API Caching Benefits for E-commerce
The Benefits of API Caching for E-commerce
In today’s digital age, e-commerce is an essential part of many businesses. Whether we’re shopping for clothing, electronics, or even groceries, the web has made it easier than ever to find the products and services we need at the click of a button. The majority of modern e-commerce websites rely on application programming interface, or API, in order to function.
An application programming interface is a set of instructions that allow two pieces of software to talk to each other in the form of a series of requests and responses. When a request is made to an API, it is typically requesting data that is stored in a remote database. This data may include product information, customer information, or order information. To minimize the amount of time that it takes to retrieve this data, e-commerce websites often utilize application programming interface caching.
Application programming interface caching offloads application server transactions by distributing the load across a series of decentralized edge servers with the help of a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Considering that a popular e-commerce site can receive millions of API calls every day, API caching not only improves the scalability but also the availability of your e-commerce platform by minimizing the burden of rising web traffic on your backend infrastructure.
How does API Caching work?
Application programming interface is a technique that leverages edge servers and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to quickly deliver content to users. For this technique to work, globally distributed edge servers are placed at strategic locations by the CDN service provider to minimize latency and provide fast access to data. On the edge server itself, a special cache is implemented that can store data for a certain period of time, that can be even defined as a second. Whenever online shopper requests information from the edge server, the CDN checks its local cache first before accessing the central server. If the requested data is found on the edge server’s cache, then it can respond immediately with no delay. If not, the CDN will retrieve the data from the central server and cache it on the edge node so that it can be quickly accessed the next time it is needed.
This can dramatically decrease latency and improve the speed and performance of an e-commerce website. Even users located further away from the remote API are served quickly.
It also reduces the load on the API server, freeing up resources for other users. It helps to scale rapidly for traffic spikes and improves availability of your website. Thus, API caching is an essential solution for e-commerce websites.
API Caching for E-commerce businesses?
By utilizing an application programming interface caching solution, you can streamline internal processes like product recommendations, reviews and filtering. This improves overall data management and reduces load time for pages that rely on extensive data sets. Moreover, incorporating API caching into your e-commerce platform offers other key benefits, including reduced server loads, better scalability, improved security, and more streamlined application functionality. Further, by taking advantage of this powerful technology tool, you can help ensure the continued success of your business as well as provide a superior online shopping experience for your customers.
Let’s take a look at the key benefits of using API caching for e-commerce stores.
Improved Site Performance
In the world of e-commerce, performance is key. Consumers have little patience for slow-loading pages, and a sluggish website can quickly lead to lost sales. One way to improve performance is using API caching.
By caching API responses at the edge, e-commerce sites can avoid having to make round trips to the origin server for each API call. This can save a significant amount of time, especially if the origin server is located far away from the user.
In addition, by caching API responses on a CDN, e-commerce sites can further improve performance and availability by taking advantage of the CDN servers located around the world. In short, API caching can be a powerful solution for e-commerce websites.
Enhanced Security
API caching is an important security measure for e-commerce websites, as it helps to protect against a wide range of threats that could compromise user data and financial information. API caching provides an extra layer of security by hiding the remote API, reducing frequent access to the backend database and limiting exposure to possible attacks. It also improves defense against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) threats by leveraging powerful technologies and features of the distributed edge network.
With effective API caching, e-commerce platforms can provide users with a secure and trustworthy browsing experience.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs & Scalability & Availability
Caching is a tried-and-true way to reduce database & server costs. By caching API calls, you can eliminate the need to repeatedly query your database. This can free up resources and improve performance while also reducing your infrastructure costs.
By reducing load on your remote API and offloading transactions to CDN, API caching improves scalability and makes it possible to deal with huge traffic spikes. It also improves the availability of your e-commerce platform by preventing your site from crashing during bursts of traffic.
SEO Booster
By using API caching, you can increase SEO scores to top levels in indexes such as First Input Delay (FID), Speed Index (SI), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Contentful Paint (FCP), Time to Interactive (TTI).
Your website, which is served from geographically distributed PoPs, gets full marks in performance and Core Web Vital tests of Google.
The faster your site is the higher it ranks on Search Engines.
Do E-commerce stores need API caching?
Application programming interface caching can help to improve the performance of your e-commerce store by reducing the number of requests that need to be made to your backend servers. This not only speeds up page loading times for customers, but it also helps to reduce server load, which can prevent your site from crashing during periods of high traffic.
In addition, API caching can also help you to better manage and monitor your site’s resources. By using an API cache, you can ensure that your most popular pages are always available.
Moreover, API caching provides IP protection and improves security of e-commerce websites against everyday attempts of intrusion on your users’ data and financial information.
To improve the performance of your e-commerce site or app, consider implementing an API cache solution.
If you’re interested in learning more about our CDN or would like to discuss how we can help improve the performance of your e-commerce site or app with API caching, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d be happy to hear from you!
