Conversion APIs: Everything You Need To Know

To be successful, any great web application must tap into the power of an API.  Web applications can use an API’s information to propagate fields for consumers to read. 

Most web applications need to update or discern key information, and they can employ APIs to this end. 

The most fundamental example of an API is to write a file, include an API call within the file, and allow for an API’s information to populate each field in an application. 

An API can be thought of as a patient, and the web application can be thought of as a doctor’s office. 

The doctor’s office provides paperwork before your appointment: simple clerical questions whose answers are frustratingly easy to conjure.  You populate each simple field with a simple answer.

Some APIs serve different purposes, and some are optimized for different languages, but if you are a business owner who seeks to advance a data team’s capabilities, then you may need to consider implementing a conversion API in your data stack. 

Different from conventional APIs, conversion APIs are entirely server-side, so they present in-house data over which you and your data team have direct and unequivocal control.

Similar to web pixels, conversion APIs offer a lot of information with regard to customers’ tracking information, but there is more to the conversion API than meets the eye. 

Because conversion APIs are server-side, you can employ tracking methods against convertible leads even if B2C interactions fail to happen on your site.  Conversion APIs allow you to track customers throughout every stage of the purchasing journey. 

If a customer sees your advertisement on a social media site, then any conversion API you employ will pick up that nugget of information. 

If a consumer navigates away from your site in favor of a competitor, you will know about that too.  Web pixels capture clients’ interactions with your immediate site exclusively.

Conversion APIs can also receive data from events that happen offline.  Visits to a retail store among other sorts of offline conversations will also be picked up by your conversion API. 

Conversion APIs do pick up a lot of data, but a more important aspect of this unyielding capacity for data collection is that it is always uninterrupted. 

Server-side tracking of potential leads is more reliable because it is less susceptible to network issues like throttling and general lag. 

Conversion APIs have a way of bypassing customers’ internet plugins, so ad blockers will not get in the way of your conversion API’s data capabilities.  Whatever tracking restrictions exist in a customer’s browser, a conversion API offers a way to bypass any hurdles.

Across many types of conversion APIs, you may choose the user activity and behavior you want to relinquish to an advertisement host in the interest of more potent marketing capabilities. 

With a conversion API, you can save the most amount of money by offering extremely specific preferences to a social media site that hosts your advertisements.

In recent decades, every major digital advertising platform has presented significant privacy changes as well as the propagation of many different conversion APIs.  This means that the best conversion APIs must be vigilant against key developments in the world of data management.

Advertising platforms that fail to offer conversion APIs in their immediate data stack might still be working on implementing conversion APIs into daily work.  So many businesses are on the verge of releasing their own conversion APIs.  Yours must either follow in the footsteps of others or be a pioneer that sets an example for other businesses that want to compete in the digital age.

Getting Started

Now that you are an expert who knows the ins and outs of conversion APIs, here is how to begin using them.  Conversion APIs present a time-consuming engineering process whose intricacies may burden your data team, though this is not to suggest that you abandon conversion APIs entirely. 

Web pixels are easier to implement, but they are more limited in terms of sheer ability.

The good news is that leaning into established development practices and making excellent implementation choices can vastly reduce the effort necessary to incorporate a conversion API into an effective data stack. 

Leveraging conversion APIs need not be exceedingly difficult, as long as your data team communicates effectively and does the research.

The Final View

When your conversion API implementation is complete, you can finally enjoy a 360-degree view of data relationships, allowing for better decision-making at the executive and sales levels.  Consolidating data from events into a single data warehouse is one of the best ways to help your business compete against even the most resourceful businesses, resulting in a more complete view of each and every customer.  The data warehouse also notifies your data team of any major conversions.

Heron Nelson
 

Heron is a business blogger with a focus on personal finance and wealth management. With over 7 years of experience writing about financial topics, Heron has established herself as a trusted voice in the personal finance space. She has a deep understanding of financial concepts and strategies, and is able to explain them in a relatable and actionable way for her readers.