AT&T Developer Portal

• Heuristic & Competitive Analyses
• Requirements Gathering
• User Journeys
• Information Architecture & Wireframes
• Usability Testing 
• Usability Design

In the initial phases of the AT&T DevPortal, senior leadership at AT&T wanted to expose AT&T APIs to the developer community in a catalog format. The assumption was that developers wanted to peruse a deep catalog of developer resources to enhance their own apps. However, the reality was quite different. Through a heuristic evaluation, site metrics and usability testing with several developers, we found that the vast majority of developers simply wanted easy access to one tool, not many.

Additionally, leadership wanted to monetize the API platform under the assumption that for a reasonable entry-price, a developer would receive a broad catalog of APIs for a fraction of the price from other competitor offerings. As mentioned before, developers did not have a need for numerous APIs but instead were seeking a solution for a specific need. To compound this issue, AT&T required developers to pay upfront for the API catalog rather than providing a free trial  or free access limited version of the APIs. Through competitive analysis, we determined that a free access version of the site–within the context of a specific product–would vastly improve our traction with developer use.

Summary 

Free Access – Rather than hide documentation or require payment upfront, provide free access levels for testing purposes and documentation scrutiny.

Fulfill Primary Use Cases – Since the vast majority of developers use only one of the 20 AT&T APIs, provide simplified experiences for a developer to use a single API.

Simplify – Through competitive analysis, developer interviews and content standardization, create a simplified content structure that answers the developers top questions: what are the scope and features available for this API? What methods are used to scrutinize the API? Do you have quick start guides for me to test the API?

As a result, we developed a micro-site approach where we setup campaigns that highlighted individual APIs, with a simplified signup flow that kept the developer focused on their desired API rather than introducing confusion with other tools. Additionally, signup was vastly improved by limiting the amount of information required to setup an account via a free access flow to the platform. This provided developers with free, fast, easy access to the API platform while meeting their primary need for testing the specific functions of the API they selected.

At the end of the flow, the developer was informed that their free signup also gave them access to other tools but only AFTER they had successfully registered for the product they had expressed interest. We immediately saw a 20% increase in conversion without additional Ad spend, saving thousands in revenue while offering a much improved user experience.

This micro-site approach also provided other key benefits. With focus on individual products rather than a vast catalog, each API could be easier managed, improved and iterated through A/B split testing and ad spends for each of the APIs.

Summary 

Personalize and Scale – By focusing on single API discovery, signup and use flows, each product has a simplified and standardized experience and also allows for future scale-ability as APIs are added to the product catalog.

In late 2018 as more APIs have been retired from the site, the Developer Portal has become stale. As a result, I reached out to developers via a usability interview and survey to learn what new topics and technologies are on their mind when thinking of AT&T.

Through hour-long interviews with key AT&T Business and Developer partners, we asked a series of questions to learn what type of content related to AT&T would be helpful. In addition to our qualitative interview responses, we sent a survey with over 400 developer responses that provided additional quantitative data.

From these results, we formulated the basis for a content roadmap and updated information architecture that would enable us to continue to offer APIs while serving topical information to our audience. The updated site results in an elegant design refresh that minimally impacted our current API offerings while transitioning to a more modern style guide that caters to a content-centered presence.  

Summary 

• Create content that answers the question: Why should I care about 5G?
• A market strategy that leverages existing products and news sources.
• Avoid pitfalls of content that is too broad, confusing or not part of core competency.
• Update site with new style guide while keeping navigation and existing flows in-tact for legacy API users.