Under investigation in this paper are the (1+1)-dimensional and (2+1)-dimensional Ito equations. With the help of the Bell polynomials method, Hirota bilinear method and symbolic computation, the bilinear representations, N-soliton solutions, bilinear Backlund transformations and Lax pairs of these two equations are obtained, respectively. In particular, we obtain a new bilinear form and N-soliton solutions of the (2+1)-dimensional Ito equation. The bilinear Backlund transformation and Lax pair of the (2+1)-dimensional Ito equation are also obtained for the first time. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.