There are 3 main ways to include external content on your website:

  1. You can link to it on another web page but use a subdomain to make it look like it’s part of your site. This requires a quick DNS update.
  2. Use an API to integrate it fully with your website – this takes a developer and can take a few days to implement.
  3. You can embed it on your website using an iframe of JavaScript embed, which you simply copy and paste from the content provider to your website.

Integrating a 3rd party system into your website

I’ve just had a question from a client that sounds like it wouldn’t be relevant to smaller companies, but actually once I tell you the answer it can help you whatever your sector and however big your company.

It was about integrating systems with your website, whether it’s a newsletter system or a booking engine, or anything outside of your main site. And you’ve generally got 3 options which vary from a few minutes to a few days to implement.

The particular question was actually something I’m asked a lot by marketers in growing companies and that is “how can they hook up their recruitment platform to their website so that their job vacancies can automatically show” on their website.

Option 1: Use a sub-domain

This means that you set up something like jobs.yourwebsite.com and direct people there to see your current vacancies. To implement this, you just need to track down whoever looks after your DNS and it’s a 2minute job for them to create the A record. It requires the platform you’re integrating with to have a web page / web site offering for each of their clients (everyone who’s using that software to list their jobs) and then it’s effectively your own separate jobs site, but making it run on jobs.[yourwebsite.com] makes it look like it’s part of your site.

How much it cosmetically looks like your site depends on the options available from the platform. Before now we’ve been able to supply whole stylesheets so that the jobs site completely matches the look and feel of the main site, but sometimes you can only upload your logo.

In the case of the client who was asking today, it looks like their option is to set up theircompanyname.thejobsystem.com so I don’t think they love that as it feels more removed from their brand. But on the plus side, this doesn’t take any effort from anyone on your team as it doesn’t involve any changes to your DNS.

Option 2: Use an API

If the platform you’re integrating with has an API it means a developer can code a way for your site to communicate with the other platform and basically suck in the all data about your jobs, store them in your website database and then display them on your site.

They’ll also write code to keep going back and grab the latest jobs every night, or every hour – however often is appropriate.

Then, with all of that data on your website, your developer can display that on a page of your actual main site and it can look however you want it to – completely branded with the rest of your site.

Because it can look however you want it can also show whatever info you want, from what was pulled in from the jobs system. So say the jobs system provides a salary, but you don’t want to display that on your jobs page on your website, then you don’t have to – it’s all in your control (via your developer).

Your developer can also build a search filter so people can select different categories of job, or select a salary bracket, for example. The data is sucked from the jobs system into your database and it’s as if you added it manually yourself via your CMS, it’s just all automated.

The only downside to this approach is that it costs quite a bit to set up as it’s going to take a developer a while to do it. How long exactly depends on how far you want to take it, and how experienced they are with APIs, and how good the documentation is for that particular API.

Option 3: Use an embed

Lots of 3rd party platforms provide an embed – whether it’s a youtube video or a mailing list sign up form or a list of jobs.

An embed is kinda like a window to another site – it sits on a page on your site, but it shows something being supplied by the 3rd party platform.

It takes literally minutes to add and you can possibly do it yourself – one hurdle can be that website backends can be built to not let you paste just any old code in, for security reasons, so you might need to ask for help, but you can give it a try. It’s just copying and pasting where you want it on the page (do make sure you switch to code view if you have it when you paste).

The only downside to embeds – especially iframes – is that they really are just a window to another site, so you can’t change how the content looks unless the 3rd party platform gives you controls to change it on their end.

So in a list of jobs, if they’ve got salary in their list, you probably can’t remove it. If they’ve got bright orange links, and you’ve got a pink website, it’s gonna clash. If they use a tiny sans serif font and you use a large serif font, it’s not gonna be on brand. I say “probably” because depending on the embed, and your developer, there are some tweaks you can do and ways you can intercept things, but in general, with an embed it’s what you see is what you get.

If you need a hand with integrating a 3rd party system into your website, do get in touch.