In recent years, eCommerce has become an integral part of global retailing. Thanks to the continuing digitalization of modern life, the number of both buyers and retailers is increasing.
Retailers use shopping platforms such as Magento to build their online stores. They must have real-time information to succeed, and software vendors can offer such functionality. However, it is only possible if such software is integrated with all the eCommerce platforms needed on the market.
Using a third-party integration solution, eCommerce software can connect to multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces via a unified API. Such tools significantly save time, money and development resources.
Let's learn more about the unified API for Magento integration, the main aspects of development, and how to do it best.
Why You Should Connect to Magento
Magento is a popular shopping cart with a strong position among industry leaders. At the moment, about 178K online stores are created on it.
As SaaS app providers seeking to expand into new markets, you want to develop a Magento integration as soon as possible to access data from this platform’s stores and offer your services to retailers who are using Magento. In addition, it helps to provide many other benefits for your business. Let’s consider some of them:
Magento powers over 8% of eCommerce stores and is in the top three eCommerce usage distribution. Hence, using a unified API for Magento integration can increase your chances of acquiring leads or prospects.
By establishing a reliable integration, you can increase your revenue and profits.
Magento integration can help you expand your eCommerce business globally. You can reach international clients as Magento has a worldwide presence.
Such connection helps retrieve store data and gives your software the ability to perform its core functionality.
Main Aspects of Magento API
When a company wants to integrate its software with Magento, it is crucial to know about the API of the eCommerce platform. In addition, it will allow you to understand how to connect your software with Magento.
Magento has released an API that allows for the integration of their shopping cart with other applications. The API supports both SOAP and REST.
API is an interface that enables you to interact with data. The Magento REST API enables developers to create custom solutions that access and update Magento store data. The API supports both JSON and XML and uses four main methods: POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE.
The SOAP API enables your application to make requests for work with specific resources, such as products, sales orders, or customers. It uses an array, string, or Boolean values. The SOAP API is Magento’s default protocol, but most developers prefer working with REST because it's more straightforward.
Magento integration allows you to connect your business with this platform and gain access to the data of your customers using Magento. As a result, you can integrate your business with Magento to gain new business opportunities and extend your features.
However, you should also be aware of some disadvantages to implementing integration with Magento. These include technological complexity, high expensiveness, security risks, high time consumption, and constant upgrading & maintenance.
Challenges of Integration with Magento
If you don’t use an iPaaS solution for integrating with Magento, you may face some challenges. Developing in-house integrations can be expensive as you must commit resources from your core business just to establish eCommerce integrations with needed shopping platforms. Other difficulties include:
Integration is expensive. Integration costs can add up quickly, and since many companies integrate with more than one platform, the aggregate cost of integrations can mount into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Integration takes time. Your clients may not be willing to wait 8 weeks to release certain software features. Moreover, many of your clients have stores on multiple platforms. That makes it necessary to integrate with more than one platform, increasing development time.
Integration is complex. Furthermore, Magento API's unique logical architecture makes this integration especially difficult to complete. Some technical obstacles in Magento are not documented in the software documentation.
Maintenance and upgrade required. eCommerce platforms change their APIs frequently to address security issues. As a result, integrations must be maintained and upgraded regularly to keep pace with these changes. Magento is no exception.
Connection SaaS business with Magento is a complex process that can take time and money. The best option in 2022 is to use API2Cart's unified API for Magento integration.
Usage of a Unified API for Magento Integration
When you need to integrate your SaaS system with other shopping platforms such as Magento, you can use a unified API provided by API2Cart. Using it, you can connect with not only Magento but more than 40 other shopping platforms and marketplaces at once.
With more than 100 API methods, API2Cart allows working easily with all the needed online store data. When working with Magento, using API2Cart's API methods, you will be able to work with all the store data like orders, prices, categories and images, shipping details, and customer information.
Unified API for Magento integration allows you to not only access store data but also manage, add, get, update, and sync by using the following methods for Magento store data:
order.add - add a new order to the platform
order.update - update existing order
order.shipment.tracking.add - add order shipment's tracking info
order.refund.add - add a refund to the order
product.add - add product to store
product.update - update price and amount for a specific product
product.delete - delete existing product
product.variant.image.add - add image to product
product.image.delete - delete image
You can get all the necessary for easy integration via API2Cart regardless of your niche. We can help you grow your business and reach all those tens of thousands of potential customers on Magento.
API2Cart offers a 30-day free trial for you to test if our service covers your business needs. To take advantage, simply register your account right now. Or, if you have any questions before registering, contact our managers by phone or email.