Currently, we are witnessing the actual emergence of new mobile era in conducting online trade. So, mobile app building solutions penetrate the business world to help vendors create m-stores at one stroke. Customers, whereas, expect and demand support across a great variety of gadgets. However, building mobile applications is quite different from developing websites and requires faster work to meet all client’s expectations.
Accessing various data is crucial while developing a mobile app and the role of API is tremendous in performing integration. Recently, Claus Torp Jensen has posted an article that smartly describes why do you need API management in doing mobile. We offer you to explore his work on our blog.
You are already doing well on your mobile initiative, having deployed the first couple of innovative apps. Why shouldn’t you just continue down the current road instead of getting sidetracked by this pesky API management discussion?
Part of the premise for an engaging app is that it has access to interesting data, whether read-only or including updates. Put bluntly, un-integrated mobile apps are not engaging. So yes, you want to be opportunistic about building mobile apps, becoming “Mobile in 10 minutes”. But you really need your mobile development teams focusing on innovation, not data integration. Mobile developers lack deep knowledge of backend systems. APIs make it easy to consume backend systems without the need for in-depth knowledge.
You can probably quickly get a mobile development team to agree that it would be great if all the data that they need is easily available via APIs. And those APIs need to be simple, fit to purpose with the data that you need right here and now, rather than being some general-purpose service that does too much or too little. And you still don’t need API management, right? Only where do such nicely crafted APIs come from? Somehow the backend owner of the data had to build, deploy and socialize them.
The role of APIs is controlled simplicity. Hide complexity, simplify what the mobile developer sees/consumes, but at the same time provide appropriate business and IT operational control. Trust me you really want those controls on both security and amount of traffic once you start scaling your mobile innovation, preferably policy-based so that controls are easy to change on the fly. Of course, it all has to be fast and cheap from API construction to API sharing to API control – the approach cannot slow down mobile innovation nor can it break the bank in terms of cost. Ideally, an API ecosystem should be community-centric. An effective API community shows developers the exact APIs available to them for their current tasks, with self-service registration and preapprovals already in place for the APIs that are visible to the community.
These are characteristics that are difficult to achieve (at scale) by just coding away at your APIs. But they are the hallmark of good API management platforms. In other words, API management platforms improve the collaboration between backend owners and mobile development teams. That is why you need API management even when you are already doing Mobile.
Hope, that you find this article useful and informative in understanding the role of API while providing mobile app building services. However, establishing a connection with shopping carts via API is not a simple option at all. You have to develop various integration modules taking into consideration the specific logic of data storage on every platform. Finding a simple and cost-effective solution to perform data interaction will definitely solve the challenge.
API2Cart is a unified API provider that allows integrating your business soft with 40+ shopping platforms in a fast and secure way. Receive access to such leading platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, Bigcommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop, OpenCart and others. Easily manipulate with products, orders, customers, categories and other related data in no time. Once, you integrate with API2Cart, get a connection to all supported carts with no extra payments and efforts. Save your time and money on developing different integration modules.
If you have some questions on how to work with API2Cart, schedule a FREE Call with our expert. We are always ready to provide qualified advice focusing on your unique business needs and demands.