ECOMMERCE API

INTEGRATION FOR YOUR

BUSINESS

Everything you need to know

 eCommerce API Integration for
Your Business
Running a B2B eCommerce software for online retailers is always challenging because
the industry is evolving at a steady pace. A richer abundance of solutions is offered to
a growing number of online merchants, which results in the potential clientele of B2Bs
becoming more diverse.

Thus, to be able to meet the needs of a larger number of clients, such services integrate
with multiple platforms merchants use. As most of them created their online stores on
various shopping platforms, being connected to them is a de facto must.

This white paper is aimed to inform B2B eCommerce SaaS vendors about the benefits of
the integration of their solutions with multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces.
You will find the following subtopics covered:

What are shopping platforms and why to integrate with them

What industries it works best for
Which platforms to integrate with and why
What it takes to integrate with them
How real software vendors benefited from shopping platform integration

2
 Contents
1. Shopping Platforms (eCommerce platforms)
What they are & Why to integrate with them 4
2. What Businesses Shopping Platform Integration Works Best For
Marketing automation software 5
Multi-channel commerce solutions 6
Mobile Commerce APP Development 6
Social commerce solutions 7
Repricing and price optimization software 7
Inventory, order and warehouse management systems 8
Localization solutions 9
Chatbots 9
Dropshipping automation software 10
Shipping management solutions 10
3. What Shopping Platforms to Integrate With and Why
Most popular shopping platforms 11
Less popular but widely used worldwide and on local markets 12
Integration with marketplaces 13

4. What It Takes to Integrate

API as a key to shopping cart databases 14
What integration costs 15
Challenges to overcome 15

5. Successful Shopping Platform Integration Implementation

Examples
Webinterpret 16
Video 16
DataFeedWatch 17

6. API2Cart as a Reliable Shopping Platform Integration Option 18

3
 Shopping platforms
What They Are
Shopping platforms are software that provides all the necessary tools for merchants to
build their online stores. They serve as an interface between the eCommerce website
and its deeper infrastructure. There are often multiple pLugins and add-ons that make
such necessary processes as accounting, inventory management, shipping, etc.
possible.

Why to Integrate with Them

Being connected to shopping platforms is beneficial and often vital for B2B eCommerce
SaaS systems and enterprises of different kinds. To be able to help e-store owners
organize and automate their e-retail businesses, such services as inventory and order
management, mobile app building, marketing automation, reprising, shipping
management and others need to access their clients’ stores databases. And this is
impossible without shopping platform integration.

4
 What Businesses Shopping Platform
Integration Works Best For
The list of industries that need shopping platform integration is very long. Below you
will find business use cases that have proven to benefit from being connected to
multiple eCommerce platforms on the example of our customers.

Marketing Automation
Marketing automation software help retailers win back customer attention, recover cart
abandonment, boost sales with coupons or special offers, and keep customers updated
on order statuses.

Marketing automation software greatly depends on integration with shopping

platforms, as carrying out its key functions requires access to data on products and
orders, customer contacts, coupons, etc., which are stored in stores’ databases.

Info from e-stores powers the majority of internal processes marketing automation
software runs. Without the eCommerce integration, such systems cannot send emails
featuring new items, discounts and special prices to online stores’ customers, notify
them on order statuses, track cart abandoners and generate smart e-mail statistics.

READ MORE

5
 Multi-Channel Commerce Solutions
Multichannel software empowers merchants to provide a unified and consistent
customer experience across multiple online sales channels. In particular, it allows to
coordinate and control various business processes from inventory management and
order fulfillment, to shipping management and synchronizing product listings from one
centralized place.

Seamless integration with eCommerce platforms is of paramount importance for such

systems. It enables them to get information on products, orders, shipments, inventory
levels, etc., organize it into data feeds, and update across all channels.

READ MORE

Mobile Commerce APP Development

Building a mobile store app requires syncing the app with a web store, which hardly can
be done without integration with shopping platforms. It ensures that all product info,
customers, and orders appear in both the app and the website.
eCommerce app builders depend on integration with shopping carts to ensure the
mobile app is synchronized with the website.

Without the eCommerce integration, such solutions cannot convert webstores into
mobile apps, sync product lists, prices, images, etc., sync orders in real-time, update
tracking info and order statuses.

READ MORE

6
 Social Commerce Solutions
Selling products online works more effectively when supported by social commerce.
Though being highly requested social commerce services cannot help online merchants
without being able to access their store databases. Simply because this is required to
get and synchronize products, categories, prices, and other information to reflect them
on social pages.

Instead of elaborating separate unique integration modules for different shopping

platforms used by their clients, they often seek for unified ways to integrate with
multiple platforms at once. This way they save a considerable amount of precious time
and human resources.

READ MORE

Repricing and Price Optimization Software

Repricing and price optimization systems are widely used by online merchants
that want to win on the eCommerce market. Shoppers are interested in purchasing
best-quality items for the most reasonable prices.

To attract potential clients Looking for appealing prices e-retail businesses use repricing
and price optimization systems. They monitor rival offers and show how they change
over time to help merchants set the most optimal price in order to be more competitive
in the market.

In view of the fact that merchants have their stores based on various eCommerce
platforms, gathering data on product prices, categories, and features requires being
integrated with multiple shopping platforms.

READ MORE

7
 Inventory, Order and Warehouse
Management Systems
These 3 types of B2B services are in the peak of demand due to the bloom of
eCommerce. A growing number of retail businesses evolve into bigger ones and
eventually face the need to use additional software to make order management more
flawless and effective.

Higher sales require a larger inventory, and this means that ordering, sorting, storing
and stock re-filling becomes more complicated and expensive. Here the systems
mentioned in the subtitle come in handy.

For all the operations offered by such services to be fulfilled, they need to have access
to the databases of their clients’ e-stores to get data on products, categories, customers,
orders and tracking numbers. etc.

Retrieving, synchronizing, and using this information is impossible without smoothly

developed shopping platform integration.

eCommerce Integration for Order and Inventory Software

READ MORE

eCommerce Integration for WMS Solutions

READ MORE

8
 Localization Solutions
Localization is basically translating online store and adapting it to the local culture,
which is the key step to successfully enter a foreign market. It includes translating and
adapting every single piece of content: product names, descriptions, categories,
graphics, currencies, time, date, etc.

When building localization software, you need to ensure it can accurately retrieve,
process, and add this information. This involves developing dozens of connections,
including those with shopping platforms that merchants run their stores on.

READ MORE

Chatbots
Chatbots become a means of fostering better shopping experiences and reducing cart
abandonment. For an online shop, a chatbot is like a salesperson who is ready to help
the visitor with the product information, making the payment, tracking the status of
delivery, guiding through a sale, and more.

To build such an eCommerce chatbot that will be able to run function mentioned
above, it has to be integrated with the business ecosystem (shopping platforms in the
first place) to access product catalogs, data on inventory levels and tracking numbers,
etc. Also, it needs to be able to create orders, change stock levels, get lists of abandoned
orders, etc. This implies building dozens of connections run their stores on.

READ MORE

9
 Dropshipping Automation Software
Dropshipping software functions are basically powered by connectivity with online
stores. It gathers information on products, orders, categories, and inventory levels,
organizes it into data feeds, transfers feeds to dropshipping systems, make updates on
all distributors’ storefronts, etc.

Dropshipping software greatly depends on integration with shopping platforms, as

carrying out key functions requires an ability to access and sync order, customer and
product info from different online stores.

READ MORE

Shipping Management Software

Shipping is definitely a challenging aspect for any eCommerce business. Besides
picking, packing, and transportation, it includes many other operations like order
fulfillment, shipment tracking, managing stock levels, updating order statuses.

Shipping software greatly depends on integration with shopping platforms because it

makes it possible for them to import orders from multiple sales channels, update
tracking info and order statuses, create shipping labels, organize the data in detailed
reports.

READ MORE

And This Is Not the Limit!

The industries presented in this chapter are only a drop in the ocean of the
businesses that could benefit from integration with shopping platforms. Jump to
the next chapter to read about what platforms to integrate with and why.

10
 What Shopping Platforms to
Integrate With and Why
As a business person, you want your investment to bring profits, and it is the same with
shopping platform integration. It will anyway cost you time and money, but which platforms
you chose to connect may determine the outcome. In this chapter, we are going to reveal
three potentially profitable integration decision scenarios for your business.

Most Popular eCommerce Platforms

Integration with leading eCommerce platforms is a great opportunity to substantially
enlarge the circle of potential clients. Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop,
and OpenCart together power millions of online stores, which makes a decent
percentage of influence on the market.

Being integrated with these platforms means being able to serve clients having their
e-shops based on any of them. Millions of e-retail business owners needing help with
different vital operations as your potential customers make an excellent chance to get
extra revenue.

On the other hand, most of your rivals are probably already integrated with some of the
top shopping platforms, so having a few extra ones supported would be a good
competitive advantage.

11
 Less Popular but Widely Used Worldwide
and on Local Markets
About as many stores as built on the five shopping platforms mentioned above are
powered by other platforms. Some of them are leaders in particular countries while
others do well globally.

For instance, Gambio, Zen Cart and Hybris are preferred by German-speaking and
other European users, so integration with them would be beneficial for businesses
working on or trying to expand to the European market.

If you want to increase the number of your clients in Australia or Canada, the integration
with Squarespace, Ecwid, and osCommerce will help you to do it easily and in a short
term.

Together, all the shopping platforms that fall into this category have no less than a
million online stores built on them. Of course, this makes a slightly smaller clientele, but
the prospect of having to offer what your rivals don’t have is not a bad one.

12
 Integration with marketplaces
Also, don’t forget about the integration with marketplaces as it can bring you a great
number of possibilities.

Marketplace integration represents a win-win situation for all the parties involves. You
can grow your business and gain access to a larger pool of customers, while your
customers can save time when managing their eCommerce businesses and can see all
their information in one place.

When it comes to marketplaces that you should focus on when seeking eCommerce
integrations, four big names pop up: Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Walmart. Each one of
these giant marketplaces has its vast reach and are used by millions of sellers
worldwide, reaching billions of people on the whole earth.

Perfect Choice
A combo, that is, being integrated with multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces,
would double the pros. Apart from a larger market share, eCommerce integration works
as a functionality expansion that can be applied to other business purposes.

It enables you to retrieve and use various e-store data to not only provide your clients
with the services you are offering now, but also run new useful features that would be
helpful for thousands of eCommerce businesses.

$
20
0

BU
Y
$ NO
20 W
0 !

xx
xx
00
00
00
0 00
000
oo
oo

13
 What It Takes to Integrate
API as a Key to Shopping Platforms Databases
To let eCommerce applications and B2B services use online store data, most shopping
platforms expose their APls. In their turn, businesses need to integrate with the APIs to
get access to the store data mentioned.

For instance, if you are an inventory management provider, you need to be able to
retrieve and synchronize information from your clients’ online shops. Being connected
to the shopping platforms that those clients have their stores created on and managed
from enables them to do this. And APIs are the media between your system and the
shopping platform databases. That is why shopping platform API integration is a
necessary step to obtaining access to the client‘s store information needed.

APIs make it possible for you, as a business person, to retrieve and manipulate the necessary
store data from shopping platform databases. They not only extend the functionality of your
service but also expand business horizons by letting you run new features attractive to more
clients worldwide.

14
 What an Integration Costs
Integration means having to deal with code, so you will have to find developers with
sufficient expertise to write it thoroughly. A badly written integration may cost you
thousands of extra requests a day and slow data interaction, not to mention incorrect or
inaccurate data returned and dissatisfied clients as a ’bonus’.

Good work will take a long while, especially if you want your system to get connected to
more than one shopping platform. And now think about the expenses. Not only those
you will meet in the process of integration development. but also those related to the
further maintenance of the ready and ongoing integration. New versions of eCommerce
platforms are released every once in a while, so the upgrade routine is inevitable.

Calculating the Cost of eCommerce Integration

READ MORE

Challenges to Overcome
All the issues described in the previous paragraph can be made into a list to make the
issues that integrations entail clearly defined. The following challenges are meant:

Finding a developer to elaborate a secure, seamless, and cost-efiective integrations

Time expenditures due to the long process of integration development and its
further maintenance

Thousands of dollars that needed to be paid for the developers for writing multiple
integrations, maintaining and updating them

15
 Successful eCommerce Integration
Implementation Examples
Shopping platform integration has proven to be beneficial for thousands of businesses.
A few of such real-life examples are described below.

Webinterpret
Webinterpret is a company that helps online merchants trade cross-border. To be able to
power businesses to sell goods on international markets, the service needed to retrieve
data on products, categories, prices, and orders from clients’ stores.

This information would then be used to translate, localize and promote their e-shops on
local search engines and marketplaces. Shopping platform API integration with multiple
eCommerce platforms made it possible for the company to easily get and synchronize
store data between customers’ original online stores and their copies in the global
market.

Veeqo
Veeqo is an inventory and order management solution. In order to be able to
synchronize stock levels across all the client’s sales channels, the company needed to
get access to the databases of the platforms that their clients have their e-store built on.

Integration with shopping platforms enabled Veeqo to get information on products,

orders and inventory levels from the eCommerce platforms. Once an item is sold out,
the store owner does not have to worry about updating the number of products
available because it is done automatically. The clients of the company can also avoid
overselling by setting their minimum stock level and the quantity to re-order at that
level.

16
 DataFeedWatch
DataFeedWatch is a solution that creates and optimizes data feeds for different
shopping channels and analyzes the performance of campaigns thus helping to exclude
unprofitable products. Feed creation requires access to client’s store data that is later to
be organized into feeds.

Shopping platform integration made it possible for DataFeedWatch to gather data on

products, categories, and prices from the platforms its clients have their stores based on
and send detailed feeds to the shopping channels needed.

More success stories

READ MORE

17
 API2Cart as a Reliable
Shopping Platform Integration Option
API2Cart is a service that makes it possible to connect your B2B eCommerce SaaS
solution to 40+ shopping platforms and marketplaces via a unified API. With only one
integration performed instead of multiple ones, you both save time, money and effort.

The service supports integration with the most popular shopping platforms on the
market including Magento, Shopify, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, OpenCart,
WooCommerce, Zen Cart, Gambio and others.

The tech team adds new versions of the platforms as they come out, and continues
working on expanding the range of supported platforms. See the full list of integrations
available by clicking on the button below.

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

API2Cart offers 100+ API methods to let you operate and manipulate shopping
platforms store data as you need it for your business. It ensures secure data transfer with
the help of SSL certificate and 32~symbol API key. To make your integration process
easier, the service provides detailed API documentation with code samples and
interactive examples. Plus, full tech support will help you solve any issues 24/7.

API Documentation Supported API Methods

18
Connect and Work with 40+ eCommerce Platforms through One Integration!

Make a step towards your business enhancement today! Integrate with multiple
shopping platforms in the shortest term possible and get our guidance and full tech
support that will help you succeed.

SEE HOW AP2CART WORKS SCHEDULE A CALL

Contact us

WEBSITE: https://api2cart.com/

EMAIL: [email protected]

PHONE: 1-800-224-0976 (USA&Canada Toll-Free)

19