Marco Paul is a UK-based online retailer that sells a variety of home, garden, and leisure wares. They have a large catalogue of products that are suitable for a wide audience, making it harder to define marketing messaging that appeals to a variety of demographics and customer segments while still effectively promoting their products.
In early 2025, Marco Paul decided to commit to Shopbox, after being aware of the platform’s capabilities through meeting at several ecommerce events, despite not previously using a personalisation tool as part of their tech stack. Lawrie Fraser, Marco Paul’s ecommerce website manager, was keen to introduce AI-powered solutions after using them in previous roles, understanding their value and how they can support in alleviating pressures from ecommerce teams.
The challenge
As Marco Paul offers so many different products across multiple categories, it can prove difficult to understand which demographics are buying from them, their buying behaviour, and other characteristics typically used in customer segmentation. This meant that while Marco Paul understood the need to grow as a business, they lacked clear direction with the brand.
Unclear customer segments
As Marco Paul appeals to a wide and varied audience, this means it can be difficult to target marketing efforts towards one particular segment or demographic. In order to implement a successful ecommerce strategy, improve customer acquisition, and increase customer retention, Lawrie needed to understand who was buying from Marco Paul, and which categories of products.
Lacking data to drive decisions
Marco Paul’s large SKU base means they have many products that are relevant to many different types of shopper, but couldn’t utilise this data to create clear marketing messaging, personalised product promotions, or targeted marketing campaigns.
Having a large product catalogue also usually means there will be products that aren’t as popular with customers and lack data that can be used to drive decision-making. Tooling can help with understanding both whether these products sell and their sales cycles to further inform ecommerce strategy.
The solution
Once Lawrie had identified areas of growth for Marco Paul, looking at their current technical, content, and reach powers, he created a strategy that focused on understanding brand prospects and the values that customers look for in their products, and decided that Shopbox would support in achieving their goal.
Curated recommendations
Curated recommendations enable retailers to offer their most relevant products to that specific buyer. This demonstrates that Marco Paul understands both their customers and preferences by personalising the shopping experience. Using curated recommendations on the homepage, typically the first touchpoint of a customer journey, can help in capturing the interest of the audience and keep them on the Marco Paul site and browsing for longer.
For Marco Paul, curated recommendations include using carousels, recently viewed collections, and top picks for you. These are also placed on product pages for additional reach. Shopbox quickly learns buyer intent across multiple product categories to offer each buyer personalised recommendations, based on prior browsing and purchasing history. This therefore improves a retailer’s merchandising efforts by creating a connection between data-driven business goals and actual buyer behaviour.
Blog recommendations
Blogs are usually classed as informational web traffic due to the type of content. However, Lawrie identified an opportunity to increase the amount of touchpoints they have with site visitors and implemented relevant product recommendations within the blog section of the Marco Paul site. This created another opportunity for them to convert a sale, using this informational traffic, as well as developing a deeper understanding of their ideal customer based on viewed content.
The outcome
Shopbox implemented the chosen solutions for Marco Paul in March 2025. Data began flowing through the platform after a swift implementation (only a few clicks!) and – within hours, due to the size of Marco Paul’s product catalogue – was ready to start analysing the Marco Paul site. This allowed Lawrie to clearly define Marco Paul’s ideal customer to refine their messaging to prospects going forward.
Since using Shopbox, Marco Paul have experienced several improvements to key success metrics, including:
- A 15% higher average order value compared to sales prior to using Shopbox
- Shoppers that engage with Shopbox view 200% more product pages
- 14% of all transactions on the site can be directly attributed to Shopbox
- £10,000 additional revenue from products that weren’t as commonly viewed by shoppers, as these had been brought to the forefront by Shopbox.
Lawrie also noted that they have seen significant positive changes to their gross sales, churn rate, abandoned cart rate, and conversion rate. Despite only using the platform for a short period, Marco Paul is now getting the data they need to drive their ecommerce strategy and define their brand direction. Their messaging to prospects is now much clearer and they understand how to maximise their marketing and personalisation efforts.
The website is now more technically driven, with Shopbox acting as an additional layer that brings insights to the forefront. This also lessened manual labour and analysis done by the Marco Paul ecommerce team, allowing them to focus on other parts of their overall strategy that drive success.
“Shopbox has been nothing short of wonderful. They’re a great team – it’s like working with a friend that understands exactly how to help you grow. The support is absolutely second to none and they integrate really well with the internal team here at Marco Paul. Implementation was a breeze compared to the usual one month timeframe I’ve experienced when working with other tech companies – especially as the value of the platform can be experienced immediately. I’d recommend Shopbox in a heartbeat to anyone looking to better understand their customer base and improve their ecommerce strategy.”
- Lawrie Fraser, Ecommerce Website Manager, Marco Paul
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