We set out to help Cheeky Cocktails improve discovery and scale sales across competitive Amazon category searches without relying solely on existing brand demand.
Many brands view Amazon primarily as a marketplace to capture sales based on existing brand awareness based off-platform efforts. While crucial, this perspective ignores Amazon’s true power: its function as the world’s largest product search engine. Amazon works best when it’s used not just for demand capture, but also for demand generation—acting as a discovery engine that drives awareness among “top-of-funnel” customers who are browsing a category but don’t have a specific brand in mind yet.
Over a three-month period, a small set of disciplined listing updates helped Cheeky Cocktails shift its performance meaningfully, demonstrating that on Amazon, incremental improvements to visibility can compound quickly into significant growth.
This case study outlines the definitions that matter, what changed strategically, and how performance evolved.
The Starting Point: Strong Brand Demand, Limited Discovery
In October, Cheeky Cocktails showed a traffic pattern common to many growing brands on the platform: excellent performance among loyalists, but obscurity among new customers.
To understand this dynamic, it is important to clarify the two primary types of Amazon search traffic:
- Branded Searches: When a shopper types the specific brand name into the search bar (e.g., “Cheeky Cocktails mixer”). These shoppers already have high intent and are essentially eager to buy your product specifically.
- Unbranded Searches: When a shopper searches for a general category need to solve a problem (e.g., “cocktail mixers,” “best espresso syrup,” or “premium bar ingredients”). These shoppers are browsing and haven’t decided who to buy from yet. Winning these searches is the key to scalable new customer acquisition.
Initially, the majority of Cheeky Cocktails’ purchases came from branded searches. Unbranded discovery traffic was present but very limited. Interestingly, unbranded conversion rates appeared optically high, but this was an illusion caused by very low overall traffic volume.
In short, Cheeky Cocktails converted well when shoppers already knew the brand—but they hadn’t yet unlocked consistent, category-level discovery at scale to attract new eyes.
The Strategy: Intentional Improvements to Ignite the Discovery Engine
The goal was to shift Amazon from just a sales channel into a top-of-funnel discovery engine. Between late October and November, three focused changes were rolled out across the catalog to achieve this.
1. Updating Product Titles Using Current Best Practices
Your product title is one of the strongest signals to Amazon’s A9 algorithm about what your product is and which unbranded searches it is relevant for.
Cheeky Cocktails’ titles were refreshed to reflect Amazon’s latest best practices:
- Clear Category Relevance: Crucial keywords defining the product type were moved earlier in the title string.
- Strong Keyword Alignment: High-volume search terms were integrated naturally without “keyword stuffing.”
- Improved Mobile Scannability: Important information was front-loaded, ensuring mobile users saw the key value proposition before the title was truncated on smaller screens.
The objective was to drastically improve relevance and click-through rates (CTR) on unbranded searches, ensuring the product appeared when shoppers were browsing the broader category.
2. Consolidating the Catalog with Variations (“Twisting”)
Previously, many Cheeky Cocktails products existed as standalone listings distributed loosely across the catalog.
We implemented a strategy often called “twisting,” which involves connecting related products—such as different flavors or sizes—together under one “parent” listing using variations.
All related products were fully twisted together so shoppers landing on one page could easily:
- Discover multiple flavors without clicking back to search results.
- Navigate the full assortment frictionlessly.
- Build confidence in the brand by seeing a visible, professional product range.
This change is vital for discovery. By consolidating reviews and sales velocity onto a single parent listing, the entire product family ranks better in search results, strengthening brand presence on competitive category pages.
3. Subtle Hero Image Improvements
When a customer searches for a generic term like “cocktail mixer,” they are presented with dozens of options. The main image (hero image) is the deciding factor in whether they stop scrolling and click.
No massive redesign was required for Cheeky Cocktails. The updates were intentionally simple and focused on clarity:
- Higher Quality: Existing hero images were replaced with high-resolution versions.
- Tighter Cropping: Images were cropped more tightly around the bottle, making the product appear larger in the search results thumbnails.
This small adjustment improved clarity in search results. For an unbranded shopper scanning quickly, clarity equals trust. It’s a good reminder that a little goes a long way when it comes to hero images.
The Results
Following these implementations, the data showed a clear shift in how customers were finding the brand.
Discovery Scaled Rapidly
By optimizing for unbranded keywords and improving clickability through better images, the “discovery engine” kicked into gear.
Over the three-month period:
- Clicks from unbranded category searches increased nearly 10×.
- Purchases attributed to unbranded searches grew by more than 3×.
- Unbranded clicks shifted to represent well over two-thirds of total traffic.
Cheeky Cocktails successfully shifted from a brand-dependent traffic profile to one driven primarily by category discovery.
Conversion Rates Normalized as Reach Expanded, But Sales Grew Significantly
This is a crucial concept for brands scaling on Amazon: as you widen your top-of-funnel reach, your overall conversion rate (CVR) will often decrease visibly.
As Cheeky Cocktails’ unbranded traffic scaled massively:
- The unbranded conversion rate declined by roughly 60–70%.
- However, total unbranded purchases increased materially due to the vastly higher volume of shoppers entering the funnel, with growth of more than 350% over the previous three-month period, and more than 160% year over year
This pattern reflects healthy funnel expansion. Early conversion rates were artificially inflated by low volume (only the most determined searchers found the product). As reach grew, the traffic became “colder” (more browsers vs. ready buyers), causing efficiency to normalize while total sales increased.
Brand Demand Continued to Grow
Crucially, these efforts to capture top-of-funnel traffic did not come at the expense of existing branded performance.
- Purchases from branded searches increased by more than 250% over the previous three month period, and more than 280% year over year
- Brand demand remained the primary driver of high-converting traffic
- Discovery gains complemented, rather than cannibalized, branded sales
Improved discovery helped reinforce overall brand momentum, creating a flywheel effect where new discovery eventually leads to more branded searches later.
Key Takeaways
- Amazon is a Discovery Engine: Sustainable growth requires moving beyond capturing existing demand and winning unbranded category searches to generate new demand.
- Lower Conversion isn’t Always Bad: When top-of-funnel reach expands rapidly, a normalized, lower CVR is often a sign of healthy growth, provided total sales volume is rising.
- Listings Work Holistically: Titles (for the algorithm), catalog structure (for browsing), and hero images (for the click) compound each other’s impact.
- Small Changes Matter: You don’t always need a rebrand. Higher-quality, tighter hero images can materially improve performance without overdesign.
Final Thought
Cheeky Cocktails’ Q4 performance shows that meaningful gains don’t always require sweeping redesigns or aggressive advertising tactics. By aligning product titles with current best practices, strengthening catalog cohesion through variations, and making subtle hero image improvements, the brand unlocked a new level of discovery, and set the stage for continued growth.
On Amazon, clarity beats complexity. And sometimes, the simplest changes deliver the biggest results.
