API

ay-pee-EYEnoun, abbreviation

Topic: Stock, data and integrations

1. Short for application programming interface: an agreed way for one piece of software to ask another for information or to give it instructions.
2. In ecommerce, APIs are how your website talks to the outside world. A shop uses one to take payment through a gateway, to fetch live delivery prices from a courier, to push products to a marketplace, or to pull stock levels from a warehouse system. If a service has a good API, connecting it to your website is usually straightforward. If it does not, the project gets harder and costs more.

Example The courier’s API returns a live delivery price as soon as the customer enters a postcode.

See also Stock sync Marketplace integration Property feed