Customers want it to be easy to locate goods. In the case of marketplaces and retail platforms, this needs real-time abilities and precise inventory at the store level. When the users fail to find this, they move out and the conversions decline. As a marketplace that serves brand-sensitive customers, our client required a way to display real-time availability of products in a number of large-box stores. This would assist the customers to find something fast and make purchases without fear.
Our mobile application is a real-time query of the APIs of big-box retailers using a custom administration server. The outcome was that it led to faster product discovery, better availability information and the users experienced a better marketplace.
The Probability: Tornado Inventory and Sluggish Discovery.
The client encountered many typical problems in the retail market place prior to the project:
Inventory was inconsistent. Retailers made data available at various points and varied formats resulting in the obsolete availability in the market. Discovery and search were time consuming. The user was required to cross over to another store or wait until they are updated before they can make a purchase.
The number of retail partners has increased in operational complexity due to the fact that each of them had its own API and authentication mechanisms. The distribution of products to the customer was also reduced as the products that were called available were not available at checkout.
These problems reduced the number of conversions, escalated the number of support requests, and caused the marketplace problems expanding alliances with large retailers.
Our Solution: Mobile Application and Custom Backend Administration.
Our solution was a two-part: a friendly mobile app that is easy to work with and make fast searches, and a robust back-end administration that allows real-time integrations with the API.
Real-time API Orchestration
All retailers are linked to the admin backend through their public or partner APIs, after which the responses are normalized, and business rules are applied to the responses with availability, pricing, and location.
An extremely fast response is accompanied by freshness guarantees to each retailer due to a lightweight cache.
Fallbacks and Retry logic minimise false negatives where the partner APIs are unreliable.
Discovery Mobile App Optimized.
The app searches through the backend and shows product availability per store, the distance, the ETA to the time of restock, and pickup/shipment options.
The results can be filtered by the closest store, instantly or the time when the users want to pick it up.
One-tap directions or checkout links serve to take customers to purchase fast after discovery.
Monitoring and Onboarding the Partners.
The admin console is a typical interface that provides adding new retailer partners, mapping fields, and tracking the status.
The real-time dashboards warn the operations with API failures or data problems to be corrected in time.
UX and Performance Focus
Search results are paginated with the prioritization of the in-stock items first.
Perceived delays in slower networks are minimized due to mobile performance enhancements, which increases user retention.
Information
We developed a mobile application, which requests APIs of big-box retailers via a custom administration server. The system standardizes data of retailers, offers new availability to users and operational tools to onboard and track partners.
Results Summary
The client experienced tangible improvements in the way the shoppers learnt about the products and bought them after the rollout:
Existing products were looked up so as to have newer stock and less of the out of stock surprises at checkout.
Users located items quicker and more confidently, leading to the increase of conversion rates and dropped-off rate.
Tickets associated with availability and store confusion support dropped since the application was showing more definite store-level information.
The workload of adding new retail partners reduced due to the fact that the operational administration had to standardize the integrations and provide monitoring.
The marketplace expanded partnerships faster and more reliably as it enabled more of them to be chosen without corresponding growth in engineering effort.
Business Impact
Better availability will result in more accurate availability and user trust and increased conversion rates.
More convenient time to buy since the shoppers would easily locate and take action on the available inventory.
Reduce support and returns through reducing discrepancies between inventory as displayed and inventory as actual.
Faster integration and lower integration costs.
Better positioning in the marketplace via trusted multi-retailer finding.
Key Takeaways
Real-time norming is vital in integrating more than two retailer APIs.
Speed and accuracy Lightweight caching with understandable freshness rules.
One administration console minimizes the difficulties of onboarding partners.
Mobile-first user experience and positive shopper confidence and conversion are enhanced by clear store level signals.
Conclusion
It worked together with a powerful backend to normalize retailer APIs by integrating a mobile discovery experience with it, and thus enabled the client to deliver precise, real-time product availability across big-box partners. The solution anticipated customer experience, reduced friction in its operations and assisted the marketplace to grow its partner network and transformed fragmented data on retailers into competitive advantage.