GENE

GENE is the Magento agency Making Ecommerce Better

We offer ecommerce brands all the ecommerce bits they need: from Strategy and Data to Design, Development and DevOps on the Adobe Commerce Platform.

What makes our clients happy? We think like business owners, making decisions for the long term. We work with radical collaboration as one team, allowing ideas to come from every discipline and giving clients reassuring transparency. And finally, we offer unlimited support, so that your website is up and running whatever the weather.

Ah! And we speak plain English, don’t jump on fads, prefer foundations to trends and leave the metaverse to Zucky.

Partner Spotlight Interview

As part of our Partner Spotlight Series, we caught up with Xabier Izaguirre, Marketing Director at Gene. Xabier gives advice to those looking to migrate to Magento, tells us why product discovery is so important to their clients, and what sets them apart from other agencies.

1. Tell us about Gene

We are the Adobe Commerce agency with a simple mission: Making Ecommerce Better. 

We started 10 years ago to help merchants make more of Adobe Commerce, and that’s what we still do today. 

2. What sets you apart from other digital agencies? 

Good question – we’ve thought about this extensively. 

First, we put business before technology. Our ecommerce design and development work is designed to deliver measurable outcomes for our clients. Our roadmaps are based on research to estimate the impact of implementations, and prioritised accordingly. In other words, we don’t just build the things right, we also pick the right things to build.  

Secondly, we think like owners. We constantly ask everybody if “they would do it if it was their own business”. To encourage this mindset, we have an innovation arm to GENE (called GENE Brainwaves) where team members can pitch ideas and get time to work on their own products. 

Thirdly, we work in radically collaborative ways. Strategists, designers, developers and devOps work together and have meaningful contributions to the roadmap and the direction of travel. We’ve learnt that this helps us move faster, be more transparent and improve everyone’s commitments ot the output. No more forgetting about the back-end dev until the last minute for them to tell you that a beautiful design can’t be implemented. 

Lastly – and our clients love this: our support is unlimited. Rather than being constrained by “sets of hours” and having spreadsheets tellings us when we support a client or not, we keep it simple. We support our clients without limits with the right level of agreement. 

3. What would you say to someone looking to migrate to Magento?

That will depend on where they’re looking to migrate from, and who are they.

But broadly – We’d say “you’re making the first right choice for your ecommerce, now make the second right choice and choose GENE to make the most of your Magento store”

4. What is your biggest accomplishment so far?

We built the first drag-and-drop CMS for Magento and sold it to Adobe who integrated it onto the core codebase. If you’ve ever used Adobe Commerce Page Builder, you’re using the code we lovingly crafted. 

Originally named Bluefoot after the blue-footed bird, the extension allowed Magento merchants to design landing pages and content without any design or development. At the time, this was huge! 

5. What is it like working for GENE?

We think our working culture and our ability to attract and retain talent is one of the most important things to be able to offer our clients “Better Ecommerce”. 

So we naturally put a lot of energy in being a good place to work for. We have an open management policy, with two anonymous surveys a year that bring people’s thoughts to the forefront and help us come up with initiatives that deliver for everyone, not just managers. This is why people here feel like they “own things”. 

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

Product discovery is incredibly important for our clients and their customers.

The ability of customers to successfully navigate a product catalogue (whatever their level of intent) is one of the clearest marks of success for an ecommerce customer experience. 

But besides offering a great customer experience that people remember, product discoverability helps drive more revenue. 

We know journeys with search carry a higher level of intent, so sophisticated semantic-led search can help us convert customers using longer tail keywords. 

Smart merchandising on the other hand helps us make the most of performance data to surface the best products to customers, increasing their chance of viewing PDPs and adding to their basket. 

7. Why did you decide to partner with Klevu?

We have of course reviewed extensively all companies that offer Product Discovery features and found Klevu to offer a great balance between the sophistication of the product features, its ability to deliver positive outcomes and its ease of use. 

In addition to that, we have tried with clients and been able to measure the positive outcomes. 

8. Why did you decide to implement Klevu for Skatehut?

Search is a really important feature for Hobbies and Sports sites as customers can sometimes be really clear on what they want. We wanted to match their intent with good results to make product views and add to baskets more likely, and gladly, that’s what happened too. 

9. If your agency had a theme tune what would it be? 

Great question – the GENE brand has punk influences. We really like the oppositional and challenging nature of punk, which is equally creative and constructive too. Punk is all about speaking your truth and fighting authority for a better world, which is something we resonate with.  

We really also like to not take ourselves too seriously so I am going to say our theme tune is “Lost in the Supermarket” from The Clash. Which is an amazing tune. Right?