How to Engage Your API Users (and Get More of Them) What’s the point of building an API if nobody uses it? In the API world, the saying “If you build it they will come,” absolutely doesn’t hold true. As a matter a fact, if you build an API without marketing, explaining, and documenting it well, you’re on your way to getting lots of people to hate your business. Before we get into the weeds, let’s make sure you have the basics covered: The landing page: Your documentation’s “cover” The old adage says not to choose a book by its cover, but we all know that in the age of short attention spans, that’s exactly what happens — and your API is no exception to this pattern of behavior. There are other ways for users to accomplish what your API allows them to do. Convince them that your API is the best way. Users will make instant assumptions about your technical prowess, software design, and support immediately after landing on your developer hub. What do you want them to come away thinking? Give them the “why” Your developer hub needs to explain why companies should use your API. Think about it: most companies wouldn’t dream of creating a marketing site that consists exclusively of dry product specs. But when it comes time to publish their API documentation, suddenly it’s acceptable to dump a page of endpoint URLs on somebody and say, “Figure it out!” At the bare minimum, you need to: Clearly convey the benefits — what does your API let them do? How does it make their work easier, improve the lives of their users, or save them money? Showcase common use cases, as well as linking to the guides they’ll need to implement those use cases In general, you want to do everything you can to ground your API in real-world problems (and show how it’s the solution to those problems). Tell them how to start Now your users know you have an API, and they know why they should use it, but do they know where to get started? Specifically, they need to know how to get access and where to go for support (should they need it). If you need inspiration, check out this list of quick start examples (or just keep reading!). Of course, these are just the basics — now it’s time to build on them and create a community of engaged users: How do I keep my API users engaged? You have a kickass API and your landing page checks all the 101 boxes — now it’s time to get people to engage. The only problem is that this… …isn’t exactly sexy. Nor does it show what your API is capable of. You can show an example call or curl command, or part of the feed that your API returns, and none of that would even come close to showing off the well-designed API your team is so proud of building. Collaborate with your users Static documentation written as a one-and-done deal isn’t going to engage your users. Developers are going to come to your page, browse through the docs, get bored, and bounce. But all those devs are working on their own projects and are chock-full of great ideas for cool things to do with your API. Not collaborating with them is a huge missed opportunity. Create a community around your API so that you can learn from your users and adjust your documentation and design accordingly. Your community of developers will feel more invested in your product, and you’ll learn more about what’s possible with your own API. Crowdsource your docs If open source software has taught us anything, it’s that hundreds of developers QAing a product is better than one. Same goes for documentation. Instead of creating static documentation, like the hundred-page PDF manuals of the previous decade, create an interactive developer hub. Having a “suggest edits” button is a great way to actively incorporate user feedback, without adding a ton of extra work to your team’s to-do list. Open up lines of communication The more lines of communication you have with your API users, the easier it will be to stir up a community. Use several mediums to announce updates in order to get your API users excited about new use cases and help spread the word. For example, Stripe regularly shares updates about their documentation, including when they add new features or content — like launching their app integration directory: They even created another Twitter account to share updates that are specific to developers and improving their developer experience. This strategy has worked well for them over the years, and now they have a strong following of developers, and comprehensive documentation to meet the needs of those developers. Try to fire on all fronts and engage users through several mediums. Other platforms you can use include: Hacker News: If you’re willing to put your API to the scrutiny of the Hacker News community, it’s a great way to stimulate conversation around new updates. Product Hunt: Make sure that your post meets the community guidelines. Once you post it, email your community to let them know. Upvotes can help it make the front page, in which case your API engagement will go through the roof. Slack: Some companies create a Slack community for their customers to ask questions and get instant answers from someone on the dev team. This is a great way to share updates and proactively seek feedback from your users. (You can join the ReadMe Slack community here!) Give the gift of beta access People love first dibs. The sooner you can tinker with something, the better. Extending beta access to your users will make them feel like an extension of your team. They’ll push the API to its limits, and feel compelled to reach out when something goes wrong. Best of all, they’ll feel more comfortable giving you feedback on the API in later stages, which means less bugs slip through the cracks. When Clearbit did this, they even went a step further by offering a discount for the service after it launchedt: Make it easy to do more The faster a user can try their hand at your API, the more accessible it is. The obvious benefit is getting more developers integrating your platform. The less obvious benefit is encouraging each individual developer to go deeper into what’s possible with your API. You need to make the learning curve for your API as easy as possible, which means filling out the docs page with plenty of tools that make it quick and hassle-free to get started. Quick start guides as marketing As you get to know your API community, you’ll get acquainted with all the most popular use cases for your product. Once you know what those use cases are, you can create quick start guides to encourage both existing and potential users. For bonus points, add a time estimate for how long the process will take. If a developer knows they’ll be able to go through the entire tutorial in 15 minutes, they’re much more likely to give it a go than if they think it might be a several hour process. Sandboxing to try before you buy Developers are curious people, but their curiosity will only take them so far. If they have to rework their dev environment and then go through a complicated authentication process, they’re likely to blow it off and get back to work. But if you set up sandbox functionality, you’ll tempt them to pursue that curiosity just a bit further. Sonar, a multi-platform communication tool for sales teams, has sandbox functionality in their documentation, so you can check out all their most popular calls with relatively little effort. Like Sonar, you can provide a curl command that devs can just drop into their command line, or, alternatively, you can add interactive elements to your API docs, enabling users to make a call right from the page. Reputation is everything At the end of the day, you need to have a well-designed well-documented API to maintain a good reputation in the dev community. No bells and whistles will make up for that. But engaging with your API users will get them invested and excited about your product. Not only will that get them to stick around, but it’ll get them to spread the word about your platform and all of its potential.