Ecommerce has traditionally been built around a recognizable journey in which consumers search for products, enter online stores, compare alternatives and move toward checkout. Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, founder and director of Enjoy Pets, operates in a digital environment where that sequence is becoming less predictable as marketplaces, recommendation systems, social platforms and conversational AI increasingly influence product discovery before shoppers ever reach a retailer’s website.
Why is the online store losing its role as the front door?
Traditional ecommerce gives the website a central role in product discovery. Even when shoppers arrive through search engines, advertisements or social media, categories, filters, internal search tools and product pages usually guide much of the decision. The retailer therefore controls a significant portion of the path between initial interest and the final selection. This structure allows businesses to influence how products are presented, compared and explored throughout much of the purchasing journey.
Conversational AI changes part of this process because consumers can explain what they need instead of translating that need into a sequence of keywords and filters. A request can simultaneously include budget, intended use, size, preferences and restrictions. The technology can organize those requirements and narrow the available choices before the consumer has opened a specific online store. As a result, part of the research that once happened inside ecommerce websites can now take place before the first direct interaction with a retailer.
For Hugo Galvao, this shift changes the meaning of digital visibility. Attracting visitors remains important, but a business increasingly needs its products to be understandable before the click occurs. If discovery is distributed across different environments, the challenge becomes making the offer recognizable and useful wherever consumers begin their search. Visibility, in this context, depends not only on being found, but also on providing enough clear information for a product to remain relevant during an increasingly distributed selection process.
What changes when product discovery happens elsewhere?
A consumer who reaches a store after receiving recommendations elsewhere is different from someone beginning the research process from scratch. This shopper may already understand the category, know the characteristics considered important and have a shortlist of alternatives. As a result, the website may receive visitors who are looking primarily for confirmation rather than initial education.
From Hugo Galvao’s perspective, product pages therefore need to answer increasingly specific questions. Dimensions, materials, compatibility, intended use, limitations, availability and delivery conditions can determine whether an option actually fits the situation described by the consumer. Generic descriptions become less useful when the previous stage of the journey has already created detailed expectations.
Can a product become digitally invisible?
Visibility has traditionally been associated with search positions, advertising reach and marketplace rankings. The expansion of AI-assisted discovery introduces another possibility: a product may exist online and still be difficult for digital systems to interpret. If its characteristics are poorly described, comparing it with other options becomes harder before a consumer even reaches the product page. In this environment, simply publishing an item online does not guarantee that its relevance will be clear when systems are selecting among multiple alternatives.
That makes catalog organization more strategically relevant. Clear product names, structured characteristics and descriptions that explain practical applications help shoppers distinguish similar items. They also create a more coherent information base that can be reused across the different environments in which a company sells and communicates. The more consistent this information is, the easier it becomes to preserve the same understanding of the product as consumers move between different discovery and purchasing channels.
The experience of Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho with marketplaces and online sales growth helps illustrate why this is not exclusively a marketing issue. Product discovery increasingly depends on the relationship between commercial communication and operational information. Catalog accuracy, inventory availability and product specifications need to remain aligned because each can influence whether an initial recommendation becomes a viable purchase. A product that appears relevant during discovery can quickly lose that advantage if the customer later encounters incomplete specifications, unavailable inventory or conflicting information.