Introduction
When you start a business, you should create a website, anyway, if you want to promote it and become well-known, at least at the local scale. This is how the modern world works. Fortunately, you have three opportunities here. The first one is to learn a programming language and hand-code a site, in other words, say goodbye to your time.
The second option is to hire a web developer/studio to do all the work for you, in other words, say goodbye to your money.
Or you can go for website builders — offline or online tools for creating professional business sites that don’t require any special knowledge. This is exactly as simple as it sounds: a good website builder allows you to craft, customize and promote your site with no special coding or design skills. Nowadays, even developers prefer website builders to time-consuming and unnecessary manual work.
uKit or Ukit is notably worth the attention. Being one of the biggest players in the website building niche in more than 15 countries and constantly growing in the rest of the world market, it is perfect for creating a sleek and quality business website. Why? Let’s figure it out.
What is uKit?
uKit – is great for small and medium-sized businesses, it caters to many industries or types of business. In general, by looking into the template library, you could single out three main groups based on different purposes, which are business, eCommerce,and personal.
Business websites are what uKit specializes in, so the service provides plenty of templates designed for various industries: from apartment repair services to agricultural services, automotive to event planning, education to games, beauty services to sports, fashion to dancing, and more. Also, uKit can boast powerful business features like subscription forms, email marketing, promotion wizard, SEO tools, built-in statistics, etc.
For those who are going to launch an online store, uKit has a great variety of eCommerce functionality.
You can sell products and services, set up order forms and shipping and payment methods, choose the currency for store items (they are 11 in number), and so on.
UKit covers personal websites to the same extent and offers a lot of beautifully designed templates and a few tools for those who’d like to share some bits of their lives with the public or flaunt their creativity through photography, art or something like that.
All in all, you can search the necessary template by theme, keyword, and a color scheme. A separate group of one-pager templates and Premium designs is also available for Basic, eCommerce or Pro account holders.
Now, let’s take a peek at the range of features and tools of the uKit website builder.
uKit Features and Tools
Actually, it could take all day to list every single one of uKit’s features. So, it was decided to pick out some of the most important ones for you to consider.
Firstly, uKit hosts your site for you whatever plan you have, so you don’t have to pay for hosting separately. Secondly, the service’s development speed is great, which also makes it one of the top website builders in any rating table. To say nothing of the uKit Support Team that instantly reacts to users’ requests and comments, letting the Ukit developers implement some of the users’ ideas and improve the platform.
The feature set of this software is solid and practical and, at the same time, is based on the easy drag’n’drop system to help you make light work of creating a website. This means you literally drag elements (such as texts, lists, photos, icons, buttons, etc.) onto pages on your screen, move them around and resize them, without having to write a single line of code.
As for the structure of the uKit interface, it contains four modes of work: Site Pages, Builder, Design, and Preview Mode.
The Design Mode allows users to change the pictures, colors, fonts, configure the background, icon animation effects and block shadow, create a parallax effect for the pictures and it’s not the end of the list. There, in the advanced settings, you can add the “Back to Top” button, which is a must-have for a landing page, enable animation for widgets, and turn on a website version for visually impaired.
However, there’s one small snag: a limited set of color schemes of templates. To create your own custom color scheme or fonts, you will have to upgrade your current plan to Pro.
In the Pages Mode, users can add or delete pages, change their order and names, duplicate them, edit their content, etc. Besides, you can configure pop-up windows, 404 page, and Privacy Policy and User Agreement pages. If you are creating an online store website, in the Pages Mode you’ll be able to fine-tune the Checkout and Order Success pages.
To customize your site for any device, you should go to the Preview Mode. uKit layouts can be adjusted to desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes. All the desired blocks and header/footer can be hidden if necessary.
The pillar of any uKit website is the Builder Mode that contains numerous widgets such as live chat, callback, slider, price list, and so on. Plus, the service lets users take advantage of specific, pre-programmed content blocks (a themed grouping of widgets – image galleries, slideshows, contact forms, text boxes, etc.) and organize them (transform, add or remove) in the desired way.
What may appeal to an inveterate social media junkie is social media buttons and an option to turn their Facebook page/group into a website in a few minutes (!!!) and manage its content.
The online store owner will benefit from Product, Card or Price List widgets. Moreover, uKit gives access to external services such as Ecwid Shop and Cost Calculator. The latter is about creating a form for calculating the total cost of products and/or services, which attracts customers a lot.
uKit Templates
A couple of words about uKit Templates: they are over 300 in number, and the designers didn’t skimp on the themes (over 30). That is to say that among such a curated collection of the templates anyone is sure to find what suits the site. Even the templates for one-pagers are grouped into a separate category so you won’t have to select a multi-page template, delete unnecessary pages and edit the one that is left, i.e. waste your time on redundant actions.
uKit SEO and Promotion Tools
Regarding SEO tools, you can configure meta tags for each page for the correct display of your website in search engine results and social media, and connect Google Analytics to monitor statistics and adjust promotional strategies.
On top of this, in the built-in Promotion tool, a user can see what extent the website is optimized to based on 5 criteria and can get advice on how to improve each of them.
uKit Pricing Plans
uKit isn’t a free website building service. And yet, you get a 14-day free trial period to try all the features of the desired plan. Whatever plan you would opt for, if you pay for 3 or 6 months, 1 or 2 years in advance, you get considerable discounts.
Now, about the plans. uKit has four: Minimal, Basic, eCommerce, and Pro. The Minimal Plan costs $5/mo and offers a rich collection of themed layouts and secure hosting for your website. Basic includes advanced statistics, online chat with the Support Team and access to premium designs. eCommerce is mostly for online store owners and gives access to the Product widget and Store Settings. As for the Pro Plan, it’s for advanced users because it includes more creative and coding possibilities such as HTML code editor and custom color schemes.
Final Verdict
uKit is a worthwhile investment for your business. It’s uncluttered, beginner-friendly, and easy to use and navigate. An excellent collection of templates makes the design editing process seamless. Built-in tools and features are sure to turn the website of your dreams into reality.
Once you’ve got a hang of things at uKit, you’ll then have a better idea of which subscription plan is right for you. uKit hits the spot! Just try and see it for yourself.
Go to: uKit