To create a marketplace platform, it is crucial to meet the needs of both vendors and consumers. For this purpose, engineers have to deliver modules for data analytics, online payments, order, shipping, and inventory management, especially when delivering a solution to e-commerce or manufacturing industries.
Thanks to API marketplace software, companies can significantly reduce project costs and streamline development.
This article describes the leading third-party services that you should consider when making or extending a marketplace system. Let’s get started.
An application programming interface (API) lets online marketplace developers connect diverse computers and programs. To implement the necessary functionality, software engineers can either build their own API from scratch or use an off-the-shelf solution provided by a third party.
With the view of safeguarding information, an API generally involves authorization credentials, this way minimizing the risk of attacks on the server. When transmitting data, an API employs cookies, query string parameters, and HTTP headers to create additional security layers.
A payment gateway acts as a third-party virtual terminal, which allows for verifying customer identity and authorizing transactions. With a payment gateway solution , you will protect merchants from issues such as insufficient funds and expired cards. Thanks to a gateway system, users do not have to send payment details to each individual vendor, which improves information security.
Acquired by PayPal in 2013, Braintree is a popular gateway service that enables organizations to accept payments in either apps or websites. As of today, Braintree is available in more than 45 countries and regions while offering support for over 130 currencies.
By integrating Braintree, you will offer a multitude of payment methods:
Aiming to achieve security, Braintree contains features like 3D Secure, AVS (Address Verification System), and CVV (card verification code check). The gateway also provides compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
Many world-famous marketplace platforms have adopted Braintree, for example, Airbnb, Grubhub, and Uber.
In our online marketplace development company , we often integrate Braintree as it supports a variety of payment options while being available across the globe. In addition, Braintree doesn’t have a minimum payment processing amount, unlike many other gateway solutions.
Stripe is among the most popular payment gateways globally. Being available in 44 countries, this third-party service supports over 135 currencies. The solution allows for performing transactions via payment cards (i.e., Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Diners Club), electronic wallets (Google Pay, Apple Pay), and bank directs (e.g., iDEAL, SOFORT, Afterpay).
By integrating Stripe API, marketplace developers can enable online payments in both web and mobile applications. It also contributes to automated fund management.
Treating security as a top priority, Stripe employs machine learning to identify, assess, and prevent various risks. Furthermore, Stripe contains features such as 3D Secure and proxy detection while ensuring compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.
Many world-known marketplace platforms use Stripe to process transactions, for example, Amazon, Lyft, Instacart, and Booking.com.
Founded in 1996, Authorize.net is a payment gateway that permits vendors to accept credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express), PayPal, digital payments (Apple Pay, Visa Click to Pay) as well as electronic checks. However, merchants have to be based in the USA, Canada, Australia, UK, or Europe.
Authorize.net lets customers enter card and shipping details directly on a web page while many other gateways require users to register for carrying out a money transfer.
To ensure security, the gateway solution includes Advanced Fraud Detection Suite (AFDS) for identifying and preventing suspicious transactions. Coming up with 13 fraud filters, AFDS enables sellers to set minimum transaction limits, payment velocity settings, and other parameters to protect against fraud.
When building a marketplace, software experts need to integrate an API into a website. It is noteworthy that Authorize.net can be used for mobile marketplace apps, too. The service provides engineers with software development kits (SDKs) for iOS and Android operating systems. Furthermore, its Virtual Terminal is able to process manual transactions.
Mixpanel is a data analytics tool, which is perfectly suited for online marketplace development. This solution allows vendors to monitor user behavior in real time to segment the audience, identify shopping habits, and discover reasons for churn.
Employing Mixpanel, it is possible to find out which actions customers perform after registering on a marketplace platform and before making a purchase. With this tool, merchants define the top user flows when interacting with the app and visualize feature stickiness.
Additionally, Mixpanel lets you conduct A/B testing and analyze the results. It is worth remarking that Mixpanel is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). G2.com named Mixpanel a Top Rated Analytics Solution in 2021. At the moment, the service is used by 26,000 organizations—involving Airbnb and Uber—across different sectors.
In our practice, we used Mixpanel when creating an e-commerce fashion marketplace for a Swiss company. Thanks to this tool, sellers managed to define which groups of consumers show the best conversion and retention rates, explore why users churn, as well as segment the audience. With Mixpanel, vendors boosted customer engagement and increased sales, bringing marketplace owners higher profit.
Kissmetrics is one of the most popular data analytics solutions that allow businesses to monitor each activity performed throughout the customer journey and identify the key metrics that drive sales. While Google Analytics serves for tracking anonymous user data, Kissmetrics connects every action made on devices and browsers to a single person.
By incorporating this tool in an online marketplace platform, you will enable merchants to track metrics such as sales, total revenue, lifetime value, the number of new visitors, conversion rate, as well as the most viewed, added to a shopping cart, and purchased goods.
With this API marketplace software, it is possible to identify revenue by product category, traffic source, marketing channel, device type, and much more. Kissmetrics will also let vendors conduct A/B testing and analyze results.
Woopra is another data analytics solution that enables sales, marketing, and client service teams to take valuable insights into user behavior in real time. We recommend that you use this API marketplace software as it allows for monitoring user activities—for instance, logins, payments, comments—from the first interaction with the platform to conversion.
Furthermore, Woopra generates trends, retention, and customer journey reports while tracking product usage across the website and applications. In addition, companies can employ this tool to segment the audience. With Woopra, it is also possible to tailor page content according to user preferences, change lead status, customize promotions, and send a message in chat.
Fulfil.IO provides a REST API for integration with a digital marketplace platform. By using Fulfil.IO, vendors can automate back-office processes such as order management, procurement, and warehousing.
Employing this solution, organizations can track inventory and stock status using barcodes and RFID tags. With real-time visibility of operations and inventory updates across all channels, companies ensure that their goods are available for ordering and prevent human errors.
What’s more, the tool automatically converts units such as weight, removing headaches associated with math calculations.
Marketplace developers can integrate Fulfil.IO with a range of services, involving payment gateways (Braintree, PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe), e-commerce platforms (i.e., Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce), shipping carriers (e.g., DHL, Amazon Prime, FedEx), and others.
At Arateg, we used Fulfil.IO when building an e-commerce fashion marketplace to enable inventory management and transparency of back-office processes. With this system, merchants registered on the marketplace became able to easily track orders across multiple channels (eBay, Amazon, etc.) in one place.
Zoho Inventory is a cloud-based software solution for inventory management that lets sellers and buyers track the movement of each item throughout the sales cycle. The app allows for generating and tracking orders, creating invoices, as well as monitoring expiry dates.
When a purchase is made, inventory quantities are automatically updated across all sales channels while businesses receive alerts when there is a risk of shortage. By integrating its API into a marketplace platform, brands can organize inventory, indicating prices, stock-keeping units, and statuses.
Salesforce provides various tools that can meet the needs of merchants operating on a digital marketplace platform. For instance, Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based software solution for order management that enables vendors to track sales, generate and process orders, as well as control inventory.
Representing a multi-tenant system, this third-party service aims to address the challenges of both B2C and B2C marketplace applications.
Through the integration with Commerce Cloud, organizations can automate operations such as payment capture, invoice creation, and order fulfillment. In addition, companies are able to ensure a unified shopping experience across all channels (a website, mobile app, social networks, etc.). What’s more, it is possible to customize the business logic to their workflows with the help of drag-and-drop technology.
BigCommerce Orders is another API that you can integrate into a digital marketplace platform. With this solution, sellers can optimize order management and control their fulfillment from the moment of placement to purchase and delivery. BigCommerce Orders allows organizations to create shipments, make refunds, and generate invoices.
The tool provides built-in order statuses enabling customers and vendors to monitor execution stages such as paid, in progress, and completed while automatically sending notifications about updates. BigCommerce Orders offers three ways to alert users when a merchant receives an order: via a text message, email, and a mobile application.
Tracktry provides API marketplace software that enables customers across the globe to track their packages from multiple couriers in real time. Employing Tracktry, consumers can monitor the status of their parcels and orders, get automatic notifications about updates, leave comments and feedback, as well as ask the community questions.
DHL offers an API for shipping management that you can use for marketplace software development. Using this third-party solution, companies can easily ship and track orders via a marketplace website or application.
By integrating the API, businesses can receive up-to-the-minute shipment reports that may contain shipment location, travel history, delivery time, destination, proof of delivery, origin details, weight, the number of pieces, and more.
It is worth noting that DHL covers a variety of regions, including the USA, Canada, Asia-Pacific, as well as European countries (e.g., the UK, Poland, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium).
With UPS, merchants can optimize shipping processes and minimize the time necessary for shipment preparation. For this purpose, organizations can use UPS software such as WorldShip® or the UPS Developer Kit when building an online marketplace.
Thanks to UPS API software integration, it is possible to increase order accuracy, automatically create labels, and significantly reduce the number of delivery delays.
Furthermore, UPS solutions provide the Address Validation API that allows for verifying countries, cities, and postal codes. The tool also enables consumers to choose the level of shipping service based on cost and date while tracking packages via a marketplace website.
Thanks to API marketplace software, you can significantly cut down expenses and streamline development while saving product quality. Before integrating an application programming interface, it is crucial to identify industry-specific needs and requirements. The choice of third-party services may depend on pricing, the number of users, their pain points, location, and many other factors that you should take into account.
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