For eCommerce SaaS companies, developing integrations with multiple shopping platforms is a challenging and resource-heavy task. Each platform has its own API logic, data structure, and frequent version updates. As a result, managing and maintaining multiple separate integrations becomes time-consuming and expensive.
That’s why having a unified and scalable way to connect with various eCommerce platforms and marketplaces is essential. A universal API provides exactly that — a single integration point that simplifies and accelerates the development process.
In this article, we’ll explore what a universal API is, how it works, and why it’s a game-changer for eCommerce SaaS providers looking to scale efficiently.
What is a Universal API for eCommerce?
Universal API (also known as a unified API) is a type of API that allows eCommerce SaaS to integrate with multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces at once. Instead of dealing with different data formats and API specifics of eCommerce platforms, developers can use one standard endpoint.
Examples of How Platform-Specific APIs Differ
As we previously mentioned, each eCommerce platform (e.g., Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce) has its own unique API structure, which makes integration development more complex. For example:
- Shopify has recently shifted to GraphQL API which can complicate the integration process for developers who are used to working only with traditional REST APIs.
- Magento uses an EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) database model with over 40 tables for products and categories, making integration more complex. This complexity also leads to slower performance due to the complexity of SQL queries. Another issue arises in the import process. Magento often requires additional steps during validation and can lead to errors during import.
- Requests to WooCommerce REST API one way or another involve downloading the WP/WC PHP code modules. This leads to an increased store load when retrieving a huge amount of data if the store server is not powerful enough. This results in slow work or total store unavailability.
These are just a few peculiarities of how eCommerce APIs work and how they provide access to store data. Without a universal API solution integration with eCommerce platforms becomes a real headache.
Key Benefits of Using a Universal API for SaaS
Using a universal API brings significant advantages for eCommerce SaaS or apps that need to integrate with multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces. Here are the key benefits:
Faster Integration with Multiple Platforms. With a universal API, SaaS developers can link to a wide range of eCommerce platforms using just one integration. This streamlines the process for adding new platforms, giving teams a quicker road to launch.
Reduced Development and Maintenance Costs. Teams can work with a single, cohesive integration rather than juggling different ones for every platform. This streamlines the engineering effort and cuts down the overhead of accommodating platform-specific updates or shifting API requirements.
Improved Scalability and Flexibility. Once a SaaS company begins to expand, a universal API allows onboarding additional platforms without the usual headaches. Rather than pouring resources into separate development efforts for every new eCommerce platform, the API scales with your product needs.
Simplified Data Synchronization. No matter which shopping platform you integrate with, using a universal API you get a consistent data model across platforms. Synchronization of products, orders, customers, and inventory becomes straightforward. The unified API takes on the heavy lifting, so your software or app can interact with uniform data without dealing with the messy specifics of each platform.
Use Cases of eCommerce SaaS that Can Benefit from Universal API
There are a lot of SaaS that work in the eCommerce industry and need to connect to multiple sales channels such as shopping platforms or marketplaces. Below are some of them that need to connect to as many eCommerce platforms as possible.
1. Multi-channel software
These systems allow retailers to manage sales on various platforms like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and WooCommerce using one single interface. To sync listings, stock levels, and order details, multi-channel solutions need to connect with a wide array of marketplaces and platforms.
2. PIM systems
PIM software helps businesses manage and distribute product data across multiple sales channels. For them to deliver precise and uniform product info, they need seamless integrations with numerous shopping carts and marketplace that can be easily implemented through universal API.
3. Price optimization software
This kind of SaaS monitors competitors’ prices across channels and adjusts pricing dynamically to stay competitive. To be effective, it needs to gather product and pricing info from a wide range of platforms.
4. Order and inventory management software
These systems help merchants avoid overselling and stockouts by syncing orders and inventory from every sales channel they use. To function properly, they must continuously pull and push data across multiple platforms.
5. Shipping tools
Shipping software needs an integration with multiple shopping platforms to provide the features such as automatic label generation, rate calculation, and tracking across carriers and sales channels.
How API2Cart Solves Integration Challenges with Its Universal API
API2Cart provides a universal API for eCommerce SaaS to connect their software or apps with 60+ shopping platforms and marketplaces. It is built on REST API and provides 100+ unified API methods to get, add, update and sync store data like orders, products, customers, categories, etc.
Here is more detailed on how API2Cart unified API works on the example of order.list method:
To get the list of orders you need to send order.list API request to API2Cart.
API2Cart transforms the unified API call into the native one and sends a native API request to Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento (or any other eCommerce platform).
It receives a native API response from the previously mentioned platforms and transforms the native API response into the unified API response from API2Cart with the list of orders from Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento.
Using API2Cart you avoid all the challenges of developing an integration with eCommerce platforms. Moreover, it allows you to launch integrations faster, reduce maintenance costs, and focus on delivering core product value instead of chasing API updates.
Start a free 14-day trial and see in action how easy it is to connect to multiple shopping platforms and marketplaces via API2Cart universal API.
Top comments (4)
thanks you for you post!
glad you liked;)
Really clear explanation, thanks for sharing!
thanks you!