How Ecwid by Lightspeed transformed their e-commerce API documentation with GitBook
Ecwid by Lightspeed is a leading e-commerce platform serving thousands of merchants worldwide. With over 115 API endpoints and hundreds of fields per endpoint, their API documentation is crucial for supporting external developers who integrate with their platform.
But their previous documentation platform wasn’t keeping up. Outdated information, poor writing tools, and a lack of structured organization were creating friction for both their team and their developer community.
We spoke with Artem Kudriashov, who led Ecwid by Lightspeed’s docs transformation, to learn how GitBook solved their complex API documentation challenges.
The challenge: Managing massive API documentation at scale
For years, Ecwid by Lightspeed’s API documentation was managed by their API support team — a dedicated customer support group for external developers integrating with their platform. While this team understood developer needs, they lacked a proper process for receiving updates when the development team made API changes.
“There was no established process for delivering changes that affect our public API from our developer team. So there was always something wrong with the documentation. We didn’t really know what was wrong — we just knew it when someone came and told us, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work’ or ‘This works not like it’s described in the docs.’”
Recognizing this fundamental issue, Artem took on the challenge of establishing a proper documentation workflow. But he quickly discovered a second major problem: their platform, ReadMe, simply couldn’t handle the complexity of documenting 115 endpoints with 200+ fields each.
“API documentation is not just described in points — you want to give some guides to people, you want to give some use cases. With an enormous API like ours, it’s just a huge amount of information that you need to structure, and it’s hard to easily understand what is what.”
The solution: GitBook’s comprehensive structuring capabilities
When evaluating new platforms, GitBook immediately stood out for its powerful organizational features and intuitive interface.
“GitBook just nailed it 10 out of 10 with the features we need the most — features that ReadMe didn’t have. The docs structure with multiple spaces was perfect — each space has its own dedicated part of the URL and its own link in the header, and when you click it, the structure on the site is unique to that space.”
This multi-level organization was exactly what Ecwid by Lightspeed needed to handle their complex documentation structure. They could organize content by articles, group articles into sections, group sections into larger categories, and separate major topics into distinct spaces — all while maintaining clear navigation.
Exceptional support and continuous improvement
Beyond the product features, the team was impressed by GitBook’s customer support and commitment to addressing user feedback.
“It’s just cool that GitBook keeps on improving things, and the communication is absolutely perfect… I just like everything about GitBook right now.”
The team particularly appreciated GitBook’s proactive communication approach:
“I like that the GitBook team keep us informed when they release new features — they actually push that information to us, so I'm aware of the latest features and fixes.”
Looking ahead: OpenAPI integration and streamlined workflows
With their documentation now properly structured in GitBook, Ecwid by Lightspeed is preparing for the next phase: migrating to OpenAPI format with GitBook’s native OpenAPI support. This will allow the team to consolidate multiple endpoint pages into comprehensive, individual pages with clear visual indicators for different HTTP methods.
“With GitBook’s OpenAPI support, we’ll be able to further streamline our documentation by consolidating related endpoints onto single pages, each clearly distinguished by visual indicators.”
For Ecwid by Lightspeed, GitBook has provided the foundation for scalable, well-organized API documentation that serves both their internal team and their extensive developer community.
Ready to transform your API documentation like Ecwid by Lightspeed? Get started with GitBook for free or reach out to our team to see how GitBook’s powerful organization tools can handle even the most complex documentation needs.
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