The growing popularity of eCommerce marketplaces allows merchants to expand significantly their businesses and get more clients. For B2B SaaS solutions integration with marketplaces is also a vital need.
Marketplace API is what allows SaaS providers like you to connect your software with an eCommerce marketplace. Integration with marketplace API allows you to get products, orders and manage other necessary store information. As a result, you will provide store owners with the needed functionality for their businesses.
Let’s see how you can profit from marketplace APIs and integrate with them with ease.
What Is Marketplace API Integration
The ability to connect to various marketplaces is advantageous and necessary for SaaS applications and businesses of different sizes. Various application solutions must access their clients’ store records to assist online store owners in organizing and automating their online business. We’re talking about inventory and order management, marketing automation, mobile application development, shipment management, repricing, and other related applications. And this is hard to achieve without establishing a seamless marketplace API integration.
Connection with marketplaces refers to the process of connecting SaaS solutions to any marketplace. It provides access to information from online stores listed on such marketplaces. Order and inventory management, WMS, shipping management, ERP, marketing automation, repricing systems, and other services, for example, cannot operate with merchants’ shops and execute their important tasks without this type of connection. In other terms, high-quality integration with multiple marketplaces allows you to obtain, add, remove, and synchronize data on orders, products, clients, and deliveries. However, creating integration is a difficult task. It needs extensive work, large expenditures, upkeep, and qualified personnel, as we will see below.
The Specifics of Marketplaces’ APIs
Integration with various eCommerce marketplaces is certainly one of the most challenging issues for any provider that offers eCommerce services. You would require a lot of effort and experience to comprehend any marketplace if you want to link your SaaS software with them. Integration with them creates plenty of problems, some of which are mentioned below.
When attempting to integrate your eCommerce software with Amazon’s marketplace, you may experience many difficulties, including:
- Because the Amazon API is pretty old, it needs a certain degree of skills and knowledge. Only a handful of XML and CSV files can be used to deal with packages, products, and other data.
- Another integration issue is Amazon’s API documentation, which is complicated to understand and handle due to the absence of actual examples. Furthermore, Amazon’s user support personnel is inefficient. Therefore you may have to wait longer than 24 hours for an issue to be resolved.
If you are attempting to link your eCommerce software to eBay’s marketplace, you may experience the following difficulties:
- The eBay API is inconsistent because different resources such as clients, items, orders, and other information have distinct data formats.
- eBay sandbox does not function properly and contains a substantial number of errors. In addition, the programmers must spend a significant amount of time reviewing the completed requests since eBay generates uninformative messages.
- The eBay sandbox administration panel logs out the users regularly. As a result, it is difficult to build a product with its assistance.
- It might be challenging to discover all of the necessary info in the eBay API documentation at times. As a result, developers must spend a significant amount of time searching the eBay developer boards for solutions to their questions.
If you are an eCommerce service provider trying to link your application to the Etsy platform, you may encounter the following issues:
- The API information on the Etsy platform does not provide all of the necessary data to guarantee a seamless connection. It takes a substantial amount of time for programmers and necessitates additional research. Additionally, the characteristics of the Etsy API are likely to be subject to alteration at any time and without notice.
- Another issue with getting data from Etsy through its API is the lack of a relationship between product images and categories. Furthermore, evaluating the Etsy API is a costly operation.
All of these factors will make connecting your eCommerce solution with various shopping marketplaces challenging, so you need to find a way to make things simpler.
How to Develop the Integration With APIs of Multiple Marketplaces
Developing API integration is a complex process due to the number of issues involved. Nevertheless, there are two approaches to accomplish this integration.
In-house integration development
This method will involve the creation of connections by in-house software development. However, you must first look for skilled developers, recruit them, and prepare them for the task. Furthermore, because integrations are complex, time-consuming, and expensive, you will wind up paying a substantial amount of money to build a single integration.
Third-party integration development
Enlisting the assistance of a third-party solution provider is yet another way to ensure a smooth API connection. It will let you integrate your software with many eCommerce marketplaces without needing a significant expenditure of time, effort, or money. The service provider handles any further updates and changes. All you need to do is to purchase a monthly subscription.
API2Cart is an outstanding integration option for software providers operating in a wide range of eCommerce sectors. It is a unique API solution that can integrate your eCommerce software to over 40 different shopping platforms and marketplaces at the same time.
After you’ve connected your SaaS software with an eCommerce marketplace, you’ll be able to quickly retrieve products, orders, customers, update some store info, etc. API2Cart offers a 30-day trial period for you to test if it covers your needs. Moreover, we are always ready to add new supported methods and shopping platforms under your request.
If you have any questions about API2Cart, contact us or schedule a call with our manager.
