The Map Center is an independent map shop and creative space in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with roots stretching back to 1950. Today, under new ownership and with a professional cartographer at the helm, The Map Center is evolving beyond the traditional map store.
The business brings together maps, books, art, educational materials and more in a space designed to encourage curiosity and discovery. Its inventory spans folding maps, books, rolled art maps, historic prints, contemporary cartography, children’s materials and other eclectic finds. Beyond retail, The Map Center also serves as a family-friendly gallery and museum, bookstore, framing and print shop, and event space for geospatial professionals, classes and workshops.
The new website needed to capture that same sense of personality: tactile, curious, colourful, slightly quirky and full of things to discover.
The Map Center had outgrown its Squarespace website.
The existing site had originally been launched as a fast, professional replacement for an older WordPress/WooCommerce site. But as the business grew, the limitations of the ecommerce platform became increasingly apparent.
With more than 200 products and an intentionally eclectic inventory, visitors needed better ways to discover what was available. The existing store lacked robust filtering and navigation, making it difficult for customers to answer simple questions such as:
The challenge wasn’t simply accommodating a larger catalogue. The website needed to support the way The Map Center actually sells maps: through geography, subject, format, curiosity and serendipitous discovery.
The client also wanted a more sophisticated ecommerce foundation that could better support inventory management, shipping requirements and continued business growth.
At the same time, the existing visual experience didn’t fully reflect where the business was headed. The Map Center wasn’t trying to look like an antique map shop. It wanted to celebrate contemporary cartography, creative mapmakers, adventure, imagination and the many stories maps can tell.
The new website therefore needed to do two things at once: make a growing and complex ecommerce catalogue easier to navigate, while creating a distinctive digital experience that felt unmistakably like The Map Center.
We began by looking beyond the individual pages and considering how customers would actually explore The Map Center online.
The goal was to create an information architecture that could accommodate a large and varied inventory without making the site feel overwhelming. We mapped out key user journeys around browsing, searching, filtering, discovering products by location and moving from exploration to purchase.
Rather than treating the store as simply a catalogue, we designed the experience around the ways people naturally encounter maps: by place, subject, format and curiosity.
The visual design was completely reimagined.
The new site moves away from the expected visual language of an old-fashioned map store — heavy nostalgia, sepia tones and traditional cartographic styling — in favour of something contemporary, colourful, playful and approachable.
The design draws on The Map Center’s existing brand while giving it room to feel more energetic and expressive. The result is intentionally a little quirky and unexpected, reflecting the physical shop and the eclectic collection inside it.
The design also had to work exceptionally well on mobile, since much of The Map Center’s web traffic comes from mobile devices. Interactive and playful ideas were balanced against usability so that the experience remained easy to navigate regardless of screen size.
We moved The Map Center from Squarespace to Shopify, creating a more scalable ecommerce foundation for the growing business.
This included migrating and organizing the existing product catalogue, configuring collections and product data, implementing search and filtering, setting up SEO metadata, and configuring the core Shopify storefront and checkout experience.
The new structure gives the client considerably more control over a large and varied inventory while making it easier for customers to find relevant products.
The project also included custom functionality designed specifically around The Map Center’s unique catalogue.
Location is particularly important to map shoppers, so we developed the storefront around geographic discovery and worked with Shopify’s Search & Discovery functionality to create a more useful filtering experience.
We also developed custom Cartographer functionality to showcase the people creating contemporary maps, helping connect the products with the broader community of mapmakers behind them.
And because shopping at The Map Center should involve a little discovery, we added an “I’m Feeling Lucky” experience that lets visitors encounter a random product rather than always starting with a specific search.
Once the new storefront was built, we worked through a comprehensive launch and quality-assurance process covering responsive layouts, navigation, product discovery, custom functionality, checkout, SEO, accessibility considerations and ecommerce behaviour.
We configured page and product metadata, connected Google Search Console and prepared the site for search-engine visibility.
Finally, we connected the production domain, removed the Shopify password protection and launched the new site.
The result is a Shopify ecommerce experience that gives The Map Center room to grow without losing the character that makes the business distinctive.
Customers can browse a much larger catalogue through search, filters and geographic discovery, while custom features encourage exploration and serendipitous discovery.
Behind the scenes, the client has a more capable ecommerce platform and a site structure designed to accommodate an evolving inventory.
Most importantly, the website now feels like The Map Center — contemporary, curious, colourful and a little bit unexpected.
