Case study

A gift box sold like a gift, not a SKU

The Maritime Box curates gift boxes from New Brunswick and wider Maritime producers. Almost every order is bought for someone else, frequently shipped to a different province than the buyer. That fact should have shaped the entire storefront. It shaped almost none of it. A 90-day Foundation engagement, five focus hours a month, rebuilt the buying experience around personalization, separated the brand from its sister store, and trained the team inside the build. Paid advertising was not in scope.

Focus-hour sessions

Day Foundation term

Domain Rating at start

Ad dollars on this tier

5,000

Organic sessions in 30 days, no ad spend

The Challenge

There was no way to make the gift personal. A customer could not write a message to the recipient or add a photo to the box. The product was personal. The interface was not.

The Maritime Box and The Atlantic Canada Box ran on the same theme, navigation logic, and collection structure. Cheap to maintain, confusing to shop. Nothing told a visitor which brand they were in or why the two differed. Collection pages followed internal product categories instead of how people actually buy gift boxes: by occasion and recipient. Mobile carried most of the sessions and most of the leaks.

The Maritime Box curated gift catalog with occasion filters and boxed gift products

The Solution

Each brand was designed separately. Personalization was built in the cart and order experience, because native checkout-page code changes require Shopify Plus and this store is not on Plus. The note and image pass through as line item properties so fulfillment still receives them intact. The customer cannot tell the difference. Only the engineering location differs.

The Maritime Box builder showing gift box progress, food choices and product selection buttons

A storefront that belongs to this brand

Homepage, navigation, and mobile layout were redesigned for The Maritime Box rather than as a skin on a shared template. Collection pages were rebuilt around occasion and recipient. Mobile received the most attention because that is where most traffic was and where most of it was leaving.

Gift note and photo, without Shopify Plus

A gift note field and customer image upload were added on this store and the sister store. Working in the cart and order layer avoided a Plus upgrade the business did not otherwise need.

Organic surfaces only

Product titles, descriptions, and URLs were optimized around high-intent keywords. Meta titles and descriptions were rewritten. FAQ and answer content was added so the store can surface in Google and AI answer engines. Product feeds were configured for Google, Microsoft, and Meta as free listings. Visibility results for the regional keyword set are covered in the companion Atlantic Canada Box case study. Keyword targeting was split on purpose: this store leads on personalization and occasion terms so the two stores stop competing for the same cluster.

Training inside the 15 sessions

The client team was walked through adding products, managing collections, running the shopping feeds, and keeping the checkout personalization and SEO healthy, plus written guidance for self-management. Training happened inside the build, not as a document on day 91.

The Results

The storefront is now a Maritime Box store, not a shared template. Senders can write a note and attach a photo. Collections follow occasion and recipient. Feeds exist for free shopping placements. Domain Rating at the start of this write-up was 12.0 on themaritimebox.com, verified in Ahrefs. Conversion, AOV, and mobile figures from the internal draft stay unpublished until client analytics replace them. Native checkout-page changes remain out of reach without Plus. Paid ads, CRM sync, audience lists, conversion tracking, and directory listings sit on a later tier.

The Maritime Box