If you are a small business owner, API integration can mean the difference between just surviving and thriving. APIs are application programming interfaces and they are essentially sets of programming instructions and requirements that govern how one application communicates with another. As a small business owner, what you need to know about APIs is that they can help one computer program talk to another computer program to make your life easier and to make the daily running of your business more streamlined.
APIs And What They Do – Simplified
An API is essentially the middle man between a programmer and an application or software program. As the middle man, the API accepts requests from the programmer and, if that request is allowed, returns the information to the programmer. The API also informs the programmer about everything they can request, exactly how to ask for it and how they’ll receive it. A real-world example of this that you can easily understand is when you’re looking for a restaurant on a website and you’re given the option to click on a “get directions” or “map it” hyperlink to help you find the restaurant, you will be redirected to a mapping website, like Google maps. The API middle man in this case processes your request and sends it to the mapping site.
How APIs Can Help Your Small Business
APIs can do so much more than help your customers find directions. You can use API integration for information protection, to connect business products, to access consumer data from social media networks and eliminate the need for manual data transfers. APIs can save you time, automate processes and scale data operations. Imagine how much time and money you’ll save not having to manually generate reports or how much easier it will be for your customers to find out how many of a particular item you have in stock with just a keystroke or how many new users will see your website when you incorporate share buttons for the most popular social media applications. While the concept of APIs and how they work can seem intimidating, especially if you are a non-technical person, it’s worth your while to get the help of a web development company that can help you to understand APIs and that can help you to determine which APIs can benefit your business most.
To find out more about application programming interfaces and how API integration can help your small business, call us at axissoftwaredynamics.com at (469) 535-7500. You can also visit us online at axissoftwaredynamics.com to get information about all of our services, including website design and development, online marketing and custom software development.
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