15+ API Integrations Every Custom Marketplace Should Have
In today’s digital world, Custom Marketplaces are becoming increasingly important for businesses to succeed. They are incredibly convenient for customers, allowing them to explore, compare, and purchase products with just a few clicks. Essentially, a Custom Marketplace is an online platform where buyers and sellers can meet and conduct transactions. But in order to make the most of its potential, your Custom Marketplace needs to be efficient and fast. This is where integrations come into play. With integrations, online sellers can handle routine functions quickly and with less effort leaving more time for marketing and other customer-facing activities. Moreover, essential services such as accounting, tax reporting, or shipping processes can get automated with the right integrations; it helps owners stay organized while improving customer experience and increasing profitability. In short, integrations are an essential part of making a Custom Marketplace successful by streamlining multiple processes at once.
API Integrations for Start-ups
For start-ups, integrations are a game-changer, allowing them to streamline the development process and get their Custom Marketplace App to market faster. With an array of ready-made integrations that can be easily integrated into existing applications and platforms, businesses can quickly access the functions they need without having to build them from scratch. This not only saves valuable time during the development phase but also money – freeing resources up to use toward marketing and promotion instead. Moreover, automated integrations keep everything running smoothly and allow organizations to focus on more important tasks like strategy and innovation. Thus, it is no surprise that harnessing the power of integrations has become a core strategy of the successful business practices of many start-ups.
In this blog post, we will discuss why integrations are so important for any successful custom marketplace, and what it takes to use integrations in your Custom Marketplace App. Also, we will talk about the best API integrations for a Custom Marketplace App.
Table of contents
- What is a custom marketplace app integration and how it works
- Advantages of custom marketplace app integrations
- Best API integrations for online custom marketplace app
- Social
- Order management
- Shipment
- Payment
- Analytics
- Final Thoughts
What is a custom marketplace app integration and how it works
Custom Marketplace App integrations, part of a larger umbrella of integrations in software development, refer to digital connections between third-party service systems and your Custom Marketplace App. They are used to allow customers to access a tailored digital experience by combining different services or products.
In software development specifically, integrations are a key way for companies to create more value with smaller investments in each individual product. For example, integrating third-party digital email systems and existing customer databases allows companies to streamline their customer communication processes. Additionally, the use of APIs coupled with online Custom Marketplace App integration allows for the rapid delivery of new features and functionality in business applications.
As to how it works, let’s take, for example, a payment system integration. A payment integration, in general, connects online stores with payment providers so that customers can complete their transactions easily. It can be handled on your Custom Marketplace App or require redirect your customer to the new tab of the payment company to conclude the transaction. Adding a payment integration to an online Custom Marketplace App is a complex process, and it does require developer’s expertise to ensure everything is done correctly and, most importantly, securely.
The following is what your vendor’s developers should be sure to have:
– understanding of payment processing basics such as a variety of payment methods, security protocols, and compliance requirements, including those of the government. It entails knowing how to handle credit or debit cards, e-wallets, or other forms of electronic payments as well as processing one-time purchases, recurring payments, and subscriptions. There are also some peculiarities with government compliance. For instance, sellers from the USA, meaning those with the US citizenship, may require certain forms to be filled out for tax purposes before they are able to receive money for their products;
– knowledge of APIs. Integration in essence does mean that the data will be passed from your Custom Marketplace App to a different digital system, and it does require a careful choice of what data to pass and how to encrypt it, and under which protocol (e.g. SSL/TLS encryption, tokenization, PCI compliance, and two-factor authentication);
– familiarity with possible compatibility issues: this is where the technology stack used by the payment gateway should match to your app’s technology stack to ensure that all is working without any compatibility issues arising along the way;
and, of course,
– mastery of good old customization and configuration. Any integration can be and should be able to be customized for particular purposes. In terms of the Custom Marketplace App, it is often the case that such integration requires a certain amount of customizing and configuring to match the specific marketplace’s requirements and, as a rule, it does require writing custom code.
Similar requirements will exist for a variety of online Custom Marketplace integrations. All in all, adding an integration is a complex process requiring expert knowledge, and implementing it will significantly lower the development time and costs as well as business risks. Having a professional do it also means that this person can troubleshoot any issues that may arise at any stage of the process throughout the lifetime cycle because as with many digital products, integrations also release updates and tweak their functionality.
If you are just thinking about your own start-up, you may want to read: Startup myths vs startup facts in a custom MVP app development.
Advantages of custom marketplace app integrations
Even though, adding an integration does seem like a time-consuming and not the easiest task, creating a custom code for each piece of functionality is much more arduous and perilous. Take an example from above – a payment system. Think alone about validating users’ data and safeguarding against potential bugs and side-effects, and more so about providing the ability to process high volumes of transactions without any downtime, lags, and timeout errors. All of these things cannot possibly be done from the first iteration and they are things that get crystallized over time through rigorous testing and quality assurance.
If we speak about third-party integrations, their immense benefit is that they have stood the test of time and earned their reputation on the market for smooth and error-free performance. Can you imagine having your customers getting through getting to your marketplace, selecting items, entering all the payment data, and then some kind of mistake would make them do it all over again? To safeguard against this, it is often also common sense to opt for an integration solution rather than coding up things from scratch for each and every feature.
So let’s talk in detail what are the advantages of online marketplace integrations:
– out-of-the-box solutions:
Instead of paying for hundreds of hours of development with iterations for bug fixes and updates, your marketplace can utilize solutions that have already gone through these cycles and proved their reliability and functionality. This saves time and money.
– optimized performance:
Utilizing integrations to automate vital functions is the essence of what makes marketplaces possible, because, without automation of basic processes like payments, inventory and order management, shipment tracking, etc, the scale of today’s marketplaces would have been impossible to handle. Only by making sure all these functions are synced and responsive in real-time can make your marketplace vital and scalable.
– quick launch:
to create any good product, time to design, build, test, and improve is required. Development is no different: developing a marketplace app takes time. By leveraging the power of integrations, you can quickly get to market and start acquiring customers and expanding your sales.
– access to new functionality:
plugging in integration to your marketplace allows you to quickly expand the functionality of your marketplace to meet the ever-changing and increasing demands of your customers as well as business. Sometimes, being there first with a new feature is all you need to woo your customers and drive sales.
If you still have some doubts about the value of marketplace integration, it is worth noting that even academia has caught up with the subject and conducted a wealth of studies as well as published prolifically on the subject. For instance, they have come to the conclusion that in today’s world, adopting a business model that incorporates a digital platform has become a game-changer for platform owners. This decision not only increases their market value but also provides them with the benefit of creating their own ecosystem. The ecosystem creates a collaborative environment that brings together users to work and interact with one another. As a result, the integration marketplace can provide additional services to their users and increase the quality of their offerings. This can lead to positive effects on sales for the contributors and increase the likelihood of being recognized for an initial public offering. Therefore, with the digital platform, the sky’s the limit, and a whole new world of opportunities awaits.
In contrast
if you are a stand-alone company not incorporating any integrations, your value will always remain multiple times less compared to the integration marketplace. So, even though integrations do require integration effort and increased dependencies but it pays off in app performance and customer satisfaction as studies show.
As the world continues to shift towards a more digital landscape, e-commerce solutions have become more vital than ever. However, not every business owner has the technical knowledge or resources needed to create a custom marketplace app that truly utilizes the power of integration. That’s where our team comes in – click here to start with the MVP app version. Whether you’re looking for an MVP version of a custom marketplace app or need help optimizing your existing setup, we have the expertise and tools to make it happen as well as we provide a custom marketplace integration service. We understand the importance of a seamless user experience and strive to integrate everything from payment processing to shipping and inventory management. Contact us today and let’s take your e-commerce game to the next level.
You may want to check out this blog post: From eCommerce to Marketplace with Custom App Development
Best API integrations for online custom marketplace app
Social
It’s hard to imagine a person without a social media account these days. And surely each of us has either a Google account or an Apple account. But it is just as sure thing that people are overwhelmed with the number of login/password combinations and the websites that require registering and using their login data each time. How annoying must it be to remember the account for each and every shop people want to use. And when you have sellers on your custom marketplace publish new products, would you want to make it easier for them to spread the word about it on their social media? The same goes for the customers, they see a novelty or something that they really enjoy, and want to share with their friends – shouldn’t they be able to do it in one click? Integrating social media into your custom marketplace helps to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Here is how.
Social networks for sharing products
When was the last time you shopped on Amazon, or any other major custom marketplace for that matter? Amazon, for instance, has a share button on the image of the individual product allowing users to share products they liked via email, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and a ‘copy link’ option. Allowing users to share the product from your custom marketplace app on their social media is a tool that ultimately leads to increasing brand awareness, attracting new users, and increasing your sales as a result. It has proved to be an effective promotional tool time and again. And you can also encourage your sellers to post on their social media updates on their products, when they release some new items or announce a sale, etc. Ultimately, having social media sharing integration lowers your marketing costs by providing an ‘organic’ source of promotion on much coveted social media where users spend hours of their day.
Social networks for logins
This integration has become ubiquitous for any website that wants to achieve any success. All respectable apps that are user-centric have implemented this feature with the user in mind – not only does it save user’s time to register and enhance user experience, but it also reduces bounce rates and improves custom marketplace integrity by improving its security. The login integrations could be Facebook, Twitter, Google account, Apple, or others. It should be noted that Google is often required for the Android platform and Apple for iOS.
Inventory Management
This is yet another essential point for your Custom Marketplace App because how else would you be able to manage inventory in real-time with all the product information and sales data. Having thousands of products on your Custom Marketplace App with hundreds of sellers managing their stock and the need to display accurate data to millions of users is an essential item on your development plan. Inventory management integration is not only about the ease of managing the silos of data; it also improves user experience and your sales. If a person is in possession of accurate information about availability, they are enabled to make a purchase. So, if they can get accurate data of their order – they are satisfied. If your sellers can access data on how fast each of the products is being bought, they can make sure to replenish the stock in accordance with demand, so that user is able to buy it instead of leaving disappointed that the color or size or model they wanted isn’t there. These factors always translate into your balance sheets. Depending on the needs and budget of your Custom Marketplace App, your vendor will choose one of these market leaders in inventory management integrations: Zoho Inventory, Fulfil.io, or SkuVault. Here is a bit of detail on each of them.
Zoho Inventory
Zoho Inventory is emerging as a new market leader in this area thanks to its ease of use, helpful demos, and support as well as the availability of the free tier. In addition, its plans provide a step-by-step incremental growth based on the number of orders to manage per month and are priced from €0 to €329 per month. Such flexibility and affordability are one of vital things for a start-up marketplace app.
Fulfil.IO
Fulfil.io offers state-of-the-art solutions for e-commerce business including management of all key aspects of an e-commerce business: finance, inventory, order fulfillment, as well as manufacturing. You can often request the demo but they don’t publish their prices. They are priced above average as their rates start at $499 and using this software entails a bit of a learning curve to use this software.
SkuVault
It is also easy to schedule a demo of their product. SkuVault offers specifically inventory management software and integration including all the desired features ranging from inventory management to analytics, reporting, and forecasting. Their prices start at $329 per month.
Order management
While you might be asking yourself why it has to be a separate function, it is often a common practice to keep inventory management and order management as separate functions with different people/departments fulfilling these roles. While one manages the supply side of things, the other is tightly linked to the sales process. Choosing a different piece of software to manage the orders and sales process for your Custom Marketplace App ensures you have the best and most efficient tools in place to streamline processes. For instance, Fulfil.io does provide both inventory and order management, but the reviews are that the two together are too complex to use, the staff makes mistakes, and things get mixed up, and so on. Seeking a one-size-fits-all solution may not meet the needs of specific tasks and goals. So, here we will look at market leaders in order management integrations. The suitability of each option depends on the size of your business (small-business, mid-market, or enterprise-level) and the Custom Marketplace App needs such as flexibility, scalability, and feature-set. Your vendor will help you make the correct choice.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Order Management
Salesforce offers robust customer-centric order management with a 360-degree view of your customers throughout all channels and makes the management process as transparent as possible. In addition, it offers quite useful marketing interactions and the flexibility to integrate a bunch of other tools. It’s often chosen by mid-market organizations.
Webgility
The focus of their order management system is on multichannel capabilities and synchronization with QuickBooks for accounting purposes. In addition, it offers functionality to set up a variety of users for this software with different levels of access to foster collaboration and keep your data safe and secure. One of the biggest attractions of using this service is its single-dashboard view where all data gets linked and displayed. It is often preferred by small businesses.
QuickBooks Commerce
QuickBooks Commerce is a solid player on the market that offers its service to enterprises of different scales. It is an ecosystem of services that includes order management along with accounting, tax filing and reporting, payroll, and forecasting. This will be a great integration for those who value business insights, efficiency, and keeping costs down.
Shipment
IT’s a commonplace practice to send packages with items bought online through some kind of courier services such as FedEx, DHL or UPS rather than create your own delivery service. To provide tracking capability for the sellers and buyers of your Custom Marketplace App, you would surely want to use some kind of integration. Again, building it from scratch is possible, but it is lengthy in time, extremely costly and, essentially, it will only remove a layer of integration as you will still need integrations or some sort of API communication with each separate delivery service. In addition, out-of-the-box solutions also often include additional functionality like calculating cost, providing options for the customer to choose from, and a variety of delivery dates, and often they integrate with an order management system in case a seller has a few warehouses in different locations to make sure the optimal starting point is selected.
Tracktry
Tracktry offers a free subscription plan to start, but if you need it to integrate with your codebase you will have to pay at least $9 per month. It supports more than 600+ courier services and allows for real-time tracking. Tracktry is a relatively new player on the market for shipment integrations and so it’s UI is modern and easy to understand, the prices are affordable, and the company is working hard to provide its users with the main thing – the ability to manage shipment so that it saves costs for all – seller, buyer, and Custom Marketplace owner.
FreightPOP
FreightPOP is one of the more established companies on the market, and it offers a cloud-based solution rather than an API. In addition, it offers quite a few useful integrations with QuickBooks for small businesses, Oracle NETsuite and Oracle Database for enterprises, Logiwa WMS which is an inventory/warehouse software, and Sage CRM. It is often praised for its cloud-based solution, no learning curve for using core features, and flexibility to customize to specific requirements.
WISMOlabs
WISMOlabs is a highly-customizable service that can be tailored to work with any platform and include any feature; yet, it comes with a price. On top of its Shipment API, it offers a variety of nifty functionality such as tailored messages, customer analytics, branded tracking pages, and more. Last but not least, it has quite a customer-centric focus to ensure that communication with a client is seamless across all stages of getting a package and beyond.
Payment
Having a payment integration is plainly crucial for any Custom Marketplace App. It brings in security and ease of making payments and, on the other hand, allows sellers to receive the payment safely and swiftly. Ultimately, payment integration is the number one item that builds trust for your Custom Marketplace App and ensures integrity.
Stripe
Stripe doesn’t cost anything to set up and has no monthly payments, but it does charge on a per-transaction basis. It has been continuously maintaining its A+ rating which allows it to maintain its global status and accept close to 140 currencies from all over the globe. Not only its global reach but also its transparency is making it a top choice when it comes to the payment gateway for your Custom Marketplace App. It also can serve a variety of payment methods such as card payments, PayPal, or bank transfers.
BrainTree
BrainTree is also positioned as a global payment system, yet it is more practical to use it mainly for the European market. So if your marketplace targets the European market, you can take advantage of the lower commission rates of BrainTree gateway compared to those of Stripe.
Analytics
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, utilizing analytics and making data-driven decisions is crucial for successfully managing a Custom Marketplace App. The tools you use translate into insights you can gain and leverage to optimize your marketplace performance and create a robust competitive edge. Any Custom Marketplace becomes an ecosystem where millions of user interactions flow at a constant rate, and it is a tremendous source of information to exploit so that you can tailor offerings and services to best satisfy customer needs. Moreover, these data-driven insights can help to identify potential issues in real-time, allowing for prompt solutions and minimizing disruptions to the overall user experience. Ultimately, adopting a data-driven approach to managing Marketplace Apps empowers businesses to stay agile and responsive and the quality of analytics tools and the skill of their utilization are key to unlocking these benefits.
Google Analytics or FB Analytics
Diving into the world of digital marketing, two of the most popular and effective platforms for data-driven insights and ads targeting are Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics. Each serves a distinct purpose and caters to different advertising needs. If you are looking to capitalize on the vast reach of Google Ads, Google Analytics is your go-to platform. With its robust features, seamless integration, and data-driven insights, it helps fine-tune your ad campaigns and maximize their potential. On the other hand, if you want to harness the power of social media advertising across Facebook, Instagram, and their affiliated platforms, Facebook Analytics is the ideal solution. Known for its user-friendly interface and granular insights, it enables you to create highly targeted ad campaigns that cater precisely to your desired demographics. Whichever platform you choose, leveraging analytics will definitely give your digital marketing performance a significant boost.
Firebase
Firebase Analytics helps app developers understand critical factors such as user behavior, engagement, and conversion trends. These insights enable more informed decisions regarding product development, marketing, and user experience. Additionally, Firebase Analytics offers advanced audience segmentation features, so that your vendor can implement personalization of your marketplace and tailor offers specifically to their user base for better engagement results. Overall, incorporating Firebase Analytics in a Custom Marketplace App is a smart, data-driven approach to boost user satisfaction and propel your marketplace toward long-term success.
Amplitude
Amplitude offers tracking and analyzing user behavior capabilities and the platform also provides a plethora of customizable dashboards to help you make data-driven decisions and optimize conversion rates, ultimately contributing to the success of your marketplace.
Final Thoughts
So, integration is a powerful tool to drive a variety of indicators up for your online marketplace starting from technical ones like the range of functionality and security to business ones like customer satisfaction and sales. It is given, that implementing marketplace integrations does require expert touch and makes your marketplace dependent upon those integrations. But the benefits of creating an ecosystem adds robustness, marketplace integrity, and resilience as well as increase your market value multiple times compared to whatever a stand-alone app is ever able to offer. In this blog post, we presented 15+ best integrations to consider for your marketplace. Most of them are market leaders for their specialized function and some of them are emerging as such. Anyways, it is up to you and your vendor team to make a final choice for the best portfolio of integrations. Don’t wait and check now with an expert how your marketplace can benefit from the above-mentioned integrations.
