Coalition Technologies

Partner Spotlight

1. What sets you apart from other digital agencies? What would you say are your areas of expertise? Focus on any particular verticals?

Coalition Technologies sets itself apart from other agencies in a number of ways. Most noteworthy are our scale, breadth of expertise, and shared alignment with client objectives. In the past 15 years, Coalition has grown to have over 250 full time team members, and works with a sizable group of content creators on top of that. We have experts in design, UI/UX, development, SEO, PPC (search and social), social media, email, SMS, and more. Combined, we have thousands of years of experience in our respective areas of expertise. Additionally, Coalition developed a unique way of creating mutual incentives for individual team members that help encourage them to meet client objectives. 

We’re best known for our work with higher complexity ecommerce brands, and work with clients in a wide range of verticals. 

2. Why do you think product discovery is important to your client base?

Product discovery is important to our client base because it enhances customer engagement and satisfaction by making it easier for users to find what they’re looking for, which can lead to increased sales and higher average order values. 

Effective discovery tools, like personalized recommendations and intuitive search functions, not only improve the shopping experience but also reduce bounce rates and foster customer loyalty. Additionally, they provide valuable insights for which products are in high demand, and can even help identify areas of missed revenue. Overall, product discovery is important to our client base because having a weak product discovery system leaves revenue on the table.

3. Why do you see the need for clients to go headless?

Clients tend to need or want to go headless usually for a few different reasons:

• Performance: Performance is a big factor. They want to be able to scale and grow their business without worrying about the performance of their website.ers below.

• Flexibility and Customization: They want more flexibility and customization than a SaaS solution like native Shopify or BigCommerce offers. This allows them to future-proof their business with a tech stack that has the potential to scale and grow. Businesses often find certain platforms limiting in one way but strong in another. For example, Shopify is great for e-commerce but not the strongest for blogging. With a headless approach, they can mix and match different content management systems to power different components of their site, getting the best of both worlds.

4. What types of clients go more down this route?

Coalition’s clients that opt to go headless do so because they find that traditional CMS experiences lack the full suite of features or presentation flexibility that they desire. The end stage headless solutions we build can offer distinctive takes on ecommerce experiences, hybridize marketing and transactional needs, and more. 

5. What are the pros and cons of going headless?

Pros:

• Customization: Greater flexibility in designing and providing the user experiences they want their users to have when using their site.
• Scalability: Easier to scale and manage large amounts of content and traffic.
• Performance: Faster load times and better overall performance due to the decoupling of the front end and back end.
• Security: Reduced attack surface as the front end and back end are separated.

Cons:

• Costs: This usually has much higher upfront costs due to the need for a lot of custom development, even when using a pre-existing CMS. Custom functionality often needs to be made from scratch. It also has much higher ongoing costs because, if you move away from a native SaaS solution such as Shopify or BigCommerce, you’ll need to handle maintenance, security hardening, and sometimes even content changes, which may require developer involvement.
• Complexity at Scale: Making a site work at high traffic levels takes a lot of work. You need to optimize every single request to be as lean as possible. The importance of architecting the build is heightened, as everything needs to be thoroughly planned and considered.

6. Why did you decide to partner with Klevu?

We chose to partner with Klevu because it stands out among many tools for its advanced AI and product discovery capabilities. No two users will behave the same, so Klevu’s power to dynamically personalize search results based on user behavior can’t be overstressed. Klevu also integrates with all the major e-commerce platforms meaning all of our clients can easily integrate it into their tech stack. All of that combined with the excellent support from the Klevu team for any inquiries has made it an easy choice to back Klevu as our partner.

7. Let’s talk seasonal business. How are you preparing your clients for Black Friday and the upcoming holidays?

We strive to get our businesses to prepare early! Starting to back out ideas and planning for the Black Friday / Cyber Monday (BF/CM) stretch should really begin in Quarter 2. Some basic steps and areas we work with our brands on include:

• Identifying what has worked for our brands (or not worked in the past) during the BF/CM season.
• Identifying goals we’re aiming to hit during the holiday season.
• Beginning to consider promotions/incentives our brands feel comfortable committing to during the BF/CM season.
• Considering the marketing mix – what disciplines and strategies inside of those disciplines do you most want to commit to during the holiday season.
• Identifying a budget split amongst the disciplines we’ll be utilizing during the holiday season. 
• Beginning base-level content / graphic creation – this could include landing pages, graphics, email content, social media posts, etc. that we will want to utilize for the holiday season. It’s never too late to jump on top of creating what we’ll need for the season.
• Determining steps for the deployment of our strategies. 
• Identifying site and brand enhancements to implement/execute ahead of Q4 to ensure the brand is well-prepared to deliver outstanding shopping experiences during the peak season.
• Stress-testing sites to find friction points and potential hurdles to conversion and implementing solutions ahead of Q4 to provide plenty of time to measure the impact before peak. 

We always tell our brands NOT to wait until the last minute. Review where you have been, where you want to be, and formulate a plan to get there early on. 

8. What are some of the biggest changes/trends that you currently see happening within e-commerce?

One of the biggest trends we’ve seen take hold (especially during the 2020 holiday season) was the starting of promotions earlier and earlier in the holiday season. We saw many brands starting to drip really interesting offers and promotions in August and September, which seemed to light the way for the bigger promotional rollouts that hit during the BF/CM stretch. We are seeing this happening more and more. 

We’re also of course seeing the impact of interactive shopping experiences like TikTok working their way across the e-commerce landscape. It’s difficult to understate the impact and effectiveness that interactive experiences like on-site live selling can deliver for a brand. Ensuring brands have well-optimized shops on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok is also becoming more and more important as users want brands to meet them where they already are. Streamlining the journey from watching a new viral video to buying the star product featured in that post resonates with users and improves outcomes for our brands.

9. What are some of the most overlooked elements of a website that you find to be of importance?

Right now everything is about price for consumers, as is where consumers go to shop. Many consumers are finding out about brands via social media channels and interacting with their favorite influencers to find out about new brands and products. The idea of ‘dupes’ or products that rival bigger brand name products (that are often higher in cost) has been largely influential for consumers who want fashion or other higher-end items for less. As consumers work to spend less during the holiday season, we will probably continue to see cheaper option products really becoming purchase favorites during the season. 

Learn more about Coalition Technologies HERE.