Overview
Green Acres Nursery & Supply, a well-established garden retailer in Northern California, recently expanded into the Texas market. With that expansion came a new layer of complexity to their ecommerce operations. Product availability, pricing, events, and gardening content all vary dramatically between these two regions. A typical Shopify setup couldn’t accommodate those differences without creating confusion for shoppers or significant backend inefficiencies.
To meet these challenges, Green Acres needed a highly scalable ecommerce solution capable of delivering a personalized experience to customers based on their location, while still operating from a single Shopify instance. Ambaum led the strategic and technical implementation that made this possible, turning Green Acres’ store into a location-aware, user-centric experience that didn’t sacrifice performance, flexibility, or maintainability.
The Challenge
While Shopify Markets supports international localization, it does not offer state-specific targeting. California and Texas differ not just in terms of climate, but also in product assortment, pricing, store availability, and event calendars. Without a tailored experience, customers risked viewing and purchasing the wrong products for their region.
The site needed to prevent cross-region ordering mistakes, present regionally appropriate pricing and messaging, surface only the relevant events and gardening advice, and keep content, search results, and navigation in sync with a user’s location. And all of this had to be managed from one centralized Shopify store, not fragmented across multiple storefronts.
Our Solution
To address these needs, we developed a custom-built regionalization framework inspired by the logic behind Shopify Markets, but designed for targeting users within a single country.
We began with geolocation. Shopify’s built-in geolocation API allows us to detect a user’s state when possible. However, recognizing that many users opt out of location tracking or have privacy measures in place, we added a persistent location selector at the top of the site. For first-time visitors or when geolocation was unavailable, we introduced a gentle location selection prompt to guide users toward the correct experience. These safeguards ensured consistent behavior across user types and devices.
We then extended the theme’s architecture to support regional control over content and layout. Every section of the homepage, banners, product pages, flyers, and custom blocks could now be tagged for either California or Texas. Navigation menus dynamically adjusted to reflect the appropriate store locations and product categories, and product cards clearly indicated whether items were available for shipping or pickup, depending on the region.
Additional store elements were localized as well. We customized the store locator so that users would only see relevant physical locations based on their selected region. Even gift card terms were adapted to reflect which stores they could be redeemed at, ensuring transparency and reducing customer confusion.
We also worked directly with key third-party apps to maintain consistency. For example, our collaboration with Boost AI Search & Discovery allowed us to adapt their search results and predictive suggestions to reflect only the products and content appropriate to the user’s location. Other integrations were similarly reviewed and modified to align with the region-based structure.
“As a plant nursery, we aim to deliver regionally specific and seasonally appropriate plant selections and garden advice. We were a bit lost on how to accomplish this on one website. Our goal was to maintain our brand image and messaging, but tailor PDP’s, blog posts, collection listings, and marketing material uniquely to each region. Ambaum worked with us every step of the way to find a solution that accomplished our goals while being sensitive to our technological limitations. Thank you Ambaum, you’ve helped our digital presence bloom!”
– Nikki Rieger, eCommerce Manager
Results
Green Acres now operates a single Shopify Plus store that offers two distinct, localized experiences without duplicating its backend or increasing administrative burden. Customers in both California and Texas see only the products, pricing, and events that are relevant to them, significantly reducing confusion and cart abandonment caused by fulfillment or pickup errors.
The geolocation framework we built positions Green Acres for further expansion. Additional regions can be added to the system with minimal development effort, allowing their ecommerce presence to grow alongside their physical footprint. This implementation stands as a strong example of how state-level personalization can be achieved within Shopify’s ecosystem, even without native platform support.
Why It Matters
As ecommerce continues to evolve, personalization is no longer a luxury. It’s an expectation. Green Acres’ investment in regional customization reflects a broader trend in the industry: consumers want experiences that are tailored to where they live and how they shop.
For multi-location retailers operating on Shopify, this project proves that it’s possible to deliver a high-touch, localized experience from a single store, without sacrificing efficiency or control. If you’re looking to expand across regions and deliver truly personalized experiences, we’re ready to help you build the infrastructure to support it.
