Book Image

API Analytics for Product Managers

By : Deepa Goyal
Book Image

API Analytics for Product Managers

By: Deepa Goyal

Overview of this book

APIs are crucial in the modern market as they allow faster innovation. But have you ever considered your APIs as products for revenue generation? API Analytics for Product Managers takes you through the benefits of efficient researching, strategizing, marketing, and continuously measuring the effectiveness of your APIs to help grow both B2B and B2C SaaS companies. Once you've been introduced to the concept of an API as a product, this fast-paced guide will show you how to establish metrics for activation, retention, engagement, and usage of your API products, as well as metrics to measure the reach and effectiveness of documentation—an often-overlooked aspect of development. Of course, it's not all about the product—as any good product manager knows; you need to understand your customers’ needs, expectations, and satisfaction too. Once you've gathered your data, you’ll need to be able to derive actionable insights from it. This is where the book covers the advanced concepts of leading and lagging metrics, removing bias from the metric-setting process, and bringing metrics together to establish long- and short-term goals. By the end of this book, you'll be perfectly placed to apply product management methodologies to the building and scaling of revenue-generating APIs.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
21
The API Analytics Cheat Sheet

Defining the right product metrics

The importance of prioritizing certain product metrics over others is to narrow the focus and ensure that the product team focuses on the most important and relevant metrics. This helps avoid being overwhelmed by data and ensures that the team makes informed decisions based on the most impactful metrics.

In his book, The Lean Startup (https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898), Eric Ries shares three criteria for good product metrics, which are shown in the following figure:

Figure 14.2 – Eric Ries’ three criteria for good product metrics

Figure 14.2 – Eric Ries’ three criteria for good product metrics

These criteria can also be applied to APIs to ensure that the metrics used are useful, relevant, and aligned with the overall business strategy:

  • Actionability: Good product metrics for APIs should inform and guide the product team’s decision-making process. For example, data on API response times and error rates...