Today, all businesses are moving towards a digital transformation. And an Application Programming Interface strategy makes an important component of digital transformation. Businesses are increasingly understanding the importance of APIs and many of them already have well-defined API strategies.
Tips to Develop a Winning API Product Strategy
API programs can help generate significant revenue for businesses but only working with APIs will not help to do so. The API strategy needs to be well-defined and developed to gain success. Here are some tips to have a properly optimized API strategy.
Consider How an API Strategy Can Help Your Business
Going for an API program just because other businesses are doing it to generate revenue will not do you any good. You need to understand how the API strategy can help your business. Analyze how the strategy can help the core development processes of your product or service and how the APIs can complement your business. Consider if developing an API strategy can help you make better networking with partners, meet demands from the customers or build a stronger mobility ecosystem.
Do Cost-Revenue Analysis
APIs are important components for business strategies but do not hold any intrinsic value or serve as technical solutions. Therefore, it is best to estimate your net returns when developing and implementing an API strategy. Based on the resources required and systems engaged to build the APIs, calculate the overall costs and compare them with the revenue expected due to innovations by the strategy. Your revenue must always be significantly higher than the costs needed to build APIs.
Have Clarity on Everyone’s Role in an API Program
Creating an API strategy on paper and actually implementing it are two very different things. Having the right leaders for implementing the strategy is crucial to the success of the program. One of the biggest reasons for the failure of an API program is not putting the right people in charge of the API management. Enterprise architects should be the lead managers of the program and oversee the development, changes and deployment of APIs. Product managers should act as a communication channel between the API developers and customers. API architecture should be maintained by system administrators of the company.
Select the Right API Design Style
Having the right API strategy can help you increase revenue but choosing the wrong API design model can make things complicated. Therefore, it is essential to carefully choose the right API design style for your needs. You can go for a True Rest design model, a Pragmatic REST model or a Web Service Tunneling model depending on your business goals and visions for API.
Also read: The Metaverse: More Than Just a Gaming Trend
Consider the Overall Quality
An improperly performing API can cause more trouble for your business. It can cause production glitches, and faulty marketing and you can even lose your external customers and developers. Your APIs must be scalable to high huge amounts of network requests and must be easy to plug into multiple systems at the same time. It is also important to take care of the fault tolerance of the KPI.
