Building for Developer Success with Shopify’s Newest APIs

Our developers are constantly building new apps to help enhance merchants' businesses. And since every great builder needs a great set of tools, we want to equip our community with everything they need to bring their wildest app ideas to life. Today, we’re proud to introduce Shopify’s newest APIs — launched to help you pave the road for entrepreneurial success. In this article, you will learn about: Several of our newest APIs. The new features and capabilities each API provides. How to get started using each API.

Our developers are constantly building new apps to help enhance merchants' businesses. Since every great builder needs a great set of tools, we aim to equip our community with everything they need to bring their wildest app ideas to life.

While it’s true that we’re always listening to merchants to better understand what needs to be built, we’re also listening to our developers. Since last year’s Unite, we’ve taken into account your biggest requests and the pain points you experience in trying to show app effectiveness.

Today, we’re proud to introduce our newest APIs.

In building more paths to more entrepreneurs, we hope you can use these new APIs to help pave the road for entrepreneurial success.

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Marketing Events API

Merchants build amazing products. Shopify hosts these products. Apps provide the marketing muscle to help these products sell.

Shopify surveys show that one of the biggest struggles our merchants face is finding ways to market their products and business. We also know that over 50 percent of merchants install marketing apps. But when merchants do use these apps, with multiple campaigns and efforts employed at once, it can be difficult to understand the impact of individual marketing efforts, and how they contribute to overall sales and growth.

To make marketing better for merchants, and to improve how these apps show their strength, we’re introducing the Marketing Events API.

In using this API, developers will have the ability to automatically add tracking to an app, which can be used to highlight performance data, show merchants how much traffic apps drive, and how they lead to sales.

We know the ability to track performance is important, because our research also uncovered that merchants who manually track campaigns through UTM codes are 10 times more successful than those who do not. By making performance data available to all merchants, you can help demonstrate your app’s value, and receive some much deserved credit for its impact.

Another new boost for marketing apps? We’re adding some “Pow!” with app actions. What this means is that right in the Shopify Admin, merchants can now receive prompts (aka app actions) that recommend apps that could help in driving both traffic and sales.

By connecting to the Marketing Events API, and through our app actions in the admin, merchants can be more successful in driving customers to their products, and developers can help merchants use marketing apps more effectively.

Marketing Events API

Reporting API

As already mentioned above, we know that when merchants track an app’s impact, they’re better able to use the app effectively.

With the new Reporting API, we’re giving all developers the ability to generate customized, app-specific reports. Since we also know that running a business of any size can involve juggling many balls, and managing a multitude of programs and spreadsheets, we’re making it easier for you to serve reports to merchants in one familiar place.

One of the key features of the Reports API, is that you can surface reports to merchants directly through their homebase, the Shopify Admin.

With this new integration, you can better communicate your app’s impact and provide easier to access reporting to merchants, directly through Shopify’s Admin, creating a more seamless app experience. Developers who want to serve reports also have the option of not storing data or developing their own code for report generation.

Reporting API

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Resource Feedback API

With our Sales Channel SDK increasingly being used, we want to ensure the merchant experience with sales channels becomes easier and more effective.

When uploading a product from an online store to a channel, we recognize that sales channels can have their own unique product restrictions and requirements that differ from what the merchant may have input.

With the introduction of the Resource Feedback API, you can now create a function that alerts merchants when a product fails to upload onto a sales channel, and includes feedback on what prevented it from publishing (e.g. missing keywords, price restrictions, incompatible formatting, etc.).

Merchants will be notified in the Shopify Admin when products need to be updated, helping them better list their products on sales channels and earn sales. This API can also improve merchant onboarding onto sales channels, as it will notify the shop owner if they haven't connected their account properly.

Resource Feedback API

In addition to the Resource Feedback API, we’re introducing 3rd Party Vaulting for payments to help address another common sales channel headache; accepting credit card information in a way that’s PCI compliant.

Through the Checkout API, you can now accept payment tokens from partners such as Stripe and Spreedly to facilitate transactions, while also using the secure encryption they provide. This function will give you a better pipeline for payments, without the worry of ever having to store credit card information on your servers.

Draft Orders API

Launched in beta earlier this year, the Draft Orders API is now available in its final iteration. As a result of our partner’s feedback and feature requests, we’ve made various improvements and added additional functionality.

Using the Draft Orders API, you can create orders on which taxes and all total amounts are calculated by Shopify. Draft orders also enable the use of custom items to represent additional costs or products that aren't displayed in a shop's inventory, and lets merchants sell products at discount or wholesale rates.

This provides great flexibility concerning how orders are created and completed using the API, and enables a wide range of use cases, such as creating new orders for sales made by phone, in person, via chat, or by other means, and sending invoices to customers to pay with a secure checkout link. Other use cases could be to re-create mistaken orders and take pre-orders. Draft orders can also be marked as paid or pending via the API.

Draft Orders API

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Your building blocks

You spoke and we listened. These new APIs aim to help you get even more creative, and build apps and integrations that are even more powerful and effective. We hope these tools become your building blocks, and create amazing opportunities for you and the merchants you serve.

With the addition of these new APIs, what are you most excited to build? Let us know in the comments section below.