The e-commerce sector is thriving with speed and has opened countless job opportunities in its verticals. While the giants in the field like Amazon are credited for hugely popularizing the term and providing an excellent purchase experience to the customers, the real hero is probably the technologies that back them.
SaaS solutions like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce have offered the desired platform for such businesses to help build an online store from scratch with nearly zero technical knowledge. Something that has helped them more is the innumerable list of ready-to-go solutions offered by respective e-commerce app stores, each catering to the specific needs of businesses.
For instance, we have nearly 300 ready-made Shopify apps that import products from marketplaces like eBay:
Interestingly, each comes with a different set of features and pricing plans.
On a similar occasion, the WooCommerce development team at The Brihaspati Infotech recently developed a plugin that integrates a third-party API (AmmoReady) to a client’s WooCommerce store. This blog takes you through the custom WooCommerce API integration service and our approach for the same.
Need for WordPress third party API integration
Calling third-party APIs as a part of e-commerce stores would be an understatement. According to Digital Commerce 360,
On average, every e-commerce store relies on some 40-60 third-party integrations.
That being said, it is easy to recognize the numerous amount of external data every online store requires to function. The kind of service these APIs provide varies from one business to another. We have jotted down a few with the purpose they solve:
- Marketplace importer plugins
For some businesses, these plugins form the backbone. Popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay provide APIs that can be used to import products to their e-commerce stores. The app stores have several plugins that help import data from these marketplaces.
- Importing Real Estate listings
The WordPress store has some excellent plugins that import Real Estate listings. In fact, we have mentioned one in one of our previous blogs: Real Estate custom theme development.
The plugin integrates the client’s WordPress website to a third party Real Estate listing data, fetching details about the property, its price, location, and more.
- Shipping Management
Have you ever given this a thought, how does an international online store that merely took your address, delivered the product right at your doorstep? You didn’t have to move an inch. How did a website manage a complex real-life job like shipping so precisely?
Shipping management plugins connect your store with the concerned third party shipping services, fetching real-time charge rates, and the ability to track the product. In fact, there are several plugins that manage multiple shipping carriers and manage their respective rates.
- Payment Gateways
An e-Commerce store is incomplete without an online payment service. There are numerous plugins that make this a success without passing sensitive data to the online stores. At the same time, they offer a quick and reliable payment services to the store and hence the end-user.
Need for developing a custom API Integration Plugin in WordPress
The client owns an online store that sells Guns and Ammunitions fetched from the AmmoReady API. The store offered a multi-vendor environment with each vendor managing thousands of products, customers, inventory, orders, and more.
The store, however, faced some issues that affected the daily functioning of the vendors and thus the client. The vendors needed to sync the products between the store and the AmmoReady data, and this would consume several minutes to hours.
At this, the client asked for some serious help to quicken the tasks while maintaining the integrity of the complete e-commerce process. The idea was to work on the roots of a multi-vendor product-heavy store to enhance its daily functioning and offering an excellent experience for the client at managing vendor products.
Developing a WordPress Plugin for API Integration
Our WooCommerce API integration and development experts analyzed the entire store and were quick to realize that it’s the default configuration of AmmoReady API that shows up as a roadblock.
The JSON file for product listing is stored with the AmmoReady API. Therefore, when a vendor requests for importing products the default API would first import the product from the AmmoReady source and then save it in WooCommerce. In short, a request by the vendor was followed by two tasks resulting in product imports at a decelerated pace.
As a solution, we created a cron to fetch AmmoReady products and saved the JSON of product listing in a paginated format on the client’s server. Now that the client’s server already has all the products imported, the store doesn’t have to request the AmmoReady API for presenting them to the end-customers.
The idea is to let the WooCommerce store add products directly from the internal server while the AmmoReady products are already saved in the server. We extended the idea for a multi-vendor setup allowing the store to save assorted products by creating relevant JSON files for specific vendors.
The final result:
The vendors can import their respective AmmoReady products in a tweak.
Ammoready API Integration with WordPress: Features
We developed a custom WooCommerce plugin that integrates AmmoReady API to the client’s store. The plugin not only plays as a bridge between the third-party API and the online store for effective data exchange but also minimizes the time taken to handle every process.
Let’s get started with some exclusive features our app offers to the WooCommerce stores.
Product Synchronization
The customized plugin for AmmorReady API integration saves the vendors ample time by reducing the product import steps. The WooCommerce third party API integration ensures that the store and the third-party source stay in continuous sync. For the same, we have installed the product listing JSON files to the client’s internal server.
As a result, your WooCommerce store already has the products vendors would like to offer to their customers. Just hit the “Sync Products” and let the products be imported to your storefront.
The plugin is furthered with an intuitive interface for syncing the products. The interface comes with the estimated time for product import along with the product names in the processing.
Managing products for Vendors
Keeping in the eye that the store offers a multi-vendor configuration, we have saved individual JSON files for individual vendors. The setup helps to assort the right products for the desired vendor along with the exact quantities.
The plugin further identifies deactivated vendors and disables products assigned to them. Now as that is done with zero human effort, the client really doesn’t have to keep a count of all the vendors and the products they possess.
Updating Vendor API
Vendors are a part of a multi-vendor environment via specially designed APIs. One challenge that showed up here is: what if the API changes. How to update them in the store?
The plugin makes it easier to update the vendor API. The vendors and the WooCommerce store owner can easily update the API keys assigned to the Vendors at any point in time with zero hassles.
The plugin fetches the updated keys from the AmmoReady API. The vendors can verify and update the same in simpler clicks.
The plugin is furthered by notifying the vendors at the time of updating the API keys. We have customized the plugin such that it sends an automated email to the concerned vendor.
Our WooCommerce API integration plugin development service
The e-commerce development team at The Brihaspati Infotech has developed several applications in the past meant to solve custom business challenges. The team is known for its capability at building private extensions for client stores along with public extensions for the leading e-commerce plugin stores.
In one of our recent blogs, we have discussed a similar extension we developed for our Magento 2 based client- Custom Multi-vendor Marketplace Extension Development – Magento 2. The extension helped the client at providing and managing a multi-vendor setup on Magento 2 with ease.
Final Words on Developing WordPress API Integration Plugin
Businesses are way more complex than they look from the outside. Business owners can always look out for automated solutions that can help save a precious resource for them – time. The global community of e-commerce developers can offer you the ready-made solution you are looking for.
If not, you can hire WordPress experts from us who will offer a tailored solution as your business demands. You can always contact us to gain more technological insights for your business and the best available solutions your e-commerce deserves.
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