What is an API?
API stands for Application Programming interface, used to establish communication between the apps. Technically it can be defined as the set of instructions used by an app to employ the feature of another app. Google’s Map API and Twitter’s API can be an example of it.
Let’s say, you are owning a business. You are having your e-commercial website, an app for Android, and another one for iOS. Now your customer will ask you for service by using different channels that are made available by you. Few will navigate through the website and few can visit your website. But you need to integrate all these data. For a third-party app or software that can be used, Umbraco provides these features also. It can become your central Content Management System and can manage the content of all the platforms by itself, without the use of any third-party apps or software. Umbraco’s REST API Package can be used for it.
API is further classified into:
- Private API – They are built to serve the organisation itself.
- Public API – They are built to serve the public.
- Partner API- They are built to serve partners or customers
Advantages of API
There are various advantages of building an API. A few of them are:
Economical: As some built-in -features are used, it saves the cost as the developer doesn’t need to recreate from scratch.
Increases collaboration: API connects Customer Relation Management (CRM), marketing automation, and financial services and increases collaboration within the enterprise.
Marketing growth: Development of API leads to providing an innovative solution to the organisation and hence leads to the growth of marketing.
Productivity: In today’s busy world, no one has time. Everyone wants their task to be done quickly. In such a case, when there is demand for service and when the developer starts to build everything from scratch then it may take a lot of time. Hence to save time and to increase productivity in workflow, API needs to be developed.
More or less, it can be concluded that to bring the revolution of your product to the online market, the use of API is a must.
How will it help your business?
Increase productivity: Integration of API in your platform will allow you to add as multiple features as you want to enhance your service, Since there is no need to develop everything from scratch when you are using API, this increases the productivity of your business by allowing high input-to-output ratio.
Save time: Using API in your platform allows you to use all the features that this API provides, without any development from the scratch. This will save time and this time can be utilised for other things. For example, if you are using Google’s map API, then there is no need to develop a Google map-like software from scratch. You just need to integrate the API with your platform in a good way.
Save the development cost: As mentioned above, API eliminates the development of certain features (which you are going to provide) hence, it saves development costs. Also, since the development content is small and hence its maintenance, as well as its maintenance cost, will be low.
Invites innovation : Integration of the API in the original platform is easy. Therefore customization as per the need can be easily done. By doing so, complex problems can be solved by using innovative solutions. And for implementing this innovative solution, API enabled platform gives convenience to the developers as well as the business owner so that development can be done as per the need.
Collects data for analytics: Collecting data is a blessing for any business. Integrating your platform with certain APIs helps you to fetch real-time data scenarios. This real-time data when applied to certain analytics software or say API, can produce results and this result can be used further for the improvement of the business.
Enhance customer experience: API enhanced customer experience. For example, if someone wants to have a taxi in whatever place he /she is then they can use certain apps. Instead of writing the whole address, a location tag can be used. In such a case, we can use Google Map. This G map will fetch the user’s location and send the information back to the server centre of that taxi app, from where proper actions need to be performed.
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