In the fast-paced world of ecommerce, staying competitive means optimizing every aspect of your online store. One crucial element is product tagging.
As you strive to enhance your customers' shopping experience and boost your sales, understanding the ins and outs of product tagging becomes essential.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through the fundamentals of product tagging, why it's important for ecommerce, and best practices for implementation.
Key takeaways
- Product tagging is the process of attaching descriptive labels, attributes, and keywords to products to make them easily searchable, categorized, and discoverable.
- Examples of tags include size, color, material, brand, style, seasonality, and customer search terms like “yoga” or “summer gear.”
- Tagging improves product discoverability, search visibility, personalized recommendations, targeted campaigns, and average order value.
- Common pitfalls include inconsistent and incomplete tagging, difficulty scaling across large catalogs, and lack of regular updates.
- Best practices include using specific, keyword-rich tags, maintaining consistent structure, regularly auditing tags, and leveraging AI tools to automate and optimize tagging.
- Hypotenuse AI automates product tagging using AI to generate relevant, consistent tags, which reduces manual effort and improves discoverability and customer experience.
What is product tagging?
Product tagging refers to the process of attaching descriptive labels, attributes, or keywords to products in an online catalog. These tags help organize and categorize items, making them easily searchable and discoverable for customers.
What are product tags?
Product tags are short labels attached to a product that describe what it is, such as its color, material, style or use. Site search, filters and recommendations read these tags to match products to what shoppers look for. Product tagging is the process of adding and managing those tags across a catalog.
Here are some product tag examples for a single item, a women's rain jacket:
| Tag type | Example tags |
|---|---|
| Product type | Rain jacket, outerwear |
| Attributes | Navy, recycled polyester, hooded, waterproof |
| Use or occasion | Hiking, commuting |
| Search terms | Raincoat, shell jacket |
| Merchandising | New arrival, fall collection |
Why is product tagging important for ecommerce?
Product attribute tagging is a crucial element that can significantly impact your ecommerce store's success.
Improved Search and Discovery
Effective product tagging helps your customers find exactly what they're looking for. It improves SEO performance by increasing the discoverability of products through rich, descriptive tags.
Let's say you have a product named "plain t-shirt". Without proper product tagging, when a customer searches for "blue cotton tee", they might not be able to find it on your site.
But if you tag your product with the material cotton, the color blue and even synonyms of t-shirt like tee, your plain t-shirt shows up. And in the correct color too, if you configure it well.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Product tags create a seamless ecommerce shopping experience. Proper tagging enables businesses to offer personalized content and product recommendations based on customer behavior and preferences.
Based on the products that a shopper has viewed, your ecommerce recommendation system could surface up relevant products.
If they've mostly viewed clothes for formal occasions, a personalized feed would look like a wall full of formalwear, such as blazers, suit pants, or wrinkle-free shirts.
Highly targeted campaigns
Accurate product tagging allows ecommerce businesses to segment their product catalog and target specific customer groups with highly relevant campaigns.
With that, marketers can create personalized promotions, emails, and advertising that resonate better with their intended audience.
For example, an ecommerce store selling activewear can tag products with product attributes like "running," "yoga," "summer gear," or "high-performance." This allows the business to target specific customer segments, such as runners seeking lightweight shoes or yoga enthusiasts looking for stretchable, high-waist pants.
Increases Average Order Value
By presenting customers with relevant cross-selling and upselling opportunities based on the products they've viewed or added to their cart, retailers can encourage additional purchases.
For example, if a customer is browsing for a laptop, product tags could be used to suggest complementary items like laptop bags, external hard drives, or wireless mice.
Furthermore, effective tagging enables businesses to create bundled product offerings, combining related items at a discounted price. For instance, a retailer could bundle a camera with a memory card, tripod, and camera bag, creating a comprehensive package that appeals to photography enthusiasts and potentially increases the average order value.
In essence, understanding what are product tags and how to implement them effectively is key to enhancing the overall shopping experience for your customers and increasing sales.
What are the main types of product tags?
- Attribute tags describe measurable or visible details, such as color, size, material or fit. They power filters, so they work best with a fixed list of allowed values.
- Category and product type tags say what the product is, such as "rain jacket" or "sectional sofa".
- Use and occasion tags describe when or why someone would buy it, such as "hiking" or "wedding guest".
- Search term tags add the other words shoppers use, such as "raincoat" for a rain jacket.
- Merchandising tags group products for promotions or collections, such as "new arrival" or "gift under $50".
What is product image tagging?
Product image tagging reads a product's photos and tags the visual attributes it sees, such as color, pattern, neckline or style. It's useful when supplier data is thin, for example a supplier file with only a title and a photo. AI image tagging can tag a full catalog this way, with the team reviewing the results.
What are the common pitfalls of product tagging for ecommerce?
Inconsistent and Incomplete Tagging
Synchronizing product data, categories, and attributes from multiple sources in a consistent manner is extremely challenging.
It requires the team to understand all the products they have, decide what are the terms to use and how to match them, as well as ensuring the tags are sufficiently comprehensive.
For instance, a retailer working with multiple suppliers might receive product descriptions that vary in terminology and detail. For example, one supplier lists a "3-seater fabric couch" while another refers to the same product type as a "grey upholstered sofa."
The team must standardize these differences to create uniform product listings, ensuring that attributes such as material, color, and style are categorized consistently. Without clear processes for attribute mapping and tagging, inconsistencies could lead to disorganized search results, ineffective recommendations, and confused customers.
Scaling Challenges
With an increasing number of products, categories, and attributes, maintaining consistent and accurate product tagging becomes a complex task.
The sheer volume of data can overwhelm manual processes, leading to errors, inconsistencies, and outdated tags. And as businesses expand into new markets or onboard more suppliers, the variety of products and terminologies increases, further complicating the tagging process.
Scaling these efforts often necessitates investing in ecommerce AI tools and cross-functional collaboration between product, marketing, and IT teams.
Without robust systems and clear governance, scaling product tagging risks undermining the discoverability of products, the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and the overall customer experience.
Time and Cost Constraints
Manual product tagging is both time-consuming and expensive. Retailers often need to hire additional staff to keep up with the workload, particularly when bringing new products to market.
With seasonal changes, product tags need to be regularly updated as well, further adding to the costs.
As product catalogs grow, the inefficiencies of manual tagging become more pronounced, making it an increasingly unsustainable and costly approach for retailers.
Lack of Regular Updates
Product tags on Shopify and other platforms require regular reviews and updates to remain accurate and relevant.
If product tagging is not seen as a priority, retailers may not have a schedule to update it. They may even postpone it to accommodate other tasks deemed more important.
This can cause them to miss out on lucrative trends and sales opportunities. Marketing teams may also be using outdated tags for targeted campaigns, making them less effective.
Best practices for tagging ecommerce products
Use descriptive, keyword-rich attribute tags
Product tags should accurately and comprehensively describe the item using relevant keywords that customers would likely search for.
Avoid vague or generic tags like "clothing" or "accessories." Instead, use specific descriptors like "100% cotton" or "drawstring hood" Include details on materials, colors, styles, sizes, and other distinguishing attributes.
It's also important to incorporate common misspellings and alternate terms that customers might use when searching. For example, tagging a women's dress as both "dress" and "frock" can help capture different search queries.
When tagging products, think like a customer and consider the words and phrases they would use to find that particular item. Regularly reviewing search data can also provide insights into the terminology shoppers use.
Keep tags concise and organized
While descriptive tags are essential, it's also crucial to keep them concise and organized. Overly long or rambling tags can be confusing for customers and search engines. Aim for tags that are clear, specific, and easy to understand at a glance.
Establish a consistent structure and hierarchy for your tags. For example, you could start with the broadest category such as "clothing", followed by the product type "dresses", material "cotton", style "maxi", and any other relevant details. This logical organization makes it easier for customers to navigate and find what they're looking for.
Additionally, consider implementing a standardized naming convention for your tags to maintain consistency across your product catalog. This could involve using specific delimiters like hyphens or underscores to separate different tag components or following a predetermined order for tag elements.
Use a fixed list of values for attribute tags
Free-text tags can drift over time. One team member may tag a table "Walnut" and another "Wlnt", so a filter for walnut can miss the products tagged the other way. For attributes that drive filters, such as color, size or material, pick one list of allowed values and map every variation to it. Our guide to faceted search best practices covers this in more detail.
Automate tagging at scale, with review
Tagging thousands of products by hand is slow, and it gets less consistent as more people and suppliers add products. AI tagging tools can read product images, titles, supplier documents and manufacturer websites to suggest tags in bulk.
Set them up to use your own tag list, and review low-confidence tags before they go live. Well-structured tags also make your catalog easier for AI shopping assistants to read, as more product discovery moves into AI search.
Regularly update and audit tags
Product catalogs and customer needs are constantly evolving, so it's essential to regularly review and update your product tags.
Set a schedule to audit your tags periodically, such as quarterly or bi-annually, to ensure they remain accurate and relevant.
During the audit process, look for opportunities to:
- Add new tags based on emerging trends, product updates, or changes in customer search behavior
- Remove outdated, irrelevant, or low-performing tags
- Consolidate redundant or overlapping tags for better organization
- Adjust tag hierarchy and structure as needed
It's also a good practice to monitor your website's search data and customer feedback to identify potential gaps or areas for improvement in your tagging strategy.
If you notice certain search queries are not yielding relevant results, consider adding or refining tags to better match customer intent.
By regularly maintaining and optimizing your product tags, you can ensure a seamless and intuitive shopping experience for customers while improving search visibility and conversions for your ecommerce business.
How does Hypotenuse AI automate product tagging?
Hypotenuse AI's automated product tagging software handles the tagging work across the catalog:
| Tagging task | What Hypotenuse AI does |
|---|---|
| Tag from images | Reads each product image and tags visual attributes such as color, pattern, shape and style, even when the supplier sent only a title and a photo |
| Use your own values | Maps every tag to your own attributes and allowed values, so "dark blue" and "NVY" both become Navy, with units and formats following your rules |
| Fill missing tags | Researches manufacturer sites and PDF spec sheets for products with sparse data, and uses the UPC to match the right product when one is available |
| Suggest alternate tags | Recommends alternate tags and catches misspellings, so products match more of the words shoppers use |
| Improve over time | Continuously learns from your team's feedback, so tags get more accurate as your team reviews them |
Complete, consistent tags also improve ecommerce site search, since search and filters can only match what's in the product record.
Frequently asked questions
What are product tags and how do you use them?
Product tags in ecommerce are descriptive labels attached to items to categorize and organize them. These tags typically include information like product name, attributes like color and material, as well as specifications like dimensions. Product tagging for ecommerce is crucial for improving searchability and enhancing the customer experience. To tag a product effectively, consider its key attributes, features, and intended use.
Do product tags help with SEO?
Yes, product tags can significantly boost your SEO efforts. By using relevant keywords in your product tags, you can improve your store's visibility in search engine results. This practice helps potential customers find your products more easily when searching for specific items or attributes.
What is a product tag on Shopify?
On Shopify, product tags are keywords or phrases assigned to products to organize and categorize them. These tags help improve site navigation, product filtering, and overall user experience. Shopify's tagging system allows for efficient inventory management and enables personalized product recommendations.
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