What is Customer Data Integration and How It Works?
Tags: webdev, data, api, programming
Published: 2022-09-08 10:34:58

Like any business, eCommerce stores depend on effective customer data management to benefit from their sales and marketing efforts.

[Customer data](https://api2cart.com/business/how-to-easily-track-changes-for-orders-customers-products/?utm_source=dev.to&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=customerdataintegrationv.k) is available on eCommerce platforms, where merchants create their e-shops. Access to such data is also a key to successful B2B software that helps online merchants successfully use their customers' information. In addition, it allows such solutions to increase the value of its software and provide its clients with a single solution for all their eCommerce operations.

It is important to understand how customer data integration in the field of eCommerce works. If you provide software that depends on access to eCommerce customer information, you need to integrate with the platforms such as Wix, Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. Whether you are offering repricing services, marketing automation, inventory automation, chatbot or warehouse management software, you need to know how to maximize the power of customer data integration to facilitate efficient eCommerce for your customers.

## What is Customer Data Integration?

As the name implies, customer data integration is the process of collecting and organizing data from different sets of data or databases so that they can be accessed in a more convenient form. Organizing data in one place makes it easy to find and analyze data for decision-making. In addition, it allows companies like yours to easily perform intelligent automation.

In our online commercial era, customer data integration is vital to any SaaS provider that wants to grow and expand. In particular, this process involves receiving data from various eCommerce platforms and marketplaces, such as Magento, Amazon, Shopify, or eBay, and organizing them in one place.

Data related to clients of the customer's online shop can be collected only from their shopping platforms. Integration establishes a connection between software and platforms, allowing the first to access data from eCommerce platforms. The process is called API integration, where the [APIs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API) of both programs are integrated to facilitate data transfer.

## Why Do eCommerce Software Vendors Need Access to Online Stores' Customer Data?

At this stage, you should know that any eCommerce software vendor, whether cart abandonment, repricing software, marketing automation, or a multichannel system, depends heavily on the data of their customers. Thus, all of this software requires customer-related data to use it to provide its intended functionality to online resellers. For this purpose, eCommerce software should be integrated with the source of such data, i.e. eCommerce platforms.

For example, marketing automation systems require customer data to perform the following functions:

- Send e-mails with updates on new products in the store, discounts and offers for certain products, as well as product recommendations.
- Inform customers about their order statuses, such as shipping, dispatch and delivery date.
- Track customer order history to know about products they often buy, and plan marketing e-mails accordingly.

All of the above features are the main features of the marketing automation software that cannot be performed effectively if the software does not have access to customer data from customer stores. Without customer data integration with eCommerce platforms, obtaining such data from customer storage is impossible and organizing it for all functions.

Self-service software, such as chatbots, also depends on customer data so that they can help customers with orders through online chat.

## What Kind of Customer Data Can you Get from Shopping Platforms?

As mentioned above, there is a variety of B2B eCommerce software, which depends on the clients' data to perform their basic operations. In particular, such data includes such details as:

- customer-id
- customer e-mail
- customer first and last name
- customer birthday
- customer gender
- customer phone
- customer address
- customer wishlist
- customer order history, etc.

Each type of SaaS provider can use this data in their campaigns and daily operations. For example, marketing automation systems use information such as customer name, e-mail addresses, birthday, sex, wish list and order history to send personalized marketing e-mails. These e-mails usually contain recommended products based on their wish list or order history, discounts or offers for their favorite products or products that have remained in the basket.

In this way, cart abandonment systems use the client's name, e-mail address and products left in the cart to send e-mails and encourage customers to complete their purchases.

Multichannel systems use collected customer data to organize in one information panel so that merchants can know their clients, their purchasing behavior, and order history and analyze their relationship with the business. They can also use the data to create customized reports that marketing and management teams in the e-shop can use to identify the legal issues and trends for future business decisions.

## How to Get Customer Data from eCommerce Platforms?
You need to integrate your eCommerce software with shopping platforms to obtain customer data. However, integration is painful and connected with many problems. It takes a lot of time, money, and resources to set up infrastructure, hire experienced developers, integrate it, and then support it.

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The great news is that you can avoid all these problems at by using [third-party solutions](https://api2cart.com/how-it-works//?utm_source=dev.to&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=customerdataintegrationv.k). With this unified shopping data interface, you can take advantage of seamless integration with over 40 eCommerce platforms, including Wix, Shopify, X-Cart, Amazon, eBay and WooCommerce. It means that you no longer have to wait for individual integrations, expensive configuration, and extensive maintenance.

In addition, third-party solutions offer many API methods for receiving data about products, descriptions, attributes, accounts, baskets, order and clients. Therefore, you only need to integrate your software with third-party solutions, which will integrate it with all eCommerce platforms on which your customers have their e-stores. To access information about clients of the online shop, such a solutioin has two main methods:

- customer.list – method that allows the software to receive a list of clients from customer stores.
- customer.info – method that allows the software to receive information about clients from the client store.

In addition, such an [integration solution](https://app.api2cart.com/#register) takes care of platform upgrades. Thus, you will not have to change the developed integrations on your own when the platforms release these updates.