Product Managers Guide to API Developer Portal UX
With APIs-as-a-Product on a rocketship since 2005, there are many elements that product managers need to master in their Developer persona user experience (Dx) to win and protect their business.
Michael Endler outlines the core pillars of an API product offering in his article, How APIs Become API Products, and one of the paramount compliments to a stellar, well-documented, API is the API Developer Portal. So, what UX elements make a great API Developer Portal?
Let’s take a look at the essentials of best-in-class API Developer Portals to find the common elements. Now, you don’t need to build this all from scratch, as there are several ways to save your roadmap to launch your API fast (see article on Product Manager’s Guide on Fast API Launch). Here are five core elements of market-leaders in Developer experience (Dx):
Element 1: Consistent Look-and-Feel with Your Overall Brand
Your API is part of your overall product offering (or maybe your primary product offering), therefore a consistent use of narrative, assets (logos, explainer diagrams), and branding (colors, typography) must flow between your landing pages, documentation, and developer portal. This can be accomplished by either in-house coding, stylizing templates (e.g. Drupal templates from Zero Gravity), or a no/low code Dx-as-a-service tool (e.g. www.Astral.sh).
Example: Codat.io product marketing matches their API Developer Portal with flawless consistency
Element 2: API Credentials as the Core Job-to-be-Done
One of the primary jobs of an API Developer Portal is the secure delivery of API credentials to your developers so they can build integrations. Make API credential acquisition the forefront of your UX and be sure to create that as the first time-to-first-value (TTFV) outcome measurement.
Example: Twilio makes the API credentials the first UX affordance in their Dx Console
Element 3: Clear and Present Links to Quality Documentation
Documentation is the catnip to get customer engineering and product excited about your API quality, and it is also critical to making the integration successful. Seek to have your documentation in the top and side navigation (in addition to your product marketing site).
Example: Plaid.com docs link at the forefront to be used at anytime
Side Note: My favorite documentation of 2021 is the Readme.io from Routable.
Element 4: Clean UX Affordability between Sandbox and Production
Code should not be released to production without testing, so why should your API be different? The ability for engineers to easily toggle between sandbox and production to make testing straightforward is a small but delightful feature.
Example: Stripe Sandbox vs. Production toggle
Element 5: Team Management-as-a-Must
API Developer Portals need to mirror the teams that utilize them, therefore your Developer Portal should accomplish the job of allowing a team of engineers and product managers to have access to their own company API keys, sandbox, and environment.
Example: Industry-standard mental model of team management used by Codat.io
Element 6: Easy Usage Metrics
As your API is used by your customers to unlock new value for their users, your customers will want simple visualization of the growth in usage (outside of what they can pull themselves with your reporting APIs/webhooks). Bake in a little delight with usage on the successful request growth, and helpful visualizations on errors/warnings.
Example: Twilio Developer Portal Metric Tracker Widgets
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Are you passionate about “API-first” platforms? If so, hit me up for any tips and learnings as you become the next Stripe, Twilio, Plaid, Alloy, Routable, Modern Treasury, or Alpaca API — changing the world with a few lines of code.
Twitter: @guykirbymonty
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Kirby Montgomery is a post-it note advocate, a coffee glutton, a practitioner of data & design user-centric problem solving, and an extreme prototyper. With experience as an executive product leader at multiple fintech companies, he is on a mission to bring working capital to the world via APIs and embedded finance at C2FO.
