How APIs Can Boost Your E-Commerce Business

We’re living in a data-driven world where businesses and whole industries are struggling to adept to the times and find new ways to use the tools and data presented to them. And while some businesses still have enough time to strategize, e-commerce companies need to leverage their resources right now, if they want to remain competitive in the market.

You see, data can help e-commerce companies understand their customers better. In turn, this allows them to connect to their customers on a more personal level and turn them into loyal brand flowers and even ambassadors.

 

In order to achieve this, online retailers need to send the right proposals to their customers as soon as they enter their site.

And no matter what budget you’re working with, you need to understand that there are tools available out there that can help you adept to your customers and keep them in the long run. That’s why you need to familiarize yourself with different types APIs.

Today, we’re going to take a look some of the ways you can use APIs to boost your sales…

Use APIs to Personalize the Customer Experience

As we already mentioned in the opening paragraph, the best way to utilize modern technology is to make a more personal experience for the consumers.

A personalization API will enable you to organize your website and its content in accordance to the needs and wishes of your visitors. In general, there are two specific ways you can use personalization APIs.

On one hand, you can use them to arrange the content you’re promoting according to the customer’s previous visits and their shopping history. You can also use this technique to send more targeted emails to the same customers.

On the other, you can use this APIs to understand the needs of your customers from their online behavior and reorder the content your site to match the products your visitors talked on social media, for example.

Automate the Shipping Process with APIs

 

If your business specializes in drop shipments, you can simply embed a shipping-and-delivery APU into your site. This will give your customers a sense of trust when they are ordering products from your website and establish your business as upfront and trustworthy.

With these APIs, you can automate the whole process and make things easier for both you and your customers.

The shipping-and-delivery API can be activated after a customer completes the shopping process to start the delivery procedure right away. It can also serve as a tracking tool that keeps your customers up-do-date on their shipment.

This will also notify you when the product has reached its destination and allow you to check with your customer with a follow up email, to ensure everything went seamlessly.

 

Power Your Recommendation Engine with Ecommerce API

 

Recommendation bars play a big role on your site. After all, they lead your customers further down the rabbit whole and help them discover new products they didn’t even your site carried or that they weren’t even planning on buying in the first place.

But that’s not all you can do with these kinds of APIs. Just take the recent collaboration between Pinterest and Random House.

By using the Pinterest API, Random House is now able to see which books are trending on the popular social network and put these books on their front page to attract the attention of visitors. Of course, the Pinterest API isn’t the only one of its kind.

Do some research and you’ll be able to find dozens of different recommendation APIs that can make attractive suggestions to your visitors.

Display Affiliate Links on Your Website Seamlessly With APIs

Some people are afraid of using APIs simply because they look to complicated to implement. But little do they know that they are probably already using APIs on their websites.

For example, if your e-commerce site has miniature widgets, which link to different products on sites like Amazon, then you’re already using APIs without noticing it.

And if you’re not, then it’s definitely the time to start. If you’re curating Amazon products, then you need to start using these widgets – that are powered by the Amazon API – to display the products on your site.

Unlike some other tools out there, they automate the whole process and record a sale automatically every time one of your customers purchases something off your site. This way, you’ll be able to collect all commissions without moving a finger.

 

Final Thoughts On E-Commerce APIs

Some of the things we talked about may sound too technical to some of you. But don’t worry, APIs are actually not that hard to implement.

In fact, every API developer nowadays uses a web service documentation tool to create easy-to-comprehend documentation that will explain everything you need to know about the API and its implementation process.

In the end, keep in mind that in just a short few years, most of your competitors will be able to integrate a good number of services to their sites and use them to attract more customers.

If you want to stay in the race, you need to act right now and learn how you can leverage all of the tools freely available to you thanks to the internet.

We hope you enjoyed our article and that you found it helpful. As always, if you have any additional questions – or if you feel like we failed to mention something important – feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.