Your internal API can be a gold mine. With the right branding and a good API product approach, you can be able to sell or share to new partners your APIs. The API portal - also called developer portal - is an essential feature to open your API to the world. Here's why and how you can open access to your API.
Connectivity has advanced dramatically over the past several decades. It continues to increase at faster rates than ever before. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are at the heart of this connection.
A simple example to show the rapid change in technology adoption is the telephone. The first telephones took 39 years to reach a 40% adoption rate. Smartphones took only 10 years to reach the same adoption.
With this rapid growth and change, it is essential for customers to keep up with the pace of adopting new technology. Only a few years ago APIs were nice to have to make data available. Now they are a must-have for companies to keep up with digital transformation. Soon it will be expected that APIs are available, especially with the increase of IoT and AI.
Businesses are starting to understand the potential of open, flexible, and customized APIs to achieve their goals. 58% of Executives say the API economy is a top priority for their organization.
With the rapid increase in connection, there is also an increase in openness. It is this openness that is helping to maintain the pace of adoption. At Blobr we’ve seen how opening access to your API through a portal will increase the adoption rate. Below are 3 reasons why.
1. Build customer understanding through immersion
Historically enterprises haven’t been open with access to their systems. However, the benefits APIs are bringing to business are changing this. Still, it can be hard for people to change the way they operate.
The best way to help customers understand the benefits of APIs is to create an immersive experience. By granting them access to interact with your API they can put it into practice and see how it works in their world. Instead of endless meetings and documents, they save time by having a hands-on experience.
Consider a start-up working with Artificial Intelligence APIs focused on speech recognition. There are endless use cases for speech recognition. Imagine all the applications that are available on platforms like mobile and web that now need to be available on voice apps.
With this amount of variety, the best way for customers to understand the use cases is by putting the API into practice. Companies can play out scenarios and learn what challenges they may face. They don’t need to understand all possibilities and outcomes upfront. Instead, they can immerse themselves in the experience and learn by trying it out.
2. Create an API community
Opening your API through a portal makes it easy for clients to connect with your product. You remove any obstacles to onboarding. Once your client has access to your API they can bring their business strategy to life.
An API community is essential for innovation and creating new sources of value. An API portal can be used as a hub to coordinate ideas, projects, and strategies. The portal provides a secure and scalable place to collaborate. Blobr’s API portal provides:
- Granular controls around access,
- Autogenerated use case documentation.
Here is an example to show how open access through a portal enhances community collaboration. A Fintech company uses the Blobr API portal to share its data with Insurtech companies. From one existing API, they discovered different API products to suit their customer’s needs. The Fintech company was able to customize their API to specific use cases and even adjust the way their API was monetized.
3. Establish trust with API insight
Giving access to your API through a platform helps with distribution, performance, and secure access. More than that it builds trust in your API. One of the biggest hurdles in adopting new technology is operational and security risks. Nothing provides better reassurance than experiencing an API reliability.
Blobr’s API portal provides usage data, displayed in insightful dashboards. You can instantly see how your API is being used. Any inconsistencies are immediately investigated to ensure peace of mind around security breaches.
As an API is flexible to suit the needs of the end clients, this insight is extremely valuable for both the API and your customers.
An ESG company that provides AI-powered data opened access to their API. They offer a real-time ESG data feed that can be accessed in a variety of ways. The API is tailored to suit the needs of the end client, whether they are an NGO, asset managers, consultants etc. Through the Blobr dashboard, they can see how their API is used by their different customers and discover new ways to support them.
How Blobr’s API portal makes adoption easy
Blobr’s API portal is well adapted for both medium organizations and individual partners. Your API can be uploaded to the portal in minutes. There you have the option to fully customize the portal to align with your company’s branding and business strategy.
You can make your API available to a specific audience whether that’s one partner or the general public. Furthermore, there’s the ability to monetize your API in a way that makes sense to you and your customers.
The Blobr platform takes care of the infrastructure to create a reliable experience for your customers. It offers low latency, global access, and enhanced security.
Opening your API through a developer portal creates understanding, community, and deep trust in your product. Best of all, you can start for free when you sign up for your own Blobr account.
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