eBay API integration is a crucial opportunity for eCommerce software developers who aim to provide their clients with efficient solutions for managing orders, products, and customers. In addition, as one of the largest online selling platforms, eBay enables the automation of data processing and integration of features necessary for effective online business management.
For software solutions that support order management, shipment processing, and marketing automation, integrating with popular platforms like eBay is essential. Through API2Cart, which allows integration with over 60 other platforms including eBay, developers can seamlessly sync data such as orders, products, customers, and shipments without the need for complex configurations.
Integrating with eBay via API2Cart allows software solutions to fully leverage the platform's capabilities, simplifying e-merchants' workflows and enabling enhanced functionality for end-users.
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 eBay API 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. This means 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. However, before you proceed, take a look at the tedious process of integration and all the associated difficulties. 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 Can You Develop a Successful eBay API Integration?
You can develop eBay marketplace integration by hiring a team of developers who can do it for you or choosing a third-party service. Let’s take a deeper look at both of these methods so that you can make a well-informed decision.
1. Working with Developers
Pros:
- More control over the entire project
- You have the freedom to choose your integrations and perform them in your desired time interval
Cons:
- This process is extremely tedious and can take weeks, if not months. Consider finding the right people for the job, signing contracts, and setting up deadlines, and you might have to wait over three months for the integration to be over
- The costs for this process are pretty high: expect to pay around $10K for integration with eBay
- eBay API usually is tough to work with: since it uses sandbox, it’s quite tricky to set up and requires the hand of developers who can quickly solve bugs and overcome obstacles
- You also need to consider working with developers who can offer you continual support for your integration
2. Using a Third-Party Integration Service
Pros:
- You can quickly integrate your software with not just eBay but with other platforms such as Amazon, Etsy, WooCommerce, ZenCart, and the list goes on
- The costs associated with such a service are way lower than what you would pay for a manual integration with multiple platforms
- The maintenance and connection improvement are part of the process and included in the package, so you don’t have to worry about finding the right team or paying extra money for this
Cons:
- You lack the control you would otherwise enjoy with a manual integration
As you can notice, choosing a third-party integration service to connect your software with eBay is a better choice than trying to put together a team for this task. Going with a third-party solution enables your business to capitalize on two of the most important benefits you can get: set up a secure integration quickly and affordably.
How to Simplify the Integration Process?
API2Cart is a solution that helps your software integrate with eBay marketplace API and 60+ 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 marketplace API 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 marketplace 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.
