API Reference Overhaul
Rewrote a legacy REST API reference for a payments platform, reducing average time-to-first-call for new integrators from 4 hours to under 45 minutes.
- Organization
- Placeholder Client A
- Date
- September 2024
- Type
- API docs OpenAPI Developer experience
Context
The payments platform had grown organically over five years. The API reference was a mix of auto-generated Swagger output and hand-written Confluence pages, with no consistent structure or examples.
Challenge
Integrating developers were opening support tickets at a high rate during their first week. Exit surveys pointed to unclear authentication docs and missing error-handling guidance as the top pain points.
Approach
Audited all 47 endpoints against support ticket themes. Established a consistent template per endpoint: purpose, request/response schema, code examples in three languages, and a dedicated errors section. Worked with the backend team to surface undocumented edge cases.
Outcome
Time-to-first-successful-call dropped from ~4 hours to under 45 minutes in usability testing. Support tickets from new integrators fell 60% in the first quarter after launch.