Integrating Third Party Apps into Your Product: Benefits and Best Practices
Integrating third party apps can bring plenty of business benefits and speed up product development. But how do you select the best-fit options, and when should you do it? Keep reading to learn all the must-knows.
Let’s pretend you decided to create your own DIY game like Jenga 🪚🪵 You go the hard way and cut each wooden figure and then smooth it out from splinters. Or you can go to a craft shop and purchase pieces for assembly. Sure enough, the second option would be much faster and less effort-intensive.
When it comes to building digital products, the resources you put in could vary greatly. In essence, there’s no point in reinventing the wheel for every single feature you want your solution to have. You have the alternative of selecting a third-party app and plugging it into your product.
As such, up to 50% of your app or digital product can be built via customized third-party integrations. User login and authentication, payment gateways, data analytics, maps — these are just a few of the areas that can be borrowed to speed things up (provided that these are secondary features and not the core of your product or unique standout feature).
When you’re at the earliest stages of product development, sticking to a budget is crucial. The same goes for startups that wish to release an MVP as quickly as possible to test the ideas on the real market. But coding everything from scratch is a lengthy and expensive process either way.
If chosen wisely, 3rd-party application integration can visibly cut costs and development time. And, even better, many such tools are very cheap to use if you’re a small business.
It’s not a magic wand, and configuration is still needed. Not to mention that it takes professional skills to select the right integrations that’ll be compatible, will enhance the product, and be optimal in further use.
Upsilon’s COO, Anton Oparienko, and CTO, Nikita Gusarov, shared some expert insights, best practices, and tips on the matter. They cover such vitals as:
- Why to choose third-party integrations
- When to make such decisions
- What can be embedded via 3rd-party integrations
- How to select the best options
- And more!
