Showing up and standing out: How brands are driving discoverability on retailer sites

The fight for attention on retailer sites is getting tougher. Consumers aren’t scrolling for days (unless it's on social), and retailers are increasingly stacking the deck in favour of private label brands and pay-to-play. Whether it’s showing up in the right search results, being featured in category navigation, or appearing in content modules, the brands that get seen first are the ones shaping purchase decisions. Visibility isn’t accidental. It’s the result of deliberate, data-driven choices. 

So how are leading brands improving discoverability and getting in front of more shoppers? The smartest teams are using a layered approach - part content, part paid, part foundational, and part relationship. Let’s dive in. 

Start with Search: Optimising Product Content for Retailer Algorithms 

First up, search. Not Google, but the retailer's own onsite search. If your products don’t appear when consumers and shoppers search, they don’t exist in that shopper’s world. 

Most shoppers don’t go looking for a specific brand. They search by product type, category, problem, occasion, or flavour. Think: “low sugar cereal” or “gluten-free snacks.” That means how your product is described and what it’s tagged against can make or break visibility within retailer search. 

To dominate the top search results, however, there are a few elements brands need to master.  

The first is understanding the algorithm of the retailer site – and before you ask, no it isn’t published anywhere.  Each retailer site will have a different set of variables that form part of their algorithm and determine which products are featured first and next. Some of those many variables include sales performance, visitation, contextual relevance, stock availability and more.  

To understand what variables might influence how search results are prioritised we need to review and analysing what products are ranking better than others and establish what they have in common e.g. do they have a lot of reviews, does the product title influence results, are they showing products who have more product images higher because it delivers a better experience etc. This diagnosis will help to inform how to best optimise your listings to improve visibility.  

The second element is understanding how people search for products - not just the obvious brand or category terms, but the long-tail phrases, seasonal searches, and emerging trends. Knowing nuances in how people search for products “alcohol free” or “non-alcoholic” could be the difference between great and poor visibility in search results. 

Using keyword research tools and retailer-provided search data, brands can craft highly valuable product titles, descriptions, and attributes to match real search behaviour. This isn’t about stuffing in keywords; it’s about making content genuinely useful and relevant so products rank higher in search results and best serve shoppers' needs. 

It also has a knock-on effect outside the retailer's site. Well-optimised content can help your products appear in Google search results that point directly to the retailer’s page. With the rise of generative engines & GEO, this interplay between retailer search and broader search visibility is only becoming more important. 

Taxonomy Matters: Getting Products into the Right Sections 

Retailers group products based on taxonomies, which is essentially the hierarchy used to structure and categorise products for the purposes of discovery.  

Smart brands don’t just accept where they’re placed. They review how their products are tagged and categorised, assess which category pages they appear on, and challenge the retailer when the taxonomy isn’t right or discuss opportunities to co-locate products in multiple parts of the taxonomy where appropriate and relevant.  

For example, a kombucha brand may realise their product doesn’t surface in the "gut health" category, even though that’s how consumers are searching | filtering to surface products which support gut health. A dairy brand offering dairy-free yoghurt products may not be featured when a user is filtering to isolate dairy-free options and the list goes on. One FMCG brand we worked with discovered their products didn’t appear in the retailer’s “primary brand navigation” item at all - a quick but critical fix that dramatically increased their visibility. 

This isn’t just about accuracy. It’s about access. If your products aren’t residing within the right buckets, you’re not in the consideration set from the start.  

Retail Media: Buying Your Way Into the Consideration Set 

Of course, visibility isn’t always earned - sometimes, it’s bought. 

Retail media now dominates results pages, with many categories showing a first row entirely made up of sponsored products. This prime placement captures attention and can push products into the shopper’s consideration set early. Smart brands don’t chase blanket coverage; they target keywords and placements that align with their category and audience priorities. This ensures their products are not only seen, but engaged with - and that engagement feeds the retailer’s personalisation algorithms. 

Once the algorithm detects a shopper’s interest, those products are more likely to appear in personalisation modules across the site, from “similar to” carousels to “top picks for you” rows. In this way, retail media spend doesn’t just buy short-term visibility - it can spark a cycle of sustained exposure. 

Online Pricing & Promotions: Visibility in Value Moments 

Pricing isn’t just about value demonstration and maximising margin. It’s a lever for discoverability. 

Retailers like Dan Murphy’s have curated landing pages dedicated to special offers, member deals, or “hot this week” picks. These are prime real estate, and the brands that show up there are often the ones with strategic pricing tactics behind them. 

Delivering a sharp member-exclusive offer can land you in the “Best Deals” tab on Dan Murphy’s. Pricing to trigger inclusion in “Online Only” offers can create extra visibility without shelf constraints. Testing pricing formats across bundles, limited-time promos, or multi-buys can push you into different discovery flows. 

Grocery brands should also take note. Digital experiences like the Woolworths app offer multiple levers to boost visibility through pricing and promotion. From half-price specials to online-only deals and personalised “my specials” offers, brands can design targeted strategies that secure prominent placement in recommendations, drive products into baskets, and build purchase frequency. 

What matters is understanding how a retailer’s site is structured and aligning pricing and promotions to capitalise on the most impactful placements. Investment in these levers isn’t just about driving a single sale. In grocery especially, many shoppers start their journey in their previous basket - creating an “invisible commerce” effect where products are re-purchased with little conscious thought. This habitual buying behaviour can quietly compound, supporting share growth over time. 

Content Integration: Going Beyond Product Pages 

Your PDP is important. But it’s not the only place shoppers can learn more about your products. 

Retailers are producing more branded content like blog posts, buying guides, tools and curated lists. And those who contribute content, ideas or insight are often featured. 

Just look at Dan’s Daily. Articles like “Best Rosés for Winter” surface on Google, feature directly in the onsite blog, and are shared through email and socials. The brands and products that feature? They get an organic boost, not just from impressions, but from a halo effect of endorsement. This content is also becoming far more important in a genAI world, where consumers engage in natural conversational languages and are seeking out recommendations and solutions as opposed to searching via keywords.   

The opportunity here is often underutilised. Some brands proactively pitch stories or insights. Others wait to be included. The proactive ones win. 

We recently worked with a client in the hardware and DIY sector, and noticed that competitors were dominating retailer-owned content and appearing in recommendation modules and DIY selection tools. Once they raised this with a major hardware retailer, it opened up new conversations and led to deeper integration across editorial and media. 

Own the Basics: Navigation, Carousels, Brand Pages 

Discoverability isn’t just about showing up in one place; it’s about being visible wherever a shopper might look.

That means auditing your presence across every part of a retailer’s site: 

→ Primary navigation menus  

→ Brand-specific landing pages  

→ Seasonal campaign hubs  

→ “Recommended for you” and “Customers also bought” modules  

→ Editorial content and buying guides 

If you’re absent from one of these areas, it’s a missed chance to get in front of high-intent shoppers. Regularly reviewing how and where your brand appears can reveal quick wins and longer-term opportunities to expand your footprint. 

The Bottom Line: Discoverability Is Built, Not Bought 

Retailer sites are now media ecosystems in their own right. 

They’re search engines. Ad platforms. Personalisation engines. Content hubs. And product directories, all rolled into one. That means getting seen takes a layered, cross-functional effort. 

The best brands don’t leave it to chance. They audit how they show up, test and learn across placements, and work with retailers to push the experience forward. They bring media, content, pricing, and partnerships together, knowing each lever can influence discoverability in different ways. 

And while some placements can be bought, true visibility is earned through relevance, consistency, and value to both shoppers and the retailer. 

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Want to improve your visibility across retailer sites? 

At Arktic Fox, we partner with FMCG and CPG brands to diagnose and enhance their digital shelf presence - from product content to pricing tactics to retail media strategy. We also help build team capability around digital shelf management through specialised training. 

Let’s talk about where your brand shows up - and how to make it show up more often.