Online e-commerce platform development with eBay integration

Our client is a business owner of an eBay shop for men’s suits. He was looking to build out a shopping portal on the website utilizing the suite of eBay API integrations. His business is a large eBay store (13k items) and sells almost all of his items through that channel.

We got a request to develop an e-commerce platform integrated with his eBay store. It could release his marketing strategy and expand his brand of men’s suits.

The customer’s website was essentially a fancy landing page that only had links to their eBay store, redirecting visitors to browse and make purchases on eBay. The client wished to enhance the customer experience by allowing them to browse eBay’s catalog and complete transactions directly on the website. Additionally, the client required a partner network referral marketing program directly into their website through eBay integration. So we answered the request and started converting and developing with the client immediately.

During releasing the e-commerce platform development with eBay integration, we faced several challenges, such as:

eBay API integration;

exporting the eBay item database to the site;

creating a search with the most relevant results.

The key feature of this product is the direct integration with the eBay store, but this is the main challenge. First, the developer has to get access to the API interfaces and API keys. Then get familiar with the API documentation and understand the methods and functions needed to implement the desired functionality. In addition, the eBay API may have various limitations and security requirements that must be considered when integrating. It should also be noted that the eBay API can change over time, and you need to keep track of updates and adapt the integration accordingly. Nevertheless, our developers found and used other optimal solutions to reach out of integration difficult situations.

We created a platform in which it is possible to find a large number of products, for the most relevant data. The value is that eBay has a very detailed ranking of items by category, such as size, color, material, etc. Since the customer has a store of 13,000+ items, it is necessary to match the search query with the most relevant data.

Rich e-commerce platform development with eBay integration gave the client a set of opportunities:

Ensuring a place that can be promoted (brand promotion, instead of eBay promotion);

Capturing visitor’s attention and building a loyal audience that can be retained with the continuous increase of repeating sales;

Further on the roadmap the shop portal can various payment gateways (not just eBay transactions) to broaden audience payment channels;

Opportunity to get rid of eBay’s other seller’s promotions and recommend to your audience your smart suggestions, increasing the check value;

Have a unique style for the shop portal going forward, that can make client stand out in UX.

Tools used: Jira, Zoom, Upwork chat, Google spreadsheets