Improving the UX with Userstack API

• 5 minutes READ

Userstack is a REST API, designed by apilayer, the developer behind amazing tools such as ipapi or streetlayer. The API reveals important data sets about the users visiting your websites such as their browser, OS or device in an easy to use format.

Remember the times when you had to maintain multiple codebases so you could support multiple web browsers? Back into the dark ages of the web, we used user agent data to deliver different lines of code to our users, to ensure that websites weren’t a mess.

userstack.com Demo

Thankfully those times are gone. However, today, thanks to tools such as userstack, we use this data to build better experiences for our users.

userstack from Technological Demonstrator to Enterprise Ready API

The API was launched more than four years ago, under the name UserAgent API. As the API became popular with developers around the world, apilayer overhauled the API and upscaled it to fit enterprise requirements such as a 99.9% SLA, 256-bit SSL encryption and dedicated support.

userstack.com Uptime

Today, userstack is a scalable API, capable of meeting even the most demanding requirements. Whether it’s a product landing page with a few hundred requests per day or a complex shopping platform with one million requests per month, userstack can handle any scenario.  Accenture, Apple or Intuit are some of the prominent brands which are using the userstack API in their products and tools.

Use Case Scenarios

User experience is the key from converting visitors to users, customers or subscribers. The onboarding paradigm, the content/product itself, and the retention rate are the keys to success. The fewer steps are between your visitors and your service, product or newsletter; the more are the chances you’ll get a loyal userbase.

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Native App Downloads

After months of prototyping and testing, your app is ready. Your content manager uploaded the final revisions for the promo materials, the landing page is up an ready, and your promotion campaign returns the first users. You’ll use userstack to redirect the users to the download link that corresponds to their device. Android users should automatically be redirected to Google Play and subsequently, iOS users to the App Store. This reduces the steps required for users to onboard and increases the chances of a conversion.

Custom Content

While TV didn’t kill the radio, online shopping may be the end for retail stores. While big players such as Amazon or eBay are dominating the online shopping experience, a strong brand, an excellent product, and a great strategy can boost your e-commerce to the top. In fact, sometimes you don’t even need a great product. The drop shipping industry proved that. For example, if you are selling cell phone accessories, you can use userstack to display products that match your visitor’s device.

Stop Bots and Crawlers

Do bots attack your site? Do scrappers steal your unique content? Use userstack to detect and block them or, even better, get them stuck in honeypots. Just don’t forget to exclude legit crawlers such as search engines and security crawlers.

userstack Functionality

You can test the API’s functionality in less than five minutes. Just sign-up for the free tier, generate an access key from the account dashboard and run the request.

https://api.userstack.com/api/detect
    ? access_key = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY

This will return the following sets of data:

  • User-Agent string;
  • The entity type (browser, mobile-browser, email-client, app, feed-reader, crawler, and offline-browser);
  • The brand, name and associated URL of the associated device;
  • Operating system data such as the name, code, family, family code, family vendor and the icon of the OS;
  • Device specification: whether the device is mobile or not, type (desktop, tablet, smartphone, console, smart tv, wearable) and, if supported by the device vendor, the brand name, code, URL and the specific name of the device;
  • Browser data: name of the browser, version, major version, and the rendering engine.

For paid subscribers, an additional data module is available, the crawler module, which will identify bots crawling your sites such as search-engine, monitoring, screenshot, scraper or security crawlers.

User-Friendly

The API is very user-friendly. Designed to appeal to both beginners and professionals userstack is accessible to anyone thanks to an easy to understand code, an extensive knowledge repository, and real-time support.
In most cases, it will take you less than ten minutes to implement the API in your platform. Furthermore, the API features ten endpoints that cover the most popular programming languages of today, including PHP, Python, Ruby or Node.js.

GDPR Compliant

The API, just like any other plan product, is GDPR compliant. It’s an essential feature for freelancers and big brands alike. For smart-scale projects, userstack API’s compliance may be an excellent solution to ensure the integrity of your user’s data, and a rather cost-effective tool to implement GDPR compliant data flows that suit your needs and keep your visitors or customers data safe. For start-ups, businesses or enterprises, the API’s compliance with GDPR should strengthen your organization’s data processes and make your DPO happy.

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Great Pricing

The userstack API is available in five tiers, including a free forever tier. The only downside of the free tier is the lack of support for HTTPS Encryption, which, in today’s landscape, could be an issue. You can get HTTPS encryption for $9.99 per month (or $7.99 if you commit to a one-year subscription). In addition to that, you’ll also get the lookup cap extended to 50.000 requests per month and Crawler detection. The next Tiers extend the number of request per month and add bulk lookup functionality.

userstack.com Pricing

If you exceed the lookup limitations of your tier, apilayer won’t charge you for the excess or block you from accessing the API unless you constantly exceed your quota by more than 20%.

The pricing is designed to accommodate any use case scenario, without limiting your how you design your interactions with your users. After the initial set-up, the API is doing its job somewhere in the cloud, and it sends you valuable data while you focus on your product or services.

Get Your Free API Key

In the digital era, data is power. However, raw data is useless unless you use the right tool to organize data and extract meaningful patterns that shape your services and products. That’s why userstack’s API should be in the top 10 tools from your developer toolkit. It’s scalable, accurate, resilient and compliant with fundamental data protection practices. Moreover, if you take into account the extensive documentation and real-time support, apilayer’s userstack API, can be the difference between failure and success.

Sign up for your a free API and start using data to your advantage.

Doru Ciobanu

Doru is an old BMW lover with a big heart.

Posts by Doru Ciobanu
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