In today’s competitive world, it becomes mandatory for eCommerce B2B software vendors and developers to build strong connections between their systems and modern shopping platforms like Magento, Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce. Without such a connection in place, it becomes almost impossible for software that provide shipping management, warehouse management, order and inventory management, etc., to properly access their customers’ online store data.
In this article, we’d like to dive deeper into the concept of software integration and show you how you can develop strong, reliable connections with today’s most popular eCommerce platforms.
Software Integration Meaning
Software integration is quite a complex process, but it can be simplified to include creating a connection between two systems. For example, we can talk about the integration between any software and eCommerce platform, such as Shopify or WooCommerce. Such eCommerce integration is mandatory for allowing the software solution to maintain its functions and perform its operations.
Software integration aims to automate mundane tasks and ensure your team does not spend the entire day moving data between systems, creating reports and updating data tables in Excel. A good integration eliminates manual work and allows you to focus on more important tasks for your business, such as finding new partners, diving into new markets, or joining new business verticals.
Experts agree that integrations represent the future of retail technology. Thus, platforms and tools accessible from anywhere and can be dynamically updated will soon be the new norm. Software connection is usually performed using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). We’ll dive into that in the next section. But, first, let’s get practical and look at some specific integrations for modern eCommerce B2B software developers.
- Inventory: effective inventory management is a priority for millions of online sellers who want to ensure they never run out of products or experience shortages. Inventory software providers that perform an eCommerce software integration can easily observe how much stock is “laying dead”, pinpoint the actual inventory across channels, and then automatically update stocks based on invoices.
- Shipping: software companies providing shipping automation need to integrate their solutions with modern shopping cart software to be able to maintain transparency in delivering logistics, manage order packaging, and handle returns easier than ever before.
The Specifics of eCommerce Platform Integration
So why should you perform a software integration with various eCommerce platforms? First off, you can drastically expand your customer database. Connecting your business with just a few platforms, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento, gives you access to millions of online sellers using them to sell their products and conduct their businesses.
Second, performing a software eCommerce integration allows your solution to gain access to all the data you need to fulfill your services. This data includes information about products, orders, taxes, shipments, inventory, and sensitive data about site shoppers. You can use this data to provide better services to your target niche.
Third, you can expand your range of services provided. The data you can collect from these platforms can help your business to adopt new functionalities and create better services that are fine-tuned to your clients’ needs.
Last but not least, connecting your business with eCommerce platforms will increase your company’s profits since more customers will automatically mean a more significant business, more reach, and higher earnings.
To perform a connection, you need to use an API. This set of rules and coding processes allows your solution to seamlessly connect to the shopping cart software, gaining access to the data stored on it. Because each eCommerce platform has its unique API, developing a connection with multiple platforms requires different skill sets when coding.
At this point, it’s essential to mention the difficulties that usually accompany a manual integration process. In addition to the fact that, as mentioned above, you need to find developers with diverse skillsets who know how to perform bespoke integrations that cater to the needs of each unique API, you also need to invest thousands of dollars in each integration, plus thousands more for ongoing maintenance. Add to that the fact that some APIs come with their bugs and issues, and they are also quite prone to cyber-attacks and data theft, and you would soon realize that software integration is best realized via a third-party tool.
How to Develop a Reliable Integration with eCommerce Platforms?
You can try the manual approach, which includes finding the right developers for the job, hiring them, performing onboarding, and then making sure you keep paying them to maintain each connection separately, or you can go with a third-party integration tool. The latter option involves hiring a team of experts that have already developed their unique integration tool and can connect you to multiple shopping cart software at the same time with no difficulties. One such tool is API2Cart.
API2Cart is a third-party integration solution that works by connecting eCommerce software and apps to over 40 shopping carts. You can use its unified API to integrate your software with a multitude of shopping cart software and then apply various API methods to gain access to the exact data you need.
With API2Cart, you have over 100 API methods for managing data on orders, products, prices, taxes, categories, shipments, or online store customer details. You can also capitalize on a 30-day free trial period once you register. During this trial, you can explore all of the features offered by API2Cart to properly determine if this service is the right option for your business. All you need to do is to create your free account on the service, add your clients' online stores to the system and start working with their data. You can find all the helpful info on how to get started with API2Cart and what API methods to use in our detailed API Docs. They contain code samples and useful tutorials.
If you want to learn more about how API2Cart can help your business with software eCommerce integration, do not hesitate to contact us. We are ready to answer all your questions by phone, email, or chat 24/7.
