Customer data is valuable information for almost any B2B software such as order management, shipping, chatbots, marketing automation systems and many more. It is an integral part of their functionality that allows them to implement features like order fulfillment, email automation, report generation, etc.
Integration with eCommerce platforms like Magento is what allows B2B software to offer a wide range of features to online store owners. However, developing the right integration and getting Magento customer data is often a complicated process.
In this article, you will learn all about Magento and its API so that you can also understand the process of retrieving Magento customer data.
Key facts about Magento and Its API
Magento is on the top of most business owners' list when it comes to setting up an online store. No doubt about the popularity of the shopping platform due to its 26% share of the eCommerce market. That means Magento currently runs more than 240,000 online stores.
The Magento API makes it easy for software vendors to connect their eCommerce systems to Magento and access the data they need to run smoothly. It supports SOAP and XML formats, with SOAP being the default protocol. It works with four main HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. An important concept of REST API architecture is that different HTTP request methods perform different actions when applied to the same URL.
Magento API Integration Peculiarities
The Magento API is a complex architecture and integrating with Magento is like the cherry on top.
Below are the most common pitfalls you will experience when integrating with Magento and accessing Magento customer data:
First, you need to find a team of advanced developers to help you build the integration code. Dealing with Magento API is a complex process and you need a robust team to take care of it.
Integrations are expensive. You will have to spend more than $4000 per integration. Add to that the cost of hiring a team, training and onboarding, setting up infrastructure, to name a few. Given the number of integrations you have to create for your customers, it will cost you a fortune.
Time is the most important thing in this world and developing integrations in-house violates this very aspect of the deadline. It will cost you a lot of time to develop a single integration considering the complexity.
You have to deal with an EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) database model and more than 40 tables with information on products and categories. The complexity of SQL queries is another factor responsible for the delay. Again, if you count the number of integrations required you can estimate how long it will take you to meet your client expectations.
Shopping platforms like Magento are constantly updating their API for security reasons. This means that your integrations will also need to be updated as needed to keep them constant and secure. So, if you repeat the whole process of integration development with your team in terms of updating and maintenance, you will increase your expenses by dollars and months.
So that's what it's like - the process of integrating with Magento. If you choose the hard way, you will end up losing your customers. But since there is a smarter way available to you, let's save the decision for the end.
Solution for Easy Magento Integration
The simple and affordable way to integrate with Magento and access customer data is to use API2Cart.
API2Cart is a unified API that allows B2B SaaS software vendors to integrate their eCommerce software with more than 40 shopping carts and marketplaces including Magento in one go. That means you don’t need to build separate integrations for all shopping platforms. Also, it takes care of the updates and maintenance required after integration.
Benefits of API2Cart
Save on multiple integration expenses - API2Cart allows you to retrieve information related to products, customers, orders, and categories from more than 40 shopping platforms at once. You don’t have to spend individually on all the integrations.
Save on time and internal resources. API2Cart frees up your business resources, time, and manpower involved to be focused on other important tasks.
Leverage the latest platforms and their updated versions. We keep adding new eCommerce platforms and ensure the existing ones are present with all of their versions.
Access to complete technical support. Reach out to us in case of any technical issues, or customization needs you might have.
Highly flexible and scalable. No matter how different your requirements are from our use cases, we deliver a custom model for your business to directly integrate with shopping platforms. That said, we never fuzz about an ever-increasing clientele in your business.
How to get Magento customer data with API2Cart?
Here comes the key to retrieving Magento customer data easily and quickly with API2Cart.
Our API methods help software vendors to retrieve the data they want from the shopping platforms. In case of Magento customer data, the method used is customer.list.
The customer.list method is used to retrieve a list of customers from the online stores. It returns the following info about the customer like name, email address, created time, birthday, orders counts, and many more.
You can find more information on this or other methods on our documentation.
If you have some questions about API2Cart, get in touch with us for a consultation call.
