Five Types of APIs that Can Improve the Shopping Experience

Since the beginning of marketing, marketers have been trying to predict customers’ behavior. Now with the growth of the technology’s influence on the economy, making good prediction has become more complicated than ever. What’s more, technology has also influenced the customers’ behavior.

There is a wide range of elements they need to work on, in order to fulfill this complicated task. Thankfully, there are some tools that can make this task a lot easier. And possibly the most impressive tool you can have in your marketing arsenal is an API.

In collaboration with marketers, many developers have designed APIs that can be used for enhancing the customer experience on their application or online shop. Today, we will talk about different types of APIs that can help you achieve that.

But first, for those of you who don’t know, we are going to explain what APIs are and how they work…

What is an API?

Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, are a set of regulations and functions that will enable the communication between the two pieces of software. Also, those sets will allow the developer to access the data and features of automated systems. If the developer does his job right on both ends and gives you clean API docs, an API could transform crucial shopper data into widely usable business intelligence tool. It is not really all that important how well you are familiar with the modern technology, you just need to realize how important is the technology for your business. Simply, you cannot build a successful online business without APIs.

·  API Type No. 1: Price Comparison APIs

Usually, online businesses are not limited to one country, which means they also not limited to one currency. Because of that, it is important to have a price comparison API implemented inside your e-commerce. By doing that you will be able to get information on various prices. You need to connect the product catalog to this type of API.

You will receive notifications about price changes in your industry. After that, you will be able to make changes in order to stay competitive in the market. So when the prices are dropping, you can quickly scale your products, adjust the prices and ensure that you’re not asking for too much from your customers. The same goes for price rises as well.

·   API Type No. 2: Site Search API

Recent research indicates that internet users are impatient. Majority of users will leave your website if it takes more than a few seconds to load. To prevent them from leaving your site, you need to implement a site search API. That way users could filter through your products and catalogs faster and easier. In our experience, a search bar should be placed on the top left bar, where users look intuitively.

That way the potential customers will be able to search what they need and still be able to see some of the most popular products on your page. This will increase both the customer conversion and enhance the user experience. Examples of this type of API can be found on almost all e-commerce websites and you probably won’t have any problems finding out what the top search APIs are.

·  API Type No. 3: Security APIs

If you have an online store and you are not having any type of security, the internet could be a very dangerous place. Users who are looking to place the malicious attack on the vulnerable websites are roaming across the internet. According to the most recent stats, in the United States over $400 million are lost every year because of the malicious attacks.

Modern customers are avoiding the websites that don`t have the proper security assurances. Naturally, nobody wants to take the risk of their personal data and credit cards being exposed to the malicious users. The way of avoiding this scenario is using the authentication API. There is a great number of examples of authentication APIs on the internet. Having security badges in place will ensure that customers are more confident about shopping on your website.

·  API Type No. 4: Payment Handling API

After talking about the security APIs, we feel obliged to talk about another essential feature for an online store: a secure payment process. It will make the money transaction easier and safer. In addition, it will provide a simple interface that will enable your users to fill out their payment cards details. It is important to choose an API that doesn`t make the process complicated.

APIs that are asking for a larger number of fields to be filled should be avoided. According to new research, the lesser number of fields you have, the larger conversion rates.  Nowadays, a full-stack way of payment has become the standard. It removes all of the unnecessary process from the equation, such as going through the accounts of merchants and PCI compliance.

·  API Type No. 5: Shipping APIs

This is probably the biggest selling point of your business. Making sure that your customers have the product they paid for placed on their doorstep, is a very big plus. A shipping arrangement system and automated processing will ensure that your customer remain satisfied and loyal for years. So it is very important to be focused on this.

Implementing an API that will help you in eliminate the complications and errors that are associated with the manual sorting of your products. Using this type of API will help the retailer to improve the customers experience from the moment they buy the product, to the moment of arriving at their doorstep. Retailers partnering with courier companies have proven very successful too, so make sure to look into it.

Conclusion

We can surely say that no matter the amount of data that is collected, marketers will never be fully sure about customers’ online behavior. Some tactics worked perfectly yesterday, however, there is no guarantee that they will work today or tomorrow. But that doesn`t mean you should give up.

Using APIs in e-commerce revolutionized the world of online business: from simplified forms to user experience. APIs are taking a lot of work from the developers on the back-end. In modern times, they have proved to be essential for the online businesses.

We hope you enjoyed reading our article and that you found it informative and helpful. If you have some questions or something to add, feel free to go to our comment section down below and leave a comment. We will respond on a short notice. Thank you for reading our article.