Picture this: You’ve decided that you want to make it easy for customers to join a live video demo directly from the sales page of your own website.
Not that long ago, rolling out this functionality would’ve involved a lot of time, knowledge, and elbow grease – and likely an entire team of developers tasked with building that application from the ground up.
But, given the rise of what’s coined the “API economy,” offering this type of feature is easier (and faster) than ever.
What exactly is an API?
If you’re scratching your head at the mention of “API economy,” we don’t blame you. It can be a bit of a daunting concept to wrap your arms around, especially if you don’t pride yourself on your tech knowledge.
API stands for application programming interface. We won’t get too into the weeds of the tech stuff, but think of an API as the messenger that allows two applications to talk to each other.
For example, have you ever visited a website with the option to “login with Google” or something similar? That website uses Twitter’s API to give users an option to login quickly and conveniently. Developers didn’t need to create that login functionality themselves – they were able to piggyback off of existing functionality using an API.