What’s an API, and why should I care?

Most businesses these days have fancy, good-looking websites which allow them to showcase their products and services to potential clients and, in some cases, do a lot more. A good example is an eCommerce site where you can buy products directly from the site.  

While a website allows humans to interact with another computer, an API (which stands for Application Programming Interface) allows a computer to interact and exchange data with another computer.

At its most basic level, an API could be thought of as a website of just plain text (no fancy graphics or menus etc.), formatted in a way that’s easy to understand by another computer.

So why should you care?

In truth, you almost certainly make use of several APIs every day. When you open your phone to look at your bank balance, check the weather, or see what that latest WhatsApp message says, your phone will need to connect to an API to get that data. Whenever you make a card payment, an API will be used to transmit the transaction details to your bank so that they can confirm it.

Data from Cloudflare suggests that a little over 50% of all internet traffic is one API calling another and exchanging data of some kind, and that rate is growing every year.

In your business, the key benefit of utilising an API is speed and allowing you to get the latest and most up-to-date information to where you need it most, removing the need to transfer the data manually from one system to another (with the potential for human error).

Think of this, when you need to change the prices of your products and services, how many different systems do you need access to change the price? It could be your accounts package, a spreadsheet or two and your website. Utilising an API means you could update that price once, and everything else follows.

It’s not just internal use however, making an API available for your customers to use can also be a powerful offering, allowing them to access the very latest data and offering you have so they can move quicker.

APIs have the potential to transform your business by removing traditional time-consuming and outdated methods to run. It has been embraced heavily by multinational companies to make themselves as efficient as possible, and now you can too.