How to write better API documentation

If you're reading this, you probably already know your docs aren’t pulling their weight. Support tickets are stacking up. Engineers avoid writing them. PMs don’t know who owns what. And when someone finally says, “We need better documentation,” everyone nods, but nothing happens.

We’ve seen this play out many times. In consultation calls with founders, during onboarding audits, and in product documentation reviews. The same question keeps popping up, “How do we build better technical documentation?” After answering this question over and over, we decided to stop sending Loom videos and write down what it takes to create good documentation.

And who better to tackle it than our CEO, William, who’s worked across multiple developer tools and software development teams, advised early-stage and enterprise teams, and reviewed more docs than any sane person should (🤐).

I had to chase him across his busy calendar (you don’t want to see William’s calendar!) to make this happen. But he showed up, jumped on a video, and broke down everything.

This guide is your team’s reset button. A way to build documentation that ticks the box, improves developer experience, scales across teams, and helps your product sell itself.

We’ll walk you through a step-by-step tutorial on how to write documentation that works, show you why most teams struggle, what it’s costing you, and why this isn’t just a writing problem.

But it starts with knowing what ‘better’ documentation is.

Know what “better” documentation looks like

Before you fix something, you need to know what good looks like. Not good enough—good. And in documentation, that bar is surprisingly high.

You know you’ve hit it when users find answers without hesitation. When the docs feel like a teammate who gets the problem, and when every line helps you move forward instead of making you assemble the puzzle yourself.

Over here, we think of good documentation as doing two things well: it solves problems and builds trust. If it doesn’t do both, it’s a liability disguised as help.

As William puts it,

“People can sometimes integrate with a product, but after going through the docs, you're not certain if you want to continue using this product. Is it stable? Can you really trust it? Better documentation elicits trust, and the content enables you to integrate as fast as possible."

Great documentation goes beyond explaining the product to understanding the people using it. It shows up at the right moment, answers the right question, and moves users forward with clarity.

You’ll find this in:

Content structured around goals:

Not features. Not internal developers. Actual user flows. Docs that say “Set up payments in 3 currencies” do more than “Payments API.” Intent shapes structure.

Different layers for different roles:

A CTO skimming for security info doesn’t need to scroll through JavaScript examples. Admins don’t want to decode API endpoints. Finance teams want reports and compliance guides. Good docs don’t collapse these into one experience, but separate what’s important to each role.

Examples that mirror a real situation:

A working cURL request is nice. But what does that look like in a real integration flow? What is someone trying to build? What edge cases might they hit? Stripe and Twilio set the bar for good API documentation because they show what success looks like, complete with context and edge cases.

A system that improves over time:

Docs that work are reviewed, measured, and updated. You track dropoffs, monitor feedback, and revisit the parts that don’t land. If users are still raising tickets, something’s broken, even if it looks polished.

Tools that keep things alive:

Documentation shouldn’t get buried in Confluence. It should be searchable, versioned, linked to the product, and easy to update. If you’re not using documentation tools (like Mintlify. Yea, we love Mintlify!) that support changelogs, API reference, and page insights, you’ll spend more time fixing structure than improving documentation quality.

You’ll notice none of this is revolutionary. That’s the point. Most teams know this already, but their documentation still falls apart. Let's fix that next.

This is how to write API documentation.

We use these best practices to create API documentation for startups scaling their teams and for enterprises rewriting their developer platforms:

1. Create a map before writing a single word

Good documentation begins with structure. Most teams fail here because they organize docs around their product, not around what their users are trying to do.

Start by identifying audiences.

List everyone who interacts with your docs. For example:

• Developers integrating your SDK or API
• Internal developers needing implementation steps
• Support teams looking for troubleshooting material
• Admins configuring access and usage
• Project managers coordinating releases or onboarding flows
• Decision-makers checking security or compliance

Now flip the script: what are their tasks?

Don’t frame this by features. Frame it by use cases:

• “How do I connect our CRM to this tool?”
• “How do I create and revoke user access?”
• “How do I test a workflow before pushing live?”

These are your user intents. Your documentation must be designed around them.

Group these intents into categories.

These become your top-level structure. Think:

• Getting Started
• Authentication & Access
• Developer Integration
• Admin Setup
• Reporting & Usage
• Troubleshooting

Without intent-based mapping, documentation becomes a content dump. Users can’t find what they need. Teams don’t know where to put new docs. Growth breaks structure.

2. Set up a documentation system, not a place to write

Writing in Notion and copying to Confluence is a guaranteed way to break documentation over time. You need a system—something with version control, reviewable, and tied to product changes.

Here’s what that looks like:

• A docs/ folder in your codebase (Markdown-based)
• Pull request-based editing and reviews
• Deployment through your CI/CD pipeline
• Clear contribution workflow (who edits, who reviews, who merges)

Add feedback and measurement layers:

• Page-level analytics to see usage
• Feedback buttons for “Was this helpful?”
• Versioning or changelog references

Documentation isn’t helpful if it’s not up-to-date or if no one knows how to update it. Docs should be treated like code (with ownership, visibility, and feedback loops).

3. Write for discovery, not consumption

Users don’t read docs front-to-back. They scan. They search. They land on a page, look for answers, and bounce if they don’t find what they need fast.

So write docs like they’ll be searched.

• Page titles must describe an explicit action:

✅ “Send email when user signs up”

❌ “Email Setup”

• Use descriptive subheadings so readers can skim:

✅ “Step 2: Authenticate the webhook”

❌ “More on Auth”

• Internal search must be typo-tolerant and fast (use Algolia or Typesense)
• Use analytics to find common exit pages. If users leave without action, rewrite the page or change the title.

Unreadable documentation often isn’t about content, but how users land, where they go next, and whether they find what they came for. Discovery is 80% of the battle.

4. Separate content by user role

One-size-fits-all documentation confuses more than it clarifies. As we mentioned earlier, Admins don’t care about API rate limits. Developers don’t need invoice walkthroughs. Split your content accordingly.

Three typical documentation roles:

• Developers need: SDKs, authentication, rate limits, API reference, walkthroughs, and code samples
• Admins need: SSO setup, permissions, user provisioning, and audit logs
• Business users need: billing, reporting, product overviews, feature comparisons

Organize by intent, then label clearly. You don’t need three separate doc sites. You need a well-organized one with clear signposting for who each page is for.

Docs that don’t address the right mental models won’t work. And when they fail, users default to pinging support or skipping features.

5. Connect your docs to product and support workflows

Documentation must reflect real questions and real product changes, not tribal knowledge.

Here’s how to make that happen:

• Support teams log repeat questions and route them to a doc backlog
• Product releases include a checklist: does this feature need new docs?
• Changelogs link directly to updated documentation.
• Create a triage rhythm where unanswered support questions get converted into new doc tasks.

Most documentation goes stale, and building reactive loops keeps docs aligned with product evolution.

6. Keep documentation alive

Writing docs is one thing. Keeping them accurate, discoverable, and usable over time is another. Here’s how to do it sustainably.

Sustainability checklist:

• Assign clear ownership per doc section or category (ideally to a technical writer or subject-matter expert)
• Set quarterly reviews for top-visited pages
• Use analytics to trigger reviews (bounce rates, dropoffs)
• Create a docs changelog alongside your product changelog
• Use your documentation internally and fix what breaks

You’ll break trust faster with old docs. If users hit outdated steps, you’ve lost them, and they might not try again next time. That’s costly.

What poor documentation is costing you

William captured this succinctly:

“You're losing money when users aren’t being upsold through your documentation. Sometimes up to two times the revenue, especially when your product has multiple add-ons. Your docs might be the reason they’re not finding those features. Instead, you’re spending on account executives to educate users and push upgrades when your documentation should already be doing some of that work.”

Sometimes the signs are already there.

Your team avoids linking to the docs during demos. Support hires are growing faster than your product. Engineers are pasting the same Slack or Discord replies again and again. Your changelog is more useful than the actual docs.

These are signs your documentation has stopped working, and when it does, it breaks quietly. You might not get to see a red dashboard. Instead, you get…

• Repetitive support tickets that burn out your team
• New developers dropping off before they activate
• Customers who never discover your most valuable features
• Internal time wasted explaining the same things over and over.

Here's what those symptoms look like, what they're costing you, and how they affect the metrics you care about:

Most teams don’t quantify these losses because they’re fragmented. But they show up in churn, CAC, support costs, and delayed launches. It adds up fast…and it’s avoidable.

Learn from people building great docs.

By now, you know what better documentation looks like. You’ve seen how poor documentation quietly piles up costs, slows your team down, and erodes user trust. You’ve walked through what a sound system looks like, and what stops most teams from getting there.

But if you’re still unsure how to pull all of this together or need a partner who’s done it before, we'd love to help.

To quote William:

“The most quantifiable reason people come to us is support. They are overwhelmed. They spend so much time on docs rather than building a great product.”

AI Insurance, Flutterwave, and GBG found that restructuring their documentation with us helped cut support tickets and build docs their teams could trust.

To support more teams, we partnered to launch a joint Mintlify documentation service built for SaaS teams. We invite you to explore if you’re creating or migrating your docs.

If you’re curious about how AI fits into documentation, we also hosted a session with Mintlify on how AI reshapes technical documentation. It’s worth watching if you’re trying to scale docs without losing accuracy.

Yeap, better documentation is possible. And it’s a lot closer than you think.