5 ms·

A bit OT, but why is ikea internet store (any country) designed to be so unusable? Lists of available components hidden in pdfs tucked in obscure menu, no way t

by 112233 1y ago

A bit OT, but why is ikea internet store (any country) designed to be so unusable? Lists of available components hidden in pdfs tucked in obscure menu, no way to find compatible components, search flooded with tens of thousands of "combinations" — I mean, they obviously know what they are doing. What is the goal of making it such way?

torben-friis 1y ago
This is completely anectodal, but I have a friend who works there and he talks about a very change-averse culture. He has to sit through talks about how Ikea is a bussiness that already works very well and the most important thing is to avoid any changes that have even a 0.001% chance of making it not work. Many relatively trivial deployments have to be approved by a lengthy international bureaucracy, with a focus on preventing any automation that can eventually result in workforce not being needed. Things like that.
- showcaseearth 1y ago
  Yep, this is it. I've heard similar. I worked for a few years at a 100+ year old privately owned (same family) B2B supplier with insane profits. Website was outdated but highly practical, sales/CRM (if you can call it that) systems were mostly command line and hadn't changed fundamentally since the 1980s. These systems worked, and any proposal to change anything took months of meetings and debates and review of every cost/benefit possible. Proving that a change directly translated to a clear revenue metric was nearly impossible– for at least this niche, would more modern sales software actually translate to more orders? (answer: not really, a question reanalyzed every few years in depth). Would a nicer website get more conversions? (also no, something A/B tested to death every few years). Changing the position of one product grouping by a few pixels might be a 6 month job, lol. By contrast, their fulfillment center was cutting edge, highly automated, and relatively experimental– if it improved the speed and cut costs, they jumped right on. These are much easier to measure as profitable.
silvestrov 1y ago
Also: why can't they show all sizes of a product jusst like when choosing t-shirt size on a normal shop? e.g. this dresser is available in many sizes but you wouldn't know from the product page: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/storklinta-3-drawer-chest-white-anchor-unlock-function-00559291/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/storklinta-3-drawer-chest-white... At best you can then search for "STORKLINTA" but the result list has the other sizes mixed with all sorts of other products such as beds: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?q=STORKLINTA https://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?q=STORKLINTA
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  Not to explain away Ikea's byzantine system, a difference in size usually comes with a difference in use and environment. While a T-shirt has the same purpose in S M or L, a table isn't the same if it's lower smaller than 50cm or longer than 1.5m, or lower than 60cm or higher than 70cm. In a standard shop you'd call that a night stand, or a coffee table, or a kids' table or living room's low table etc. If you think of it as shopping for an environment (same as half of the in-shop experience: they'll show you full rooms where you can see products fit together) it makes sense. Somewhat.
  - silvestrov 1y ago
    I agree that for tables there can be a difference in use but when IKEA has a dresser series named "HEMNES bedroom series" then that argument kind of goes out of the window.
    - makeitdouble 1y ago
      But then "Hemnes bedroom series" also has beds in it...it sounds like the focus is as much on "bedroom" than "Hemnes" https://www.ikea.com/jp/en/cat/hemnes-bedroom-series-58619/ https://www.ikea.com/jp/en/cat/hemnes-bedroom-series-58619/ And the other Hemnes lines include book stands, dish cabinets, TV stands. I totally agree IKEA doesn't give a damn about series and collection consistency.
- unwind 1y ago
Reason077 1y ago
IKEA likes to find ways to get you into their physical stores because they know you’re going to end up buying more than just the items you came for. So they have a website that sort of teases you, but isn’t actually good enough to replace the physical stores. You’ll start on the website, but get frustrated with it and eventually just drive over to IKEA to find the items you want. And you’ll also come home with some candles, picture frames, and a couple packs of frozen meatballs.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  Also to note, shipping prices are egregious compared to the product prices. In most cases shipping a single product will cost 2 or 3 times more than the product price. They made efforts during COVID so they're obviously aware of the issue, and I'm sure they al see it as lost opportunity, but probably still don't want to eat the cost or go full Amazon and have their own centers. TBH as a customer I'm fine with keeping in-store price low instead of subsiding the online store.
  - superice 1y ago
    Shipping has always been a strong point for Ikea. Just look at how efficient most of their stuff is packaged, usually into very neat rectangular packages. They can fit a ton of stuff into a small volume, which improves shipping cost a lot. Last mile will always be relatively expensive, but shipping a truck load or a 40ft shipping container is relatively cheap. In the end it all comes down to cost per unit of volume, compared to the raw product cost per volume. A dense product will not nearly be affected by high shipping prices as much, and due to Ikea being insanely good at packaging, I expect they are outcompeting the rest of the market at this game by a decent margin.
  - kakacik 1y ago
    Ah yes my very recent experience. We fully redid kitchen and went for Ikea (forsbacka oak, actually decently looking stuff, we will see about longevity). Our kitchen is very restricted, its on all 4 walls and everything needs to fit exactly, plus we have slanted roof on one side, making fitting a rather complex exercise. So I bought bosch laser meter to be sure I don't mess up planning in their online planning software. We even asked Ikea to send a company that usually builds entire kitchen for them (aka their local partners), just to come for measuring and confirm my numbers (especially the angle of that roof, defines how tall and wide cabinets can fit underneath). It took forever, and the person doing measurements f*cked up badly, adding 30cm width to the place under the roof by mistake. He was re-measuring it but came with same number. I was suspicious of such a huge difference and luckily found his mistake, reverting back to my numbers (so we just wasted 1 month waiting for this company, even ignoring the fee). Anyway, even with all their planning, in-person consultation, they messed up delivery and few items were missing, and they added few unnecessary items. Since delivery consists of 80+ brown boxes of all sizes that are just dumped on you, there is no way to find any mismatch out before building the actual kitchen. A lot of "fun" around that, I burned some vacation from this year on just chasing their mistakes. Coming back to original topic - plinths or whatever goes under bottom cabinets to cover the gaping hole where legs are, were insufficient so we now have 0.5m hole there, waiting for item delivery while workers are long gone. Nothing is immediately available for pickup here, so waiting few weeks on piece of plastic weighting 1kg, 2.4m long, that costs cca 30$. Delivery - 100$, no way to even get it delivered to their shop, it needs to be a home delivery. This is Switzerland, one would expect a bit better service in 2025 for their visibly elevated prices compared to EU all around. I did order the item in French Ikea instead, delivery was 'only' 40$. Not much competition for that price point here, but stellar quality service it certainly wasn't. /rant
makeitdouble 1y ago
I'm probably part of that problem. While I don't shop that much at Ikea, I still remember their product lines, will sift through the dozens of combinations and PDFs, and take notes while looking at the building instructions to see what could be done with a product. Most of us will choose Ikea for the flexibility, and will happily do some amount of research anyway. Until reading your comment it didn't hit me that the site was so different from other brands, like Apple for instance. And I sure don't enjoy Apple's site. But then Ikea shops aren't traditional shops either, if sifting through pages of products isn't your thing, walking through sinuous paths all around the shop won't be either. It's a fundamentally different public.
- 112233 1y ago
  But how does it make sense in the case you describe to hide those pdfs on the site so deep you cannot find them except when told where to click (or by major accident)?
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    I'm kinda lost, in another comment you mention the Eket system, so if it's those components you're looking for there's a full page for them liked right at the top of the Eket page: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/eket-inserts-accessories-59286/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/eket-inserts-accessories-5928... If we're talking about the "Product details" -> "Assembly and documents" part, that's 3 clicks away and looks pretty straightforward to me. You make it sound like it's 15 levels of links inside the privacy policy.
    - 112233 1y ago
      Sorry for confusion. I am talking about documents like this: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/files/pdf/26/84/268411e4/eket_oct_2025.pdf https://www.ikea.com/us/en/files/pdf/26/84/268411e4/eket_oct... that contain all information about series in compact, easy to understand form. Try finding that pdf on their site. Now imagine chances of finding it for someone who is not aware it exists. All it would take Ikea is adding one more pdf to the "Assembly and documents" section, so why hide these so much?
gertlex 1y ago
The 'Acquired' podcast episode on Ikea speculates that their "buy in person" was historically a cost advantage (especially over pre-assembled furniture that cost $$$ to deliver), as they didn't have to pay shipping/delivery. In the modern era of "expect free shipping as long as some minimum amount is spent", online sold and delivered sales have less profit margin, and one could imagine an intentional business decision to try and keep the in-person experience the "preferred" one for customers.
- ghaff 1y ago
  I bought some shelving a while back and just paid for delivery. There is a store within driving range, but at the time (and why I needed the items) was going through some things, it was just a day I didn't want to spend. Certainly, Ikea organizes their stores in a way that probably encourages impulse purchases.
cess11 1y ago
They want you to come to a store, where they can exert immediate influence over you. In some sense it's a cult, more specifically a political cult, and they want you to spend as much time as possible in their environment. They are your family, it's where you go to eat, have someone else take care of your kid, relax and so on. Ingvar Kamprad was a lifelong fascist, which heavily influences IKEA. Loyalty over competence, futurism over tradition, things like that.
Traubenfuchs 1y ago
Trying to buy an Ikea pax: Some major but simple components I need to complete it are not available. I'd be happy to have everything delivered a month or two in the future, but no, I can't: Either I order now or I manually check back in the future. Why is everything so shit? Isn't getting me to buy their pax with as many interior elements as possible how they make money?

by 112233 1y ago

torben-friis 1y ago

This is completely anectodal, but I have a friend who works there and he talks about a very change-averse culture. He has to sit through talks about how Ikea is a bussiness that already works very well and the most important thing is to avoid any changes that have even a 0.001% chance of making it not work. Many relatively trivial deployments have to be approved by a lengthy international bureaucracy, with a focus on preventing any automation that can eventually result in workforce not being needed. Things like that.

showcaseearth 1y ago
Yep, this is it. I've heard similar. I worked for a few years at a 100+ year old privately owned (same family) B2B supplier with insane profits. Website was outdated but highly practical, sales/CRM (if you can call it that) systems were mostly command line and hadn't changed fundamentally since the 1980s. These systems worked, and any proposal to change anything took months of meetings and debates and review of every cost/benefit possible. Proving that a change directly translated to a clear revenue metric was nearly impossible– for at least this niche, would more modern sales software actually translate to more orders? (answer: not really, a question reanalyzed every few years in depth). Would a nicer website get more conversions? (also no, something A/B tested to death every few years). Changing the position of one product grouping by a few pixels might be a 6 month job, lol. By contrast, their fulfillment center was cutting edge, highly automated, and relatively experimental– if it improved the speed and cut costs, they jumped right on. These are much easier to measure as profitable.

silvestrov 1y ago

Also: why can't they show all sizes of a product jusst like when choosing t-shirt size on a normal shop? e.g. this dresser is available in many sizes but you wouldn't know from the product page: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/storklinta-3-drawer-chest-white-anchor-unlock-function-00559291/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/storklinta-3-drawer-chest-white... At best you can then search for "STORKLINTA" but the result list has the other sizes mixed with all sorts of other products such as beds: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?q=STORKLINTA https://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?q=STORKLINTA

makeitdouble 1y ago
Not to explain away Ikea's byzantine system, a difference in size usually comes with a difference in use and environment. While a T-shirt has the same purpose in S M or L, a table isn't the same if it's lower smaller than 50cm or longer than 1.5m, or lower than 60cm or higher than 70cm. In a standard shop you'd call that a night stand, or a coffee table, or a kids' table or living room's low table etc. If you think of it as shopping for an environment (same as half of the in-shop experience: they'll show you full rooms where you can see products fit together) it makes sense. Somewhat.
- silvestrov 1y ago
  I agree that for tables there can be a difference in use but when IKEA has a dresser series named "HEMNES bedroom series" then that argument kind of goes out of the window.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    But then "Hemnes bedroom series" also has beds in it...it sounds like the focus is as much on "bedroom" than "Hemnes" https://www.ikea.com/jp/en/cat/hemnes-bedroom-series-58619/ https://www.ikea.com/jp/en/cat/hemnes-bedroom-series-58619/ And the other Hemnes lines include book stands, dish cabinets, TV stands. I totally agree IKEA doesn't give a damn about series and collection consistency.
unwind 1y ago

Reason077 1y ago

IKEA likes to find ways to get you into their physical stores because they know you’re going to end up buying more than just the items you came for. So they have a website that sort of teases you, but isn’t actually good enough to replace the physical stores. You’ll start on the website, but get frustrated with it and eventually just drive over to IKEA to find the items you want. And you’ll also come home with some candles, picture frames, and a couple packs of frozen meatballs.

makeitdouble 1y ago
Also to note, shipping prices are egregious compared to the product prices. In most cases shipping a single product will cost 2 or 3 times more than the product price. They made efforts during COVID so they're obviously aware of the issue, and I'm sure they al see it as lost opportunity, but probably still don't want to eat the cost or go full Amazon and have their own centers. TBH as a customer I'm fine with keeping in-store price low instead of subsiding the online store.
- superice 1y ago
  Shipping has always been a strong point for Ikea. Just look at how efficient most of their stuff is packaged, usually into very neat rectangular packages. They can fit a ton of stuff into a small volume, which improves shipping cost a lot. Last mile will always be relatively expensive, but shipping a truck load or a 40ft shipping container is relatively cheap. In the end it all comes down to cost per unit of volume, compared to the raw product cost per volume. A dense product will not nearly be affected by high shipping prices as much, and due to Ikea being insanely good at packaging, I expect they are outcompeting the rest of the market at this game by a decent margin.
- kakacik 1y ago
  Ah yes my very recent experience. We fully redid kitchen and went for Ikea (forsbacka oak, actually decently looking stuff, we will see about longevity). Our kitchen is very restricted, its on all 4 walls and everything needs to fit exactly, plus we have slanted roof on one side, making fitting a rather complex exercise. So I bought bosch laser meter to be sure I don't mess up planning in their online planning software. We even asked Ikea to send a company that usually builds entire kitchen for them (aka their local partners), just to come for measuring and confirm my numbers (especially the angle of that roof, defines how tall and wide cabinets can fit underneath). It took forever, and the person doing measurements f*cked up badly, adding 30cm width to the place under the roof by mistake. He was re-measuring it but came with same number. I was suspicious of such a huge difference and luckily found his mistake, reverting back to my numbers (so we just wasted 1 month waiting for this company, even ignoring the fee). Anyway, even with all their planning, in-person consultation, they messed up delivery and few items were missing, and they added few unnecessary items. Since delivery consists of 80+ brown boxes of all sizes that are just dumped on you, there is no way to find any mismatch out before building the actual kitchen. A lot of "fun" around that, I burned some vacation from this year on just chasing their mistakes. Coming back to original topic - plinths or whatever goes under bottom cabinets to cover the gaping hole where legs are, were insufficient so we now have 0.5m hole there, waiting for item delivery while workers are long gone. Nothing is immediately available for pickup here, so waiting few weeks on piece of plastic weighting 1kg, 2.4m long, that costs cca 30$. Delivery - 100$, no way to even get it delivered to their shop, it needs to be a home delivery. This is Switzerland, one would expect a bit better service in 2025 for their visibly elevated prices compared to EU all around. I did order the item in French Ikea instead, delivery was 'only' 40$. Not much competition for that price point here, but stellar quality service it certainly wasn't. /rant

makeitdouble 1y ago

I'm probably part of that problem. While I don't shop that much at Ikea, I still remember their product lines, will sift through the dozens of combinations and PDFs, and take notes while looking at the building instructions to see what could be done with a product. Most of us will choose Ikea for the flexibility, and will happily do some amount of research anyway. Until reading your comment it didn't hit me that the site was so different from other brands, like Apple for instance. And I sure don't enjoy Apple's site. But then Ikea shops aren't traditional shops either, if sifting through pages of products isn't your thing, walking through sinuous paths all around the shop won't be either. It's a fundamentally different public.

112233 1y ago
But how does it make sense in the case you describe to hide those pdfs on the site so deep you cannot find them except when told where to click (or by major accident)?
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  I'm kinda lost, in another comment you mention the Eket system, so if it's those components you're looking for there's a full page for them liked right at the top of the Eket page: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/eket-inserts-accessories-59286/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/eket-inserts-accessories-5928... If we're talking about the "Product details" -> "Assembly and documents" part, that's 3 clicks away and looks pretty straightforward to me. You make it sound like it's 15 levels of links inside the privacy policy.
  - 112233 1y ago
    Sorry for confusion. I am talking about documents like this: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/files/pdf/26/84/268411e4/eket_oct_2025.pdf https://www.ikea.com/us/en/files/pdf/26/84/268411e4/eket_oct... that contain all information about series in compact, easy to understand form. Try finding that pdf on their site. Now imagine chances of finding it for someone who is not aware it exists. All it would take Ikea is adding one more pdf to the "Assembly and documents" section, so why hide these so much?

gertlex 1y ago

The 'Acquired' podcast episode on Ikea speculates that their "buy in person" was historically a cost advantage (especially over pre-assembled furniture that cost $$$ to deliver), as they didn't have to pay shipping/delivery. In the modern era of "expect free shipping as long as some minimum amount is spent", online sold and delivered sales have less profit margin, and one could imagine an intentional business decision to try and keep the in-person experience the "preferred" one for customers.

ghaff 1y ago
I bought some shelving a while back and just paid for delivery. There is a store within driving range, but at the time (and why I needed the items) was going through some things, it was just a day I didn't want to spend. Certainly, Ikea organizes their stores in a way that probably encourages impulse purchases.

cess11 1y ago

They want you to come to a store, where they can exert immediate influence over you. In some sense it's a cult, more specifically a political cult, and they want you to spend as much time as possible in their environment. They are your family, it's where you go to eat, have someone else take care of your kid, relax and so on. Ingvar Kamprad was a lifelong fascist, which heavily influences IKEA. Loyalty over competence, futurism over tradition, things like that.

Traubenfuchs 1y ago

Trying to buy an Ikea pax: Some major but simple components I need to complete it are not available. I'd be happy to have everything delivered a month or two in the future, but no, I can't: Either I order now or I manually check back in the future. Why is everything so shit? Isn't getting me to buy their pax with as many interior elements as possible how they make money?