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Whitepapers and technical guides

Expand your knowledge of ecommerce and fulfillment services with technical content authored by Amazon.

Abstract

For technical leaders evaluating ecommerce solutions, this paper shows how Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services can complement and enhance your existing architecture. You maintain your unique shopper experience and business operations while adding proven capabilities where Amazon services deliver the most value.

Amazon provides flexible integration options—from ready-to-use applications to customizable APIs and events—drawing from ecommerce expertise and AWS best practices to reduce development costs while meeting operational and security posture requirements. The real-world architecture examples and implementation patterns in this paper show how a modular approach accelerates adoption and helps your investment scale with future growth and innovation.

Introduction

Shoppers expect today's brands to deliver superior ecommerce experiences across channels from direct-to-consumer sites to social stores to other marketplaces. Amazon draws on over 30 years of experience using enterprise-grade technology to offer services that integrate with your existing sales channels beyond the Amazon store. You can delight shoppers with functionality that includes fast, reliable delivery; easy returns; trusted reviews; and real-time customer service.

Whether your technical stack includes Shopify, Salesforce, a customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, or an in-house solution, Amazon services help enhance your architecture through multiple integration paths. For example, a one-click installation can activate fulfillment services for merchants running a Shopify site. Meanwhile, enterprises running a custom site can use Amazon APIs and events to build the experience.

You determine how and where Amazon services best amplify the value of your business, and you choose the integration options that best fit your technical environments. Service configuration is also flexible; for example, you can use unbranded packaging or Amazon branding, and you can provide lot-code information as needed.

This paper offers technical leaders a strategic overview of integration options and provides foundational concepts and architectural patterns to help you assess the implementation scope and alignment with your systems. While the architecture examples are specific to ecommerce and fulfillment, the integration options can apply more broadly to Amazon supply chain services.

Architecture examples

To see what integration with Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services looks like, consider the following examples of Shopify, Salesforce, and custom site integration.

Shopify site

With the Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app for Shopify, you get support for fulfillment of products eligible for Prime, and support for unbranded fulfillment. You install the fulfillment service app from the Shopify marketplace and use the Shopify admin to complete the installation. You might need to modify storefront themes to account for the delivery estimate.

Amazon builds the fulfillment service app using a combination of UI elements, APIs, and events that you don’t need to interact with directly. Shopify and the fulfillment service app send data back and forth to display delivery estimates on the storefront and manage fulfillment. Amazon sends fulfillment updates and package tracking data back to Shopify. The information in Shopify, for example for catalog and ordering, is authoritative throughout the lifecycle of the order. Shopify acts as the central hub that communicates with Amazon and other apps, and existing apps continue to function as expected.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Order Management

Amazon provides decoupled apps, including an app for Salesforce Commerce Cloud to integrate with your storefront and an app for Salesforce Order Management to integrate with your order management system (OMS), to support fulfillment for Prime-eligible products, unbranded fulfillment, delivery estimates, and returns. You can integrate with one or both apps. For details, see Cartridge for Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce OMS Package.

The storefront app includes a UI element that displays delivery estimates using Amazon APIs and events. The OMS managed package interacts with Amazon APIs for fulfillment and package tracking. For returns, you can embed a UI element in interfaces used by shoppers or customer service associates to integrate with the logistics network.

The storefront app supports configuration options that you can apply without additional development on your end. You can also extend the functionality of the app by adding API calls and UI elements to your customized site. The Salesforce state remains authoritative, with the functionality that Amazon provides building from Salesforce extension points.

Custom site

For enterprises with custom technology stacks, Amazon offers API-driven integration options. You build the end-to-end experience using a combination of UI elements, synchronous API calls, and asynchronous events. For details, see the REST API and GraphQL API.

A custom site can support fulfillment for products eligible for Prime, and the Reviews from Amazon feature to help increase shopper conversion. You might use UI elements to show reviews, API calls for fulfillment, and asynchronous events for updating inventory and tracking. Amazon provides documentation showing how to build solutions across storefront, order management, and ERP systems. To help support custom site integrations, Amazon also makes the source code for applications like the Salesforce cartridge available as a reference for how to integrate with the API.

As your requirements become more complex, Amazon solutions architects can help you select and incrementally launch integration options from the decoupled services. As you use more Amazon services, you might need more integration to help improve the experience for shoppers and employees. For example, a fulfillment-based integration might be scoped to your storefront and OMS. You might support analytics by integrating fulfillment data into your ERP system using the fulfillment API and events.

Integration options

Amazon offers a set of tools, including ready-to-use applications, UI elements, and APIs and events, through which you can integrate with Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services regardless of your existing technical solution. You can use the tools to support any setup, ranging from the simplest Shopify site to a custom site built by in-house developers. The tools aim to lower your onboarding costs while adapting to your specific business needs.

Ready-to-use applications

Ready-to-use applications are the baseline for integrating with Amazon services. Amazon provides applications that connect with ecommerce service providers, for example Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, with expanding coverage across order management, enterprise resource planning, wallet providers, product information management, and returns management systems. The applications provide a default integration that helps reduce your onboarding effort. Each application comes with a set of customization options and access to further customization through the UI elements and APIs that Amazon provides.

UI elements

Moving down the stack, Amazon provides pre-built UI elements based on web components technology to power experiences including Reviews from Amazon, returns creation flow, displaying the Prime checkmark logo, and displaying delivery estimates. Amazon uses the same UI elements to create the ready-to-use applications.

UI elements can simplify the development of your UI and help ensure that shoppers experience an optimal UX. Instead of developing server-side code to integrate with associated APIs and render the UX, you add JavaScript snippets wherever you want to enhance your site. On the backend, Amazon optimizes the UX through experimentation and collaboration with merchants to help drive associated performance metrics such as shopper conversion. Amazon provides customization capabilities to help you apply a style that best fits the look and feel of your site.

APIs and events

Amazon provides direct access to the underlying services across primitive building blocks including order management, inventory, fulfillment, returns, and inbound logistics.

Integration options include API calls using protocols such as REST, EDI, and GraphQL to support frontend and backend integrations. Similarly, Amazon supports asynchronous events through delivery mechanisms including Amazon EventBridge and webhooks. You can use the APIs and events alone to build your integration with Amazon services, or as part of an integration combined with the ready-to-use applications and UI elements. To improve the experience for developers, Amazon reviews solutions to understand where to make APIs and events more comprehensive and help reduce application development costs.

Integration principles

Amazon services adhere to core principles for driving integration for your business and for shoppers. The following principles help ensure that every solution that Amazon develops meets today's needs and helps position your business for future growth.

Make client systems authoritative for business operations

Amazon services preserve your systems as the source of truth for business operations. You maintain control of your business processes and choose where to delegate capabilities to Amazon, for example fulfillment. You choose how to use Amazon capabilities over time so that Amazon services complement your broader business operations.

Build on existing client architecture

Amazon services integrate into your existing systems alongside other solutions. Rather than requiring special handling, Amazon capabilities integrate with your existing extension points and system architecture, which helps streamline adoption while maintaining your workflows and operations.

Prefer ready-to-use solutions with flexible customization options

To help minimize the cost of added logic or code, Amazon prioritizes ready-to-use solutions with built-in configuration options plus advanced customization such as APIs, events, and UI elements.

Simplify application logic

Accessing Amazon APIs requires application logic in your systems. Amazon strives for simplicity in the application layer to help reduce the cost of onboarding and operations, with the application layer intended to only contain logic that is specific to your business operations.

Provide multiple solutions through one integration

Amazon services provide multiple capabilities through a single integration, which helps simplify implementation, accelerates adoption of new features, and reduces the technical footprint compared to managing separate integrations for each ecommerce function.

Architectural standards for primitive building blocks

Amazon establishes primitive building blocks to power a variety of integration options. Primitive building blocks include services such as order management, catalog, inventory, fulfillment, and returns. Primitive building blocks are decoupled to allow for flexible integration while working together seamlessly in a delightful end-to-end experience for shoppers.

Data protection and privacy

Amazon systems provide access control for merchant and shopper data, and use unique identifiers to help support data privacy obligations.

Data access is restricted using a combination of access controls and dedicated infrastructure, which helps create technical boundaries from other Amazon services. The architecture for MCF and Buy with Prime earns the industry-standard ISO 27001 security certification.

Operational readiness

Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services scale to support peak loads and are rigorously tested following AWS testing standards. Amazon is operationally prepared to identify and resolve issues that do occur. Failure management helps ensure graceful recovery from a variety of failures, including outages and data deletion. Each service must pass the stringent Operational Readiness Review (ORR) created by AWS.

Functional performance

Amazon continuously measures the ecommerce and fulfillment services against strict performance metrics derived from Amazon.com operations. From tracking inventory capacity through the network to monitoring the accuracy of delivery estimates, Amazon analyzes data to help inform operational decisions and long-term improvements. You receive actionable insights through real-time dashboards and performance reports to drive business decisions such as inventory forecasting. The metrics help ensure that you get the most out of Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services while maintaining visibility into your operational performance.

Security

Similar to operational readiness, Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services follow the same security principles as an AWS service, including architectural standards for authentication, authorization, and data handling. Processes conducted by AWS-certified security architects help guide threat modeling, third-party penetration testing, and internal security reviews. Amazon enforces the processes and standards through automated scans and testing, plus manual audits for any major change.

Testing made simple

Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services include comprehensive testing capabilities to streamline integration. The testing framework provides automated test account provisioning, testing in a sandbox environment that simulates real-world operations, and mocking capabilities for physical processes like fulfillment. You can validate your integration without managing physical inventory or waiting for long-running supply chain processes. Amazon treats testing as a core feature to help ensure that you can confidently develop, validate, and launch each integration with minimal operational overhead.

Conclusion

For technical leaders evaluating ecommerce solutions, the principles and integration options outlined in this paper reflect a commitment by Amazon to meet the needs of your business within your unique technology environment. Amazon focuses on primitive building blocks and support for multiple integration paths to help you adopt services in alignment with your business goals and on your schedule. Whether through ready-to-use applications for popular services, configurable UI elements, or direct APIs and events, you can choose the integration approach that best suits your requirements.

To learn more, see Amazon supply chain portal and About the Buy with Prime API.

Contributors

Brandon Bond, Principal Software Engineer, Amazon

Further reading

To continue going deeper into how to integrate Amazon ecommerce and fulfillment services into your architecture, see the following resources.

Ready-to-use applications:

• Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app for Shopify
• Cartridge for Salesforce Commerce Cloud
• Salesforce OMS Package

APIs:

• About the Buy with Prime API
• Selling Partner API

Sandbox:

• Test in a Sandbox Environment

Enterprise case studies:

• Buy with Prime success stories