Spencer Nguyen - July 12, 2021
As with any product on the market, driving adoption is critical to success. Your API investment is no different, and driving API consumption within your ecosystem requires a well-planned strategy and adoption campaign that’s complemented by appropriate customer education and marketing. In this article we’ll discuss some ideas that will generate increased use of your APIs and help you understand how your organization integrates all of it’s systems, data and applications.
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Run Pilot Programs
Launching APIs within your ecosystem is not too different from launching any other product in that your APIs deserve just as much planning and attention to detail as any other solution you offer. This means segmenting, understanding, and garnering feedback from your audience should be at the top of your list when it comes to driving API consumption in the long-term.
So, one of the first steps that your organization should take in order to ensure widespread adoption is to segment your target audience. Once segmented, you should run pilot programs with each of the segments to open channels for much-needed feedback. By doing so, you’ll also be able to drive a developer relations strategy. Depending on the resources your company has available, you may even assemble a developer relations team.
The purpose of developer relations is not just to manage your pilot programs, but to manage all relations between your company and the development community. Without a developer relations strategy, your company will not be able to drive API adoption or consumption within its ecosystem. So, planning a strategy and starting out with pilot programs will prove to be a worthy investment.
Build Target Personas
Getting into the “product mindset” when considering your APIs is something we’ve talked about in the past because it’s crucial to turning every API into a business asset and viable revenue stream. So, just as you’d approach any other product’s release, it’s crucial that you develop target personas for the developer segments you want to reach.
Focused messaging that’s tailored to your segments will help drive API usage. DreamFactory’s intuitive and powerful API publishing tools can help throughout the process by enabling you to expose APIs and their keys as needed while managing flexible, role-based access so you remain in control.
Interested in learning more about DreamFactory’s features and how they empower you to get more out of your APIs? Explore all of our features today.
Monitor The Right Metrics
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, which is why monitoring a handful of metrics is essential to checking and improving performance. Some of the most important metrics to measure include usage and traffic. DreamFactory makes it easy to track and understand important metrics with advanced logging and reporting capabilities.
With DreamFactory, you can use a popular ELK (Elastic, Logstash, and Kibana) stack, with the latter providing highly flexible reporting tools for all API calls. You can segment data by instance, application, user, role, endpoint, and more for precise insights, too. Take advantage of pre-configured dashboards to spend less time handling data and more time digesting it.
Build a Robust Developer Portal
In addition to tracking metrics on the backend, your organization needs to consider the UX for the developers you’re targeting. This means building robust developer portals that act as the communication nexus for all the personas you serve. Depending on your starting point, your approach to developer experience may begin with components as simple as documentation.
DreamFactory’s ability to automatically generate live documentation using Swagger, the leading documentation tool, will save your teams time and help you exceed developers’ expectations when it comes to documentations, tutorials, and support for using your APIs. However, your portal needs to go beyond documentation if you want to drive consumption in the long-term across all of your segments.
By utilizing the right technologies, your company can adopt a product mindset and start seeing its APIs in a new light, opening up the door to new revenue streams. If you’re searching for a solution that will enable you to implement your strategies effectively, look no further than DreamFactory.
Generate a full-featured,documented, and secure REST API in minutes.
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Choose The Right Technologies
DreamFactory’s feature-rich platform makes API generation a breeze, allowing your teams to spend less time creating and maintaining APIs and more time creating on top of them. Whether you’re publishing APIs for external use or seeking advanced security to protect your company’s own solutions, DreamFactory’s flexible, scalable platform gives you the functionalities you need to create a thriving API ecosystem.
Are you interested in learning more about DreamFactory’s features and how they can help your company drive API consumption? Sign up today and get hands-on with DreamFactory’s many tools. Start your 14-day free trial and see for yourself the difference the right API management platform can make for your business.
As a seasoned content moderator with a keen eye for detail and a passion for upholding the highest standards of quality and integrity in all of their work, Spencer Nguyen brings a professional yet empathetic approach to every task.