API of eBay marketplace is a set of tools and protocols that allow eCommerce software developers to interact with and integrate their solutions with eBay. It enables the creating of applications and services that leverage eBay's features and data.
The development of eBay API integration is one of the most critical tasks for various eCommerce software providers. It may bring them a lot of opportunities. A great number of online sellers use the eBay marketplace as the main channel for the promotion of their products.
The main challenge for e-merchants is to manage their customer data, processing orders, and organizing shipping operations. That is why they need to use shipping, order and inventory, warehouse management, marketing automation software, etc. Such solutions allow e-sellers to simplify their business processes. Thanks to various eCommerce software, online sellers can carry out their tedious operations in a streamlined way.
However, eCommerce software vendors cannot work with e-sellers without integration with shopping platforms and marketplaces that they use.
eBay is one of the most popular marketplaces in the world used by millions of e-merchants. So, it means that connection with eBay is vital for most software providers who want to succeed in the software market. Moreover, it allows accessing data about products, orders, customers, shipments, etc., from the stores listed on eBay.
This article will help you to get more info about API of eBay and eBay integration development.
What is eBay Marketplace?
eBay marketplace is the place where merchants from around the world sell their products online. eBay has become the most significant eCommerce leader. Now it is highly popular in different countries of the world.
eBay has more than 1 billion active product listings. They include various items that may be used for different purposes. It is possible to sell everything there. Today, eBay is a multi-billion dollar business. Its operations are localized in 30+ countries. Moreover, the profits of this marketplace and the number of its users keep increasing continuously.
The main benefit of eBay is that it allows opening a seller’s account for free. Also, eBay has a wide variety of options that allows sellers to control their listings. It makes it possible to manage product photos and descriptions easily. Moreover, eBay enables to set shipping, return policies, and associated fees independently. A high number of merchants use these possibilities. It makes eBay one of their priority channels for product promotion.
According to Statista, eBay is the most popular among the sellers in the United States, United Kingdom, China, Germany, and Australia.
Find more statistics at Statista
If you are running an eCommerce solution for online merchants, you should definitely to about the integration with eBay. The development of such a connection can bring a lot of possibilities for your business.
What is API eBay and eBay API Integration?
API of eBay is a set of protocols that allow software developers to interact with and integrate with the eBay marketplace.
eBay API integration is the process of connecting any eCommerce software or app with this marketplace. It allows managing the data about products, customers, baskets, orders, and shipments from stores based on it.
eBay stands unique in providing its sellers with the best support, solutions, and platform to run and expand their business. For software providers, connection with this marketplace is the best way to provide automation functions for the clients who use it.
Software solutions, such as inventory, multichannel, order management, shipping, and others, need eBay integration for expanding their client base and increasing revenues.
Without the smooth integration with this marketplace, it’s impossible to access all the necessary data from online stores based on it. As a result, you won’t be able to propose your service to the sellers who use eBay for their online businesses.
Now, let’s go deeper and explore all the benefits of eBay API integration for your eCommerce software.
How to Benefit from Integration with eBay?
There is a pool of opportunities connected with the development of API integration with eBay.
First of all, there are approximately 182 million users of this marketplace around the world. eBay has the third position in the list of the most preferred platforms between US sellers. It means that software providers can increase the number of their prospective clients. In addition, integration with eBay may cause a significant increase in revenues.
Also, integration allows software providers to access all the data they need to provide their functionality to the clients. The solutions that can benefit from integration: shipping software, order and inventory management systems, WMS, ERP, marketing automation, PIM, pricing software, etc.
About all, connection with eBay allows working with the customer, order, price, product, and shipment data. Also, it helps to sync inventory, update orders, make reports, retrieve product lists, create coupons and update prices.
What are the Main eBay Integration Difficulties?
Now you must be thinking of integrating your software with eBay. Take a look at the tedious process of integration and all the associated difficulties. There are a lot of obstacles that bother software providers like you while establishing a connection with eBay. For example:
- Basic integration is a time-consuming task. Usually, it takes around 3 months for experienced developers to complete the whole process.
- eBay API isn’t uniform. Various resources (like products, customers, orders. etc.) have different data formats. Somewhere it can be XML, somewhere - JSON.
- eBay Sandbox doesn’t work correctly and has a significant number of bugs. The developers need to spend a lot of time checking the performed requests as eBay produces uninformative errors. For example, you can face the errors with such kinds of explanations: “A user error has occurred. Sorry, something went wrong. Please wait a moment and try again.”, “There was a problem with an eBay internal system or process. Contact developer support for assistance”.
- eBay Sandbox admin panel logs out the user continuously. That is why it’s hard to create a product with its help.
- Developing the connection demands expert technical skills and advanced knowledge of development, which is hard to find and expensive. In addition, you have to pay an average of $4000-$6000 per month to the one developer.
- Integration is an on-going process. It does not end at the development part. Further maintenance and keeping up with upgrades will haunt you all of the time.
- Sometimes it is hard to find all the needed information in eBay API Docs. Developers have to search the answers to their questions in the eBay Developer Forums. Usually, it requires a lot of time.
How to Simplify the Integration Process?
We know you may be in a state of confusion, should you go with eBay API integration or not? We think it worth considering. But, you have to approach the right solution provider like API2Cart, to streamline your integration process. Instead of connecting on your own, leverage the comfort of third-party services like ours.
API2Cart is a solution that will integrate your software with eBay and 40+ shopping platforms and marketplaces at once. Moreover, with our integration service, you can forget about wasting your time, money, and valuable resources.
API2Cart provides a unified API for connection with eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Magento, Shopify, PrestaShop, etc. Using this service you won’t need to develop separate connections with multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces.
How to Use API2Cart for Working With eBay?
API2Cart provides a wide variety of API methods for working with eBay online stores. For example, you can use the following methods for managing the data:
- for working with orders: order.count / list / info/ add/ update/ status.list/ shipment.add
- for working with products: product.list / count / info / fields/ add/ update/ image.add/ image.delete/ child_item.list/ variant.update/ variant.delete
- for working with carts: cart.create / validate / list / delete / methods / disconnect/ info
- for working with the account: account.cart.list / cart.add / supported_platforms
- for working with categories: category.list / info/ count
More info about all supported API methods for eBay and their details you can find API2Cart API Docs.
For example, let’s discover how you can easily manage product listings on eBay using API2Cart. For that purpose, you will just need to use product.list, product.add and product.update methods.
As you can see, with API2Cart, it is possible to create, update, and manage product listings on eBay and other shopping platforms and marketplaces easily. Moreover, you will be able to automatically upload products with images, titles, descriptions, categories, etc.
Conclusion
The development of eBay API integration can have a lot of advantages for your software solution. For example, it can expand your customer base in time. Moreover, it will increase your profits and market share extremely. However, the process of connection has a lot of difficulties if to do it on your own.
So, you can use API2Cart and forget about all the issues related to eBay integration. In other words, API2Cart takes care of further connection updates and maintenance. Also, you won’t need to spend your money and valuable resources on integration.
API2Cart has more than 100 methods to handle data from online stores. Also, you can use our detailed API Docs and 24/7 support.
API2Cart is a perfect solution for those software providers who operate in the sphere of:
- Shipping management
- Dropshipping automation
- Order and inventory management
- Marketing automation
- Price optimization
- ERP
- Point of sale (POS)
- Chatbot
- Translation and localization
- Social commerce
- Product catalog
- Multi-channel commerce
- And many others.
In conclusion, if you wish to know more about our services and eBay API integration for SaaS providers, get a consultation from our managers. Try API2Cart for 30-days for free now! Or schedule a quick call with our manager and get more detailed information.
