In this page
The Benefits
The Google method for developer documentation that drives adoption
Typical Projects
Case studies
DevRel writing services
How to contact us
Ready to turn your API into a developer magnet with documentation that drives adoption?
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.
We’ve helped dozens of companies increase API adoption and reduce API support tickets through better documentation.
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.
No more excuses
The Benefits
Get production-ready API docs in weeks rather than months
Writing documentation in-house can be a slow and painful business.
Your developers are pulled away from building features to explain endpoints they wrote six months ago. Your product managers are buried in Jira tickets. Your DevRel team is stretched thin between conference talks and Stack Overflow questions.
Meanwhile, your API documentation sits half-finished, outdated, or scattered across wikis, Slack threads, and someone’s local README file.
Four hidden costs of DIY documentation
- Your senior developers spend 15-20 hours per week on documentation instead of shipping code. At their billing rate, that’s thousands per week lost to a task they actively avoid.
- What should take 4-6 weeks stretches into 4-6 months as documentation becomes the bottleneck in every API release.
- Poor documentation means the same integration questions flood your support channels. Your team answers the same questions repeatedly instead of building new features.
- While you’re still “working on the docs,” potential customers evaluate competitors with polished developer portals and move on.
Reduce support costs by enabling developer self-service
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.
Our getting started guides and tutorials speed up developer onboarding.
Sleep better knowing your API documentation won’t embarrass you in front of developers
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.
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.
The Google Method for Developer Documentation That Drives Adoption
In our research of best API documentation practices, we discovered Google’s development team’s own recommendations for creating effective documentation. To learn about this, and some real-world examples, use the form below:
What If Documentation Wasn't the Bottleneck?
Imagine launching your API with complete, polished documentation on day one. No apologetic “docs coming soon” messages. No embarrassing gaps that make developers question your professionalism.
Our process can get you there in weeks
Here’s a typical workflow:
Week 1-2: We analyse your API, interview your team, and map out the developer journey. You provide API access and a few hours of SME time.
Week 3-4: We write comprehensive reference docs, getting started guides, and integration tutorials. Your team reviews drafts and provides feedback.
Week 5-6: We refine based on your input, add code samples in multiple languages, and deliver publication-ready content for your developer portal.
In some situations, we collaborate with your subject-matter experts (SMEs) to transform raw information (whether from interviews, notes, or other sources) into polished, professional content.
We apply our expertise in on organising and structuring the content to ensure a logical flow, making sure the final document serves its intended purpose.
While your SME remains responsible for accuracy, they can stay focused on their core responsibilities, trusting us to deliver a high-quality result. Minimal but essential communication between our team and your SME ensures success and smooth collaboration.
Where it’s required, we carry out more in-depth revisions. That can include re-structuring and rewriting parts to enhance clarity, accuracy, and readability.
The difference speed makes
When Tisane Labs worked with us to overhaul their API documentation, they went from docs spread across multiple locations to a consolidated, professional developer portal in under two months.
A European financial organisation reduced their API onboarding friction by consolidating multiple APIs into clear integration paths (something their internal team had been trying to accomplish for over a year).
Why we’re faster (without cutting corners)
We do this every day
Your team writes documentation occasionally between other priorities. We write API documentation full-time and have refined frameworks that ensure nothing gets missed.
Short learning curve
Your developers won’t spend weeks figuring out best practices for API documentation structure, OpenAPI specs, or developer portal information architecture. We already know what works.
Dedicated focus
When documentation is our only job, it doesn’t get deprioritised for “urgent” feature requests or production incidents.
A battle-tested approach
We’ve documented dozens of APIs across fintech, embedded systems, SaaS platforms, and more. We know what developers expect and how to deliver it.
Your team stays focused on what they do best
Your developers build great APIs. Let us handle explaining them.
You provide the technical expertise.
We provide the documentation expertise.
Together, we get your API to market faster with docs that drive adoption instead of creating support tickets.
Three Types of Organisations We Help
Companies launching new APIs or API updates
You’re releasing a new API or a major update, and you need clear, thorough documentation to onboard developers and ensure seamless adoption.
We’ll create complete documentation that covers what the API does, when and why to use it, and detailed integration guides to get developers up and running quickly.
Organisations with outdated or fragmented developer documentation
You have outdated, scattered, or hard-to-navigate developer docs, and it’s having an effect on the number of developers using the API (and its success).
We’ll consolidate and modernise your documentation, creating a centralised, user-friendly resource that makes it easy for developers to find what they need.
Businesses looking to reduce support calls and speed up adoption
Inadequate documentation often leads to increased support inquiries and slows API adoption. Our documentation solutions are designed to answer developers’ questions. This minimises the need for manual support, so you can drive faster, smoother onboarding.
No matter your documentation challenges, our team has the expertise to craft compelling, easy-to-use materials that maximise developer engagement and success with your API.
DevRel Writing Services
Content that builds developer communities and drives API adoption
While API docs explain how something works, DevRel content shows why developers should care.
Great APIs need more than just reference documentation.
They need content that inspires, educates, and builds lasting relationships with your developer community.
Our DevRel writing services bridge the gap between technical accuracy and developer engagement:
- Compelling narratives around your technology that motivate developers to try, adopt, and advocate for your APIs.
- Explainer videos
- Tutorials and cookbooks
Reverse-engineering successful developer engagement strategies
Are there organisations whose DevRel strategies you like and admire? We can use AI to decode those content strategies and adapt them to your unique context and goals.
Why technical writers excel at DevRel content
- They understand the technology deeply enough to create content that passes the developer authenticity test.
- They know how developers consume information and can create content that fits naturally into their research and implementation workflows. Our technical writers create authentic content that builds credibility within developer communities.
- They excel at making complex technical concepts accessible without dumbing them down, exactly what DevRel content requires.
Whether you’re launching a new API, building a developer community, or looking to increase adoption of existing tools, our DevRel writing services help you create content that developers trust, share, and act upon.
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:
- Understand the product and services
- Setup the product and services
- Use the product and services to create apps, call an API, publish APIs, etc
- Look up reference information when developing
- 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:
- Discover the APIs
- Explain what the APIs do
- Explain the benefits of using the APIs
- Register to use the APIs
- Get subscription keys
- Use the APIs
- Understand the endpoints and code samples
- Try out the API sandbox
- Start their integration with the live system
- 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.
Helping Tisane Labs transform their developer documentation
Tisane Labs is company that provides a natural language understanding application with a focus on abusive content, and the related legal and regulatory requirements. The system, Tisane, detects cyberbullying, personal attacks, hate speech, sexual advances, obfuscated profanities, criminal activity, and more.
So far we’ve done two projects, and the experience is more or less according to my expectations. The first project was to write several small manuals for several web applications. The second one involved overhauling all our API documentation and merging it with assorted bits and pieces everywhere.
Vadim Berman, CEO, Tisane Labs
If you want to learn more about how we helped Tisane Labs refine their developer documentation, you can read the full story here: Refining Tisane’s developer documentation.
Contact Us
Schedule a call today to discuss your API documentation needs. Our writers are ready to provide the docs your developers want.
Email:
info@cherryleaf.com
You also can talk to us via Microsoft Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting, or another video conferencing platform of your choice. Email us if you’d like to arrange a date and time for a video call.