As an eCommerce vendor, it is your responsibility to provide your e-retailer clients with full-fledged SaaS solutions to streamline their store operations. Apparently, if your current SaaS solution doesn’t have access to store data from eCommerce platforms like Prestashop, you need to rethink your business strategy.
The reason is — a full-fledged software is one that can manage all the eCommerce operations from one place and perform its core operations very well. And if your software hasn’t yet developed an integration with PrestaShop, your software is still incomplete.
This article will walk you through different aspects of integration with PrestaShop: its importance, benefits, pitfalls, and an easy way to develop it.
PrestaShop API Specifics
To develop integration with PrestaShop, you need to get to know about PrestaShop API which will connect your software to the platform.
PrestaShop API provides 4 different methods to software developers who want to manipulate store data directly from eCommerce software. These methods include Create, Read, Update, and Delete. It uses REST architecture to allow other applications to interact with it.
PrestaShop API allows both JSON and XML as the data interchange format and enables the developers to manage data using 4 HTTP methods, including GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. These methods are in correspondence to SQL and CRUD.
Benefits of Integration with PrestaShop
Integration with PrestaShop can actually prove to be a goldmine for your business. Let’s see how.
- Prestashop features more than 725,205 websites across the web, of which 299,303 are live. It has its presence spread over 200 countries. And more than 318,000 customers trust PrestaShop.
- More customers means more revenue, which ultimately translates into more profits. The more prospects you reach out to, the higher your conversion rate.
PrestaShop integration will also help you maintain a reputation in the market. With its big customer base and a solid presence in the international eCommerce industry, you will get noticed by your audience and can build a brand for you.
- You can step out of your comfort zone and provide more than what you are already offering to your clients. Integration with PrestaShop gives a whole new level of functionality to your eCommerce software. Whatever functions it is designed to perform, it can actually do without fail using the data your software would access from PrestaShop after the integration.
So if you ever think of expanding your business internationally, integration with PrestaShop is your best shot at it. You get prospective buyers for your software across the globe with popularity for your business. So integration brings you both — international exposure and a huge clientele — with one shot.
Integration with PrestaShop can actually get you ahead of your competitors who haven’t yet leveraged its benefits and with the right integration development approach, you can even outperform those who already have.
Pitfalls of Integration Development with PrestaShop
Integration with PrestaShop is indispensable for your B2B eCommerce business. But it has its own challenges that you need to know before getting started with integration development.
Integrations are a costly affair. An integration with PrestaShop will cost you at least around $4000. And if your client happens to have their e-stores on multiple eCommerce platforms, you just have to do simple math to imagine the hole integrations can burn in your pocket. The situation will be the same if you sell more than one eCommerce software.
Added to the cost of developing integrations, there’s the salary of the developers you’ll hire to do the job. Not to mention, these will be advanced developers who’ll code eCommerce integrations for your business.
Then, there are setup and infrastructure costs that you’ll have to bear for developing integrations. And last, but not least, there will be the cost of maintenance and upgrades that you’ll look after every time PrestaShop releases its new API version.
Integrations are time-consuming. One integration with PrestaShop can take around 8 weeks to complete and the number of integrations you are expecting to develop will take time beyond your imagination.
And of course, you will need time to hire and train your employees and set up the infrastructure. Then you’ll need the same amount of time as you spent in development to look after the maintenance and upgrades of integrations if they are to stay healthy and functioning.
Consequently, you will end up spending more time developing integrations rather than handling your core business operations. Besides, long waits for your software might put off your clients and they may switch to your competition very quickly.
Integrations are complex to develop. For example, PrestaShop has a different architecture than that of Amazon and other eCommerce platforms. So if you are going to connect with more platforms rather than developing integration with PrestaShop alone, you have to consider the complexity that comes with each platform.
Every platform has a different API and your developers will need to understand the functionality separately. Not only will it take more time from your developers’ scheduled hours but also cost you more money.
You already know how upgrades and maintenance sessions go. Simply put, you are going to invest a lot of time, money, and resources that are actually required in integration and it may cost you a fortune.
But you’ll only face the above-mentioned challenges if you hire an in-house development team for integration with PrestaShop or any other eCommerce platform. We have a solution that doesn’t require an in-house team and is cost-effective and efficient.
PrestaShop Integration Solution
The best and most feasible way to develop integration with PrestaShop is via API2Cart.
API2Cart is a unified API that allows eCommerce software vendors like you to integrate with more than 40 eCommerce platforms and marketplaces, including PrestaShop. So if your client has their e-stores based on more than just one or two platforms, API2Cart is your go-to integration solution.
API2Cart eliminates the hassle of connecting with all the platforms separately and combines the integration processes into one. All you have to do is, integrate your eCommerce software with API2Cart and provide the list of eCommerce platforms you wish to connect with. The unified API will automatically integrate your software with all those eCommerce platforms at once.
So apart from integration with PrestaShop, you can look forward to connecting with other platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, BigCommerce, eBay, Etsy, etc. with your eCommerce software. For retrieving and managing data from all these platforms, API2Cart provides more than 100 methods. You can import orders, sync inventory across different sales channels, manage customer information across platforms, update products in the stores, and do much more from a single place with API2Cart.
Besides, API2Cart has also got you covered in terms of integration upgrades and maintenance. With your subscription plan, API2Cart looks after all the upgrades according to the newly updated versions of the eCommerce platform APIs.
To know more about integration with PrestaShop and discuss your business case, you can get in touch with our consultation experts today.