API and developer portal documentation writing services

Create documentation developers love

APIs open up business opportunities, revenue streams, improve internal efficiency, and signal a commitment to external developers and transparency.

High quality documentation supports all these strategic goals.

Cherryleaf’s technical writers create complete, easy-to-use, API documentation. This promotes adoption and enables developers to seamlessly integrate your API into their products.

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The Benefits

Building trust

High-quality documentation can build trust between your company and your users. Developers often rely on API documentation to understand how to interact with a product safely and efficiently. When you provide documentation that is clear and reliable, it fosters a sense of trust and reliability in your company’s products.

Credibility

In the developer community, the quality of API documentation can serve as proof of your company’s competence and credibility. Companies that invest in comprehensive documentation are often seen as more credible and reliable by the developer community.

Community engagement

When you have well-documented APIs, it can encourage a sense of community among developers. This community engagement can lead to a more collaborative environment where users not only use the API but also contribute to its improvement through feedback, bug reports, and community support forums.

Empowering developers

Providing thorough documentation empowers developers by giving them the tools and knowledge they need to succeed. This empowerment can lead to greater satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, enhancing the overall user experience with the product.

Faster onboarding

Our getting started guides and tutorials speed up developer onboarding.

Reducing anxiety and frustration

Comprehensive documentation can alleviate the anxiety and frustration that developers might experience when trying to integrate an API without sufficient guidance. This leads to a more positive interaction with the product and can increase the likelihood of continued use.

Increasing adoption

Useful, well-organised documentation drive more developers to use your APIs.

Improving your reputation

High-quality, comprehensive, documentation and support for developers helps build a company’s reputation as being transparent, helpful, and committed to its ecosystem. This gains goodwill and trust.

Reducing the support burden

With comprehensive documentation, developers can self-serve instead of opening tickets. Good documentation can cater to developers with varying levels of expertise, from beginners to experts, thus broadening the API’s appeal and usability across a diverse range of users.

User advocacy

When users have a positive experience due to good documentation, they are more likely to develop loyalty to the brand. This loyalty can turn users into brand advocates who recommend the API to others, and this can help you expand your user base through word-of-mouth.

 

How It Works

Our documentation experts partner with you to:

  1. Analyse your APIs and understand integration paths
  2. Plan and structure documentation for an optimal user experience
  3. Write clear, complete API reference docs, guides, and tutorials
  4. Provide a polished developer portal to access everything

Typical Projects

We have created successful API documentation for:

  • Companies releasing new APIs or API versions
  • Organisations with outdated or fragmented documentation
  • Startups needing to provide excellent onboarding experiences
  • Businesses needing to reduce support calls and speed up adoption

Case studies

Creating a developer documentation portal for a financial organisation

An organisation in the financial sector had developed a collection of APIs and tools for accessing, integrating, and securely sharing data. They had provided some documentation, but it was contained in a number of PDFs and other formats that were hard to read and navigate.

They required a developer documentation web portal that provided overview and guidance, API reference documentation, and onboarding information.

Cherryleaf created an information design model of the revised website, and a complete set of redrafted and consolidated content. The content was organised in a way that follows the journey a developer was likely to take:

  1. Understand the product and services
  2. Setup the product and services
  3. Use the product and services to create apps, call an API, publish APIs, etc
  4. Look up reference information when developing
  5. Sustain/Resolve any problems

We reduced the amount of content, compared to what existed before, so the information was delivered in a clear and accessible way.

Creating API documentation for HCC Embedded

“The first, laborious, step was to get all the information organized into documents in a structured and modular way. As we complete the process we will want to improve presentational aspects to give a better customer and marketing experience.

We see an ongoing role for Cherryleaf as consultants who can help to get better documents out of the vast material we have added to the system. Very importantly, Cherryleaf were able to rapidly respond to our issues with the system and help us understand. We have no expertise in this and did not want to be stuck on things that experts could solve instantly – Cherryleaf were very responsive in this. “

See: Helping HCC deal with the size and complexity of embedded systems documentation

Creating API documentation for a well-known, international company

A large, international, multi-billion dollar company, had developed a series of APIs to make it easier for organisations to use its services. It wanted to provide a developer web portal that encouraged customers and partners to use these APIs.

Cherryleaf organised the content in a way that followed the customer journey:

  1. Discover the APIs
    • Explain what the APIs do
    • Explain the benefits of using the APIs
  2. Register to use the APIs
    • Get subscription keys
  3. Use the APIs
    • Understand the endpoints and code samples
    • Try out the API sandbox
    • Start their integration with the live system
  4. Sustain/Resolve any problems

We wrote a range of marketing, technical, training, and troubleshooting content. The project involved working with their API technical partner, product managers, and technical staff. The portal launch was very successful, with great feedback from the client.

Improving a developer portal for a large European financial organisation

A large European financial organisation had developed a developer portal containing APIs that developers could use in their own applications.

Often, developers needed to use more than one API in order to integrate a service. The organisation needed to improve the developer portal so that developers could understand how to integrate the products. This included:

  • Providing a better onboarding experience.
  • Communicating the relationships between the APIs (what they do, and how they work).
    • Helping developers understand what an implemented solution would look like, before they committed to a production version.
    • Stating any prerequisites.
  • Providing information that enabled developers to use the products and APIs.
  • Having consistency across all of the content.

Cherryleaf reviewed the site using a friction log to identify and record all the usability issues in the developer journey. We then developed an improved logical structure for the content in order to meet the needs of the audience. We also identified where content was missing, and improved the content on the website.

Google’s recommendations for developer documentation

Here’s the documentation Google recommends its developers provide for “curious beginner users”:

Documentation Type Description
Conceptual Builds a deeper understanding of the underlying technology.
Cookbook Explains how to accomplish a specific task.
API reference Details all the elements in an API.
Getting started Pushes a curious reader through the first few minutes of use.
Tutorial/Colab Converts a reader from curious investigator to active user.
One-pager Encapsulates the essence of a technology onto a single page.
Case study Shows how users successfully employed this technology in the real world.

This is the documentation that Google recommends its developers provide for “active users”:

Documentation Type Description
API Guide Contains far greater detail (including edge cases) than a tutorial or Codelab.
Cheat sheet Provides a condensed set of formulas, short cuts, or other hard to remember items.
FAQ Answers individual questions that users ask.
Release notes Details recent changes to a product and known problems.
Conceptual Builds a deeper understanding of the underlying technology.
Cookbook Explains how to accomplish a specific task.
API reference Details all the elements in an API.

That’s a lot of work for a developer to do.

Contact us

Schedule a call today to discuss your API documentation needs. Our writers are ready to provide the docs your developers want.

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