The goal of creating an external API product is to provide measurable benefits to both API providers and their customers by extracting value from the APIs. This involves utilising the API’s capabilities to improve efficiency, generate revenue, create new business opportunities, enable innovation, and improve the overall user experience. To create a successful external API product that meets the needs of your users and drives adoption and growth, you need to:
1
Clearly define the jobs to be done (JTBD), target persona, and business model of your API product. It’s a product, after all. Therefore, the initial steps of creating an API product are no different from any other.
2
Define and understand the metrics of success for your API product. Investments in API programs might be extensive, but at any given time, product managers must be able to answer why they are launching their product, how this benefits the business and its customers, how they measure it and if they are on track.
3
Once the JTBD, target persona, business model, and metrics are defined, it’s time to design a user-friendly interface - which set of APIs, SDKs, and documentation will make this vision come true?
4
Test your API thoroughly and continuously using automated testing tools and user feedback. Iterate your design based on user feedback and changing market conditions.
Launching and scaling an API program
When launching an API program, it’s better to select a limited number of loyal early adopters to test the value proposition, the API product itself, and its onboarding process. You need honest and unbiased feedback as early as possible. It’s crucial to validate USPs and your business model before scaling the API program. This way, you can avoid costly changes later on by getting early feedback on the technical aspects of your API products and the business side of things. Once you’ve made a few iterations over your API products, it’s time to scale your API program by building a developer ecosystem to drive the adoption of your API product. Provide access to developer resources, such as sample code, libraries, and tools, and actively engage with developers through events, hackathons, and other community-building activities.
To scale a public API program, the API product manager must prove their value is comparable to other products to secure business buy-in. This can bring about various operational issues that must be addressed. These include performance, security, reliability, infrastructure changes, and consistency challenges. Therefore, it is essential to have a robust monitoring and performance management strategy that identifies and addresses issues before they impact the program’s functionality and user experience. Let’s explore the API business models and their use cases and discuss how product managers can leverage APIs to drive company growth.