If you’re a small business owner in North Texas and your company has an online presence, you should become familiar with website API integration. If you’re working with a professional website developer, then you may already be familiar with APIs and why you need to integrate them into your website; but if you’re doing your own research on ways to make your website more functional and user-friendly, here are 3 basic things you need to know:
1 – What APIs Are, Exactly
APIs are Application Programming Interfaces and they are powerful technology that allow software devices and web applications to share data. Any size company can use APIs to connect their business products, access customer data from social media sites and eliminate the necessity of manual data transfers. If you’ve browsed the internet, you’ve come across APIs. For instance, when you look for a product on a website like Walmart or Best Buy and you click on the product you want, the website tells you how many of that product are in stock and where. This is accomplished by an interface between the software program that lets you search for the item and the software program that keeps track of inventories.
2 – Why API Is Important For Small Businesses
As a small business owner, you may think that APIs will overly complicate your website and be costly to implement, something you can’t really afford. The reality is that website API integration can save you time by automating processes that you would normally have to do manually. And that time you spend on manual processes translates to money lost because you won’t be spending your time growing your business. Additionally, using application programming interfaces will allow you to let your customers share what they see on your website with social media networks, which can increase the visibility of your business; and it will show your customers and potential customers that yours is a smoothly-run, professional website that cares about their user experience.
3 – Which APIs You Need
In addition to APIs that let your customers share your information on social media, small business owners like you can benefit from using website API integration that lets your customers purchase directly from your website through an interface with a payment-processing site like PayPal, helps your customers find you more easily through an interface with a website like Google Maps and lets your customers see, in real time, what you have available in stock so that they will be more inclined to buy what they need from you quickly. There are almost an endless number of APIs that you can utilize for your business; talk to your website developer to find out what will work best for you.
Axis Software Dynamics
To find out more about website API integration, call us at Axis Software Dynamics, custom programming and software, at (469) 535-7500. You can also visit us online at axissoftwaredynamics.com to learn more about the services we provide.
