Shipping is definitely a challenging aspect for any eCommerce business. Besides picking, packing, and transportation, it includes many other operations like order fulfillment, shipment tracking, managing stock levels, updating order statuses. Shipping software greatly depends on integration with shopping platforms and marketplaces, as carrying out key functions requires ability to access and process order, customer and product information from online stores.
In this article, we will explore in detail how to develop Amazon shipping integration easily. Amazon is one of the most popular marketplaces in the world. It means, that the connection with it can bring a lot of opportunities for shipping software providers.
Full integration with marketplaces and eCommerce platforms allows you to offer superior services to your target niche. It allows e-shop owners to create shipping labels with ease, provide tracking numbers to their customers, and control the delivery process with the help of your solution. However, to provide these features, you need to focus on integrating your shipping software with various platforms. Of course, it also includes connecting to Amazon.
The Importance of Marketplace Integration for Shipping Software Providers
Amazon API Integration
Explore how to develop the connection with Amazon marketplace easily and fast.
So why is it so important to connect your business to all the major marketplaces that exist today? Connecting to a variety of eCommerce platforms and marketplaces that your target niche use is essential for any B2B solution. Especially for shipping management software providers, for a number of reasons. We'll explore them all below.
First, you need to integrate your solution with the platforms and marketplaces that your customers use because you want to help them automate their tasks. The right integration allows eCommerce store owners to automate and better organize order management, shipping, and other repetitive tasks with solutions like yours.
Second, you need to integrate your business with the platforms used by your customers to access their data. With integration, you'll be able to access their valuable data and work with it to provide better services. This includes data about orders, customers, products, inventory and the list goes on.
Third, you should integrate your business with the leading marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, and of course Amazon to grow your customer database and increase your market reach. The more integrations you set up, the higher your chance of diving into new markets and increasing your market share.
Aspects of Amazon Integration with Shipping Solutions
Statista tells us that in 2019 Amazon got really big, making an incredible $11 billion and selling ten billion things to many millions of buyers all over the world. Like a big shop, Amazon keeps getting bigger and changing how people buy things.
Right now, there are more than 2 million online shops on this site. If you connect your software to this marketplace, it can help you reach many people. It enables you to add more customers to your list, offer a broader range of services, and make more money.
However, connecting with this big marketplace is not easy at all. Not only does it take a lot of time, but also you need to bring in developers for when setup is done and the integration keeps changing. Amazon's old API needs expert help from developers who know how to do similar tasks. They must have experience with this type of integration before they can do it successfully.
To add on, the expenses linked with putting things together are sky-high. On average, a developer can make over $10,000 each month. And the least time they would work on an important task is usually more than six months.
Developing integration with Amazon is a long-term process. It requires constant improvements and bug fixes. Fortunately, there is the alternative to hiring a developer or a team of developers. It is a straightforward one and involves using API2Cart.
Thanks to API2Cart unified API, you can integrate your software with 40+ platforms and marketplaces in no time. Additionally, you don't have to worry about the maintenance or constant updates of the integration. API2Cart's team will take care of it.
Integrating your shipping management software with multiple eCommerce platforms and marketplaces like Amazon gives you access to a huge database of over 1 million potential customers. It saves you an incredible amount of time and money and allows you to enjoy a larger and happier customer base.
Issues Related to Developing the Connection with Amazon
eCommerce software providers can face a lot of challenges and difficulties throughout the time of connecting with Amazon.
Integrating Amazon with your shipping software is a time-consuming process, requiring a developer who can spend around 2 months on its creation. If the developer is inexperienced with Amazon’s peculiarities, it will take even more time to complete. Also, Amazon’s API is quite old and requires certain skills and knowledge. Working with products, shipments, and so forth can only be done using CSV or XML files.
Another difficulty you might encounter during integration development is Amazon’s API guidelines, which are quite complicated to use and manage as they do not contain any actual examples. Additionally, the support team at Amazon does not respond quickly enough to an issue, so you may be expected to wait more than 24 hours to fix a particular problem.
How to Start with Amazon Shipping Integration?
No matter how terrifying shipping software integration with Amazon may sound, the good news is that you don't have to lift a finger to connect with tens of thousands of potential customers. Thanks to API2Cart's integration solution, you can get a robust integration within days and start offering your shipping management services to your target customers who list their stores on Amazon.
To start using API2Cart functionality, you have to register your free account with the help of our specialists. After that, you will need to add your customers’ stores that are listed on Amazon. Then you will be able to see all the available data from there. It includes the info about the orders, products, etc.
To connect Amazon SP-API to API2Cart account, you need to fill out the credentials, which is shown in the screenshot below:
The seller account that is needed to be connected to API2Cart should have an active "Professional" selling plan.
The step-by-step instruction on how to connect Amazon to API2Cart with detailed examples you can find in this guide.
Once your business is integrated with Amazon, you’ll be able to seamlessly import orders, update tracking info & order statuses, automate e-retailers’ tasks, create shipping labels, customize shipping tasks, and create reports for your clients.
API2Cart supports many API methods that allow your shipping software to access and manage Amazon data. It includes the info about order and product details. You can also check out our API Documentation for further details.
Conclusion
Developing Amazon shipping integration can bring significant benefits to your business. However, it is not easy to set it up without the help of developers or a specialized solution like API2Cart.
API2Cart comes with flexible pricing and a 30-day trial period. You can try API2Cart for free during this time and see how it works for Amazon shipping integrations. If you want to learn more about how API2Cart can help you get an edge over your competitors in the shipping management software industry, do not hesitate to contact us now.
