Launching FastSpring’s developer portal

TECHNICAL WRITING & PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Problem

Although a large portion of FastSpring’s users were developers integrating the software in their websites, FastSpring had no user-facing resources for them. This caused significant strains on customer retention and customer-facing teams.

How I addressed it

In order to reduce the strain on colleagues and customers, I:

  • Gathered qualitative and quantitative data to identify what resources developers needed 

  • Proposed launching a dev center to executives while outlining pain points it would address and supporting data

  • Developed a 6-month plan to adopt a content management system and build out developer documentation

  • Lead the cross-functional implementation of the dev center while owning the development of all new content

The outputs:

References included comprehensive parameters and interactive elements so developers could test the APIs

Each category contained an overview page explaining how associated endpoints worked and how to use associated parameters

Modernized API reference

Working with engineers, I outlined a plan to launch an automated API reference in accordance to user feedback and adopt the docs-as-code maintenance methodology. Following implementation, I led biweekly meetings to continuously expand the API reference, including 6 new endpoints for a newly acquired company.

Net-new JavaScript library documentation

After researching internal resources, I scoped and produced the first comprehensive documentation of FastSpring’s JavaScript library.

The information architecture that I developed continues to be used by FastSpring today.

Re-vamped webhook guides

I restructured inherited webhook content to increase discoverability and added JSON code samples to make the resources more comprehensive. As a result, the traffic on these pages skyrocketed.

Lasting impacts:

  • Adopted by 5,000 developers

    This allowed for long-term investment in expanding the developer center

  • Reduced support ticket volume

    The reduced volume also improved support ticket wait times and customer ratings

  • Long-lasting content strategy

    The information architecture that I developed remains used by the technical writing team