Summary
The technology landscape is shifting faster, companies are realizing that flexibility and scalability are key features to turn technology spend into savvy investments. Often, companies start with a clear vision, but as time passes, their needs evolve, prompting them to reevaluate their initial requirements, thus initiating a new spend cycle. In this context, Expresia emerges as the go-to tool for crafting an innovative digital ecosystem, allowing for a pivot in direction during the process without discarding prior efforts. This is exactly what happened to Coconal, a Mexican road construction and operation company.
"With Expresia, my creativity knows no bounds, as I can manipulate the code to craft unique developments," shares Gobert Perdomo, senior full stack developer for the Coconal project.
The Client
Coconal, a Mexican construction and concession company, transforms roads into unparalleled experiences. Their toll roads stand out for their outstanding design and maintenance, along with premium services like insurance, assistance, and service centers.
The site's statistics speak for themselves:
15%
Average reduction in bounce rate
+2 min
In user time site interaction time
+44%
Direct, search, social, and referral traffic
Goals
Keeping Pace with Digital Evolution
Coconal's starting goal was straightforward: Develop a platform that informed users about its highways and their manifold advantages. Yet, this forward-thinking vision evolved into a comprehensive digital ecosystem comprised of three web platforms:
A dedicated highways page that offers information for five toll roads built and operated by Coconal to travelers, providing details such as rest areas, toll plazas, and expected gas consumption per vehicle type. Coconal also chose to bolster its digital identity with a corporate portal, reinforcing its brand and legacy within the Mexican construction industry.
Additionally, a third site was conceived, focusing solely on the asphalt transportation and infrastructure business unit
The Right Technology, Applied Aptly
Coconal has revamped the way it showcases its highways in Mexico, with Expresia acting as the DXP driving this digital transformation.
The dedicated highway page goes beyond mere listings: Integrated with Google Maps, it allows users to view every segment where Coconal operates, offering services available on each stretch, significant details like distance and stops, benefits, and tourist attractions.
This intuitive navigation is enhanced by route recommendations based on accurate logic and formulas, enabling users to anticipate key factors such as fuel consumption, toll booth expenses, and average travel time. Each integrated map displays enriching details for the journey, incorporating real-time weather data from OpenWeather, toll booths, restrooms, stores, tourist points of interest, S.O.S stations, gas stations, and more.
Coconal understands that the way content is presented and managed has a direct impact on the user experience, which is why they chose Expresia, specifically the taking advantage of headless CMS capabilities to address different levels of content complexity with articles, content playlists and skins, ensuring that while content creation remains streamlined, presentation remains customizable and dynamic for Coconal across the three websites that make up their digital ecosystem.
In Expresia, everything starts with an article, whether you're publishing a blog post, a product description, or an event announcement. Articles are unique pieces of content, neatly housed within sections or playlists, with a set of standard fields as their foundation.
If you have multiple articles and want to group them for a specific layout, content playlists come into play, like curated collections of articles within a section. Their real power is their customization, which team with the Playlist Skin to let you render that particular group of content in a style that aligns with your brand and user experience goals.
Skins in Expresia are like customizable outfits for content playlists, ready to be selected and configured according to specific content needs. By attaching a Custom Fields profile to playlists, skins can offer configuration options, meaning content managers can make aesthetic decisions without technical expertise, with options readily available in the intuitive menu.
Launch Timeline
2023 was pivotal for Coconal. In January, they embarked on a digital journey to achieve excellence in their corporate platform and highways. With a set launch date for September 19th, they faced nine months of challenges, adaptations, and commitment, which culminated successfully.
Every journey has its hurdles. This one was no exception. The myriad of Coconal stakeholders involved in the process brought various viewpoints, leading to changes and adjustments from the initial planning. For instance, the routes on the highway page presented a particular challenge; what was initially envisioned as continuous tracks needed restructuring to record coordinates by segment due to the intermittent flow of some highways.
Expresia's Key features included:
Expresia's strengths lie in its accessibility and efficiency, enabling any user to manage content after proper training through a quick, intuitive interface. This versatility meant Coconal could have an exclusive area for its collaborators, centralizing internal corporate information access.
The integration of third-party tools on the digital highway platform showcases the robust API First capabilities of our DXP:
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Google Maps: Displays the precise location of Coconal's highways in real-time, along with all essential traveler services.
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Open Weather: Current weather data from the nearest location to the explored segment ensures safety considerations.
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Juicer: Integration for Twitter updates from each highway, ensuring users stay updated on the latest news and events on their routes.
Coconal's initial vision was to unify all its content on a single platform. However, a deeper dive into their objectives led them to segment content across three different websites to optimize user experience and information management:
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Highways: This portal educates users about Coconal's various highways and segments, emphasizing the services and benefits of choosing Coconal's toll roads.
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Corporate Renewal: With the redesign of www.coconal.com, the aim was to rejuvenate the corporate image, aligning it with current trends and enhancing the experience for both internal stakeholders and the external audience.
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Service Expansion: The asphalt transportation and infrastructure portal not only diversifies Coconal's portfolio but also positions them as leaders in logistics services in Mexico.
Although the websites have distinct domains and operate on separate instances, they all connect through a single dashboard. This centralized approach facilitates data monitoring, API call consumption, and access management.
