It has long been known that companies that want to succeed should constantly investigate new channels of customer attraction. For you as a SaaS application provider that manages orders and inventory management, shipping inventory, PIM or any other solution, shopping cart integration means an opportunity to develop your business in numbers.
Staying competitive in the B2B software market means keeping up with time and even more. In most points, you need at least a little more to offer to attract clients’ attention.
To meet the needs of more customers, B2B eCommerce solutions vendors must develop various shopping cart integrations. Of course, there are shopping platforms, which they choose more often, but the trends, as well as the preferences of the local market, are changing.
Moreover, the more eCommerce integrations your software has, the more chances to meet the needs of customers.
However, the integration with shopping carts is probably one of the most challenging tasks for each eCommerce SaaS provider. Below we will tell you more about the difficulties that often arise in shopping cart integration and about a comprehensive solution that makes it much easier to integrate with different eCommerce platforms.
For which industries does shopping cart integration work best?
So, to be able to work with the data from a huge number of online stores, SaaS software providers must have a smooth connection between their systems and the shopping cart software. It is necessary because software vendors cannot provide their customers with key features of their solutions without such connection and the ability to access and manage all the required data from e-retail stores.
The list of eCommerce software solutions that require shopping cart integration is very long. Below you will find examples of some of them:
- Marketing automation software depends on integration with shopping platforms, as it requires access to product and order data, customer contacts, coupons, etc. stored in store databases to perform its basic functions.
- Shopping cart integration allows inventory, order and warehouse management services to receive information about products, categories, clients, orders, tracking numbers, etc. for the performance of their operations.
- The integration with the eCommerce platforms is what allows shipping software to create shipping labels, process orders, automate tracking, and more.
- For chatbots it is essential to have access to product catalogs, stock level data and tracking numbers from the e-stores of their clients to provide fundamental functions.
- Repricing software require shopping cart integration to obtain price and product-related information from online stores and update them automatically.
- Shopping cart integration allows cart abandonment solutions to receive data for sending e-mails about abandonment baskets, e-mails with special offers, to create exact segments of clients, to generate intellectual statistics of abandonment baskets.
- Dropshipping automation software depends on integration with shopping platforms, because it allows them to access and synchronize information about the order, client and product received from different online stores.
Shopping Cart Integration Difficulties
Integration with just a one shopping cart solution is a complex process. That’s why many B2B software vendors can only work with a few shopping cart solutions. Thus, they lose business opportunities and limit their market share. Here are the typical integration pitfalls with which software providers often face:
- Each integration is a technically difficult task. Each shopping cart software has its own specific architecture and logic, which study requires time and knowledge. Setting up a connection to each endpoint is a unique process of exhaustion, since each integration creates new tasks.
- A qualified specialist is required to develop a perfect integration module. It is very important to develop the integration module thoroughly if you want it to work properly. In the case of B2B eCommerce software, many users depend on integration, and a poorly functioning connection can cause problems and losses for clients, and as a result, for software providers. But to write an integration code that works impeccable, you need an excellent technical experience.
- Integration takes a lot of time. Setting up only one connection takes at least one month. As we have noted above, each integration is unique, so you can multiply that time by the number of platforms you want to integrate with
- Integration is expensive. Again, the development of a properly functioning integration module involves a qualified expert, a lot of work and time. Thus, it usually costs at least several thousand dollars for each integration.
- Further maintenance and renewal of integration. After the integration is complete, it is not the end of history. It requires further updates and maintenance, which again requires time and resources because of the need for IT personnel to support integration.
How to implement shopping cart integration easily?
As you can see, shopping cart integration development is a long and complex process that can cost you a whole state. In figures, one integration with eCommerce platform can last from 4 to 12 weeks and will cost 60 US dollars or 50 pounds per hour.
If you want to focus on improving your core product instead of focusing on complex shopping cart API connections, the best choice is to use a single API provided by API2Cart. With API2Cart, you can overcome all the problems associated with the integration with shopping platforms and marketplaces. Having conducted a few hundred integrations, we have developed a unified API that integrates your software with customer stores, based on any shopping cart.
API2Cart provides a unified API to connect to more than 40 eCommerce platforms and marketplaces like Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, OTTO, etc. It can help you save time for your developers and thousands of dollars for your business.
Detailed documentation makes API usage easier and more intuitive, and 24-hour customer support is always ready to help.
Do you want to know more? Contact the API2Cart specialist now or try the service within 30 days for free.
