5 APIs You Should Know About

When you have a website, the goal is to get human visitors to interact with it, right? But sometimes you may want a machine to interact with your site. This is where Application Programming Interfaces or APIs come in. APIs allow programmers to write applications and widgets for services like Salesforce, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more. And these aren’t just feeds. Oh no, with APIs, you get web-based access to data and actual functions from the sites in question. But with so many APIs to choose from, it can be hard to select the ones that may be right for you. To help you out, we’ve compiled the top 5 APIs you should definitely know about.

Salesforce

Salesforce is considered the number one platform for tracking and monitoring any sales or marketing team. The platform is used by millions of businesses worldwide. And with the Salesforce API, developers can custom-design any application that integrates Salesforce functionality. This allows salespeople the ability to create, retrieve, update and delete records, maintain passwords, perform searches and more.

UPS

For any company that routinely sends packages via UPS, this API is a must-have. With the ability to integrate address validation, pickup information, shipping information and even signature and delivery information, a company can now provide even more value for the customer.

MailChimp

With MailChimp, you’ll be able to easily communicate with your subscription list. With this API, you’ll be able to manage your lists and stats for your campaigns on your own website or application. You can also sync subscriber information between your database and the MailChimp database and this means that you’ll have a cleaner list and, most of all, it means no more importing or exporting of subscriber information.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks makes billing and invoicing extremely easy, and now you can send invoices and manage all of those invoices right on your own site or application. The Freshbooks API offers a single point of entry and is derived right from your own account URL.

Amazon.com

With Amazon’s API, you have access to a wide selection of Amazon products and product descriptions. But you also have access to Amazon’s product reviews, which are incredibly influential when it comes to increasing buying behavior.

These are just a few of the APIs currently available, and they allow you to transform your website or application so that you don’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’, so to speak. You can access the developer software of the platform of your choice, allowing you to mold it to your specifications and needs. Use these APIs to empower your sales force, inform your prospects and consumers, send out invoices, send out communications and much more. And, with WordPress powering everything, that API just got even stronger. You’ll be able to create a custom-made application that does just what you want it to, and we’ve already given you five APIs to get you started. All you have to do is choose the ones that are right for you, mold the APIs to your specifications and you will have the functionality you need in less time, with less effort and for far less money.