announcements, get account reports, do SEO or link social media profiles but still accept and track orders, withdraw your earnings and even use the set up wizard to set up your shop.
With 200 detailed tutorials and videos to help you get started, industry leading features and expert support team, Dokan is helping over 5000 owners managing their ecommerce stores in the market today. Their broad range of features, multiple supporting extensions and options of choosing a Lite or Pro pack are helping many businesses occupy the online space, ready for a brighter future tomorrow. If you would like to be a part of this great community, do try the Dokan Lite to get yourself started. Alternatively, Dokan Pro also comes with a 14 days money back guarantee, if you would like to see the full potential of the system.
Having used Dokan ourselves, we found its design intuitive and interface very user friendly. Considering the large number of features that it offers, Dokan still runs with ease and responds quickly to give you the data you seek. Detailed documentation and extensive support along with free updates make Dokan an extremely good offering in our eyes and we are sure you will like it too and use it for many years to come.