APIs have changed the way businesses operate and provide them with platforms that connect with many other players in their day to day business operations. The main aim of using APIs for these businesses comes in augmenting the business’s capabilities and making profits from the services using the APIs. These participants and transactions make up the API economy and reap the benefits of integrating APIs into their businesses.
When it comes to the eCommerce industry, the API implementation has not been left behind. This industry comprises eCommerce businesses, retailers, and service providers that cater to different needs such as customer support, shopping cart, and payment. eCommerce players are required to keep bringing new innovations and capabilities due to customer expectations and their changing behavior. APIs have, however, made this easy for the eCommerce players to respond to these demands.
This tells you that APIs have become an integral part of any successful eCommerce business. The larger eCommerce players have developed their own APIs and opened them up to third-party developers for integrations. We also have other players implementing third-party APIs such as payment APIs from other companies to streamline their operations.
This is a growing industry that developers can invest in, but the best way would be to develop OpenAPIs. If you are a developer with an API that you would like to convert to OpenAPI, check out apitransform.com to convert your existing Postman collection.
There are different ways through which eCommerce businesses are leveraging the power of APIs. They include;
1. Payment APIs
Payment APIs run the eCommerce businesses since the main point is making sales. There are different modes of payment today and an eCommerce player would not know which one their customer would want to use. eCommerce businesses are using the best APIs in the market today that meets all these requirements. The smarter ones are going a mile further and getting APIs that can generate invoices, manage subscriptions, and complete other tasks.
2. Shipping APIs
Shipping products in the eCommerce industry involves a lot of things, among them tracking shipments, using multiple carriers, label generation, validating addresses among others. You will find some online stores with some of these shipping features, but the smart players in the industry will get all these features to make sure that their customers are happy and satisfied.
3. Shopping Cart APIs
The shopping cart option makes it easy for online business owners and retailers to optimize their cart and increase sales. They are able to control cart data and add integrations that reduce cart abandonment leading to increased conversion. This is all made possible by the shopping cart APIs. These APIs deliver personalized discounts and offers from the customer’s history of purchase. Smarter business owners are even using shopping cart APIs that offer more options with some showing the same cart content across different channels.
4. Anti-Fraud APIs
eCommerce businesses are attracting unwanted attention from cybercriminals. However, due to APIs, they are employing anti-fraud APIs that keep such cybercriminals at bay. They generate multiple checkpoints that help in filtering out any potential red flags. Some even match the shopper information with their geolocation, validate credit card information, and verify email addresses.
5. Sales Tax APIs
eCommerce businesses go through a lot of pain when calculating taxes. This is because their customers are distributed across multiple jurisdictions. However, sales tax APIs have solved this for them by calculating the accurate taxes based on the customer’s locations.
Finally, we also have APIs being used for login, catalog, marketing, recommendations, and social proof. This tells you that successful eCommerce businesses cannot survive without APIs.