Product and customer-centric approach with APIs will take you to success, but developer-centric will make you the industry leader

Audience

Dispite the fact that I love application developers, this book is written for business decision makers and marketing people in API Economy. After reading this you hopefully understand what your API consumers need and want to build best possible digital services. Successful APIs focus on primary customer and apply developer-first product strategy. You will learn what kind of team you'll need to craft APIs your customers will love. Book also provides guidance towards successful Business to Developer marketing (B2D). Without proper marketing your efforts have been in vain and waste of time and resources.

Three main topics

The book is built around three themes, each of which is one part of the book. The three themes are wrapped up in final Developer Portal focused concluding fourth part.

Part I - APIs as products

In the part one you'll learn why APIs should be seen as products and what it means in practice. We will use existing great productised APIs as examples to avoid purely theoretical viewpoint.

Chapters:

• API provides access to value proposition
• Beyond data APIs
• Primary customer is developer
• Key to success is multidisciplinary team
• API Business Model patterns

Part II - Developer-first approach

In the second part we'll go through features and aspects on API development to focus on while keeping primary customer - application developer at the center. You will learn what kind of team you'll need to craft APIs your customers will love and why APIs mentioned in part I are successful.

Chapters:

• Solve my problem!   
• Developer eXperience
• Embrace open source
• I don't want to poll your API
• Tools tools tools!
• Easy self-service on-boarding
• Sales & Support
• Getting started vs detailed documentation

Part III - Business to Developer marketing

In the third part we'll guide you towards successful Business to Developer marketing (B2D). You'll learn how to get started and things to avoid. Without proper marketing your efforts have been in vain and waste of time and resources.

Chapters:

• What is B2D?
• Tone of voice and style in B2D
• Developer advocacy
• Developer Relations
• Events and Channels

Part IV - Developer portal binds all together

All the topics discussed previously are wrapped up in separate concluding part about Developer portals.

Chapters:

• Developer portals
• First impression matters
• Must have elements