API Product Metrics are essential for evaluating the success and performance of an API product. These metrics provide insights into user behavior and help in optimizing the API’s performance. This article discusses the top API product metrics and their importance in API management.
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What are API Product Metrics?
API Product Metrics are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to evaluate the success and performance of an API product. These metrics provide insights into how well the API is meeting the needs of its users and how effectively it is being used. Monitoring API product metrics helps API providers understand user behavior, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions to optimize the API’s performance and user experience.
What Are The Top API Product Metrics?
Request Per Minute (RPM)
Request Per Minute is a performance parameter that measures the number of requests your API can process per minute. RPM is the average number of requests, though this might vary.
Average And Maximum Latency
P1 latency, more popularly known as elapsed time, is a crucial indicator of how customers are treated. This KPI has specific measures (such as networking times, server processes, and upload and download speeds) to measure the performance of APIs and, by extension, the programs that depend on them.
Errors Per Minute
It’s crucial to keep track of how frequently your APIs fail since it’s not an issue of if but when. Knowing whether the API fails helps you choose a course of proper action. For example, you can either switch service providers or create a specific fallback situation.
CPU And Memory Usage
An overcrowded server, due to high CPU use, may have severe bottlenecks. Understanding how much memory is being used will help you evaluate resource consumption. Based on these two, you may choose between upgrading or downgrading.
Uptime
Availability or uptime is the industry standard for determining the availability of a service. Uptime is typically a part of the SLA (Service Level Agreement), which is a common component of enterprise agreements.
There is minimal to no room for mistakes for software vendors under many business SLAs. To deliver this level of service, a provider’s upstream APIs must be properly working, which requires API monitoring and analytics to maintain performance and immediately address any issues.
Time To First Hello World
Since the first expression you write in a new programming language almost always produces the word “hello world,” TTFHW will be relatively evident to the majority of developers. Time to first hello world in this situation refers to how long it takes a user to complete their first API transaction after arriving at your website.
API Calls Per Business Transaction
The number of calls made for each transaction must be kept to a minimum, even though more is better for many goods and company KPIs. This measurement reflects the API’s development process precisely. If a new user makes three different calls to combine the data, the API might not have the necessary endpoints accessible. When building an API, it’s essential to take the customer’s goals or a business transaction into account in addition to functionality and endpoints.
API Retention
To establish whether an API can enhance the performance of an application, product engineers use the API retention method. Higher retention APIs have a better chance of meeting demand without seeing any churn.
Top Customers By API Usage
Tracking the top API users for any company with a B2B focus can help you better understand how your API is used and where there are extra chances. These KPIs often generate more income and organic referrals when compared to other performance indicators.
Examine how your customers use API requests to better comprehend the precise endpoints.
API Usage Growth
Unique clients and API usage are the most crucial measures for assessing API adoption. An API should not only be free of errors but also continuously improve. When measuring API usage, instead of requests per minute, you can find genuine patterns over longer periods, such as days or months.
Unique API Consumers
During the API’s growth phase, this performance indicator displays the general condition of customer acquisition and growth. To assess the overall health of the product, you can use a singular customer account of an API as a unique API metric.
SDK And Version Adoption
Various API platform teams maintain many SDKs and connectors. More significant features may be selectively rolled out to your most well-liked SDKs, while less significant features may be selectively rolled out to less well-liked SDKs. Measuring the API or SDK version is another important consideration when considering whether to deprecate specific endpoints and features. You wouldn’t want to phase out the endpoint that your biggest paying client uses without first asking them why they use it.
Why Should You Use APIs From APILayer?
Although managing API metrics can be challenging, firms are embracing and even re-engineering API use metrics to satisfy customer expectations as infrastructure consumption rises. The best programming interfaces to date all emphasize their users, which is a trait common to all of them.
Anyone who develops and makes use of APIs must monitor the relevant API metrics. APILayer is a marketplace for APIs made by businesses, independent software contractors, and the APILayer team. Before we can even see it, the APIs go through a thorough inspection and have an on-demand SLA.
If interested, Sign Up with APILayer. It’s FREE.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What are common API metrics?
Request Per Minute (RPM), Average and Maximum Latency, Errors Per Minute, API usage growth, Uptime, CPU and Memory usage, Unique API Consumers, Top Customers by API usage, and API retention.
Q. What are the KPIs for APIs?
Setting and tracking KPIs gives IT executives, developers, and program managers a standardized point of reference for your APIs’ performance.
Q. How do you measure the success of an API?
You can measure the success of API by monitoring the traffic it generates and amount of apps and developers who use it. Furthermore, monitoring the quality of service and the revenue generated by third-party services that use the API can help to measure success.
Q. What is the SLA for API?
A Service-Level Agreement (SLA) outlines the products or services to supply and the metrics by which the process’ efficacy is reviewed and approved. This establishes expectations between the service provider and the client.
Q. How do I monitor API services?
You can use pre-made API monitoring tools, which increases the security of your system.
