The threat communications company AlertMedia had a problem: developers at its customer companies were struggling with its disorganized, hard-to-use API support documentation. Its Tier 3 support team fielded so many API-related phone calls from those developers that the team didn’t have time to do its day-to-day work.
I was assigned to revamp that API documentation. In reviewing it, I saw that it was feature-oriented, not user-oriented. That is, it was oriented toward what the API could do, not what developers wanted to do with it.
I created a task-based structure for the documents, reorganizing and re-naming them according to the tasks developers wanted to accomplish. I cut out a lot of extraneous text, and wrote simple, step-by-step instructions with clear, concise tips. I also included code samples and screenshots that showed exactly how to use the API.
Now every single API document is clear, concise, and helpful. The support team fields far fewer calls from developers, and prospective customers are shown the revamped documents as an example of its strong support.