What Is Tagging? What Are Product Tags?
Product tagging is when keywords or phrases are assigned to products so that they are easier to find within your eCommerce website search function.
Why Are Product Tags Important?
Traffic from on-site search has the highest rate of conversion for eCommerce product pages, with 10.74% of these visits resulting in sales. This is markedly higher than even brand-specific search engine queries—the traffic source with the next highest conversion rate at 6.31%—and the average overall eCommerce conversion rate of 3.88%.
On-site search, and therefore intuitive product tagging, is an integral part of any successful eCommerce website sales strategy. This is why Clarity's eCommerce platform offers unlimited tagging to help associate products with related terms that users might query in your website's search box.
Aside from on-site search, tagging eCommerce products has a number of other important, revenue-driving uses which are outlined below.
Conversion Rates by Source:
- On-Site Search: 10.74%
- Brand Searches: 6.31%
- Email: 4.17%
- Organic Search: 3.98%
- Paid Search (CPC): 3.41%
- Overall: 3.88%
Tagged Search Increases Sales Effectiveness
When searching for a product, people may use several different terms to describe the same object. When products are tagged with these various terms, or keywords, it allows people to search and sort for that product in the way that makes the most sense to them. This means they can find the product more quickly and with less effort, which greatly increases the likelihood that they will buy that product from your website. Having detailed product tagging can even increase customer loyalty, since the better their website experience, the more likely they are to come back.
How to Use eCommerce Product Tags to Increase Marketing Effectiveness
You can increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and marketing on your site by using product tags. This is because product tags enable customers to find what they are looking for, even if they don't know exactly how to word what they are looking for. The greater the variability of relevant product tags, the more relevant search results will come up when a site visitor looks for something.
In a marketing campaign, it is better to have recognizable headings, tags, and names for items, so customers know what you mean and can identify the product later.
Product Tagging Increases the Average Order Size
Getting customers to spend more each time they use your eCommerce website is the holy grail of highly profitable eCommerce sites. Product tagging helps with this by automatically associating different items based on the tags and presenting those associated products to your customer.
For example, let's say you're purchasing a projector that is tagged with “Projector” and “Home Theater.” The website will also give suggestions to purchase projector mounts and HDMI cables—items the customer may not have realized they needed—because those products are also tagged with “Projector” and “Home Theater.” In the example below, NewEgg uses this strategy brilliantly.
Decrease Website and Online Shopping Cart Abandonment
Common customer pain points that cause them to abandon an eCommerce shopping cart are price, the unavailability of the item they want, or simply deciding that particular product wasn't exactly what they wanted. Product tagging is a commonly used strategy to help mitigate losses due to these problems because they can suggest similar yet cheaper products, different product brands, or related products to the customer.
An important aspect of product tagging is to make sure your product tags are up to date with the current terms being used in searches. If a customer comes to your website wondering if you sell hybrid vehicles, but you haven't updated your tags to include “hybrid” or other relevant keywords, no search results will come up and the customer will think you don't sell hybrid vehicles.
It is also useful to show customers their recently viewed products, especially while they are viewing their cart or during checkout. This would be based on their recent browsing history within the eCommerce website rather than necessarily being related to the products currently in their cart or being viewed. This function can remind a customer of what they were thinking of buying before they moved on to another product, and it may prompt them to revisit that product and add it to their cart before checking out.
Another advantageous way to use tagging is to show customers other items from the same category they were just browsing in. For instance, if a customer is looking at a laptop tagged under “technology,” then other relevant products in technology can also show up on the webpage.
More Is Better When It Comes to Product Tagging
You've probably heard the cliché, “less is more.” But when it comes to product tagging, more is more. The more tags you have for your products, the better the search results will be when customers look for particular products on your eCommerce website. In addition, when customers use the search on Google or other search engines, if your product has all the correct tags, it will show up in the search and the customer can click on it.
For example, if a jewelry box is only tagged with “jewelry box,” then it wouldn't show up for searches containing the words “fancy small container,” “wooden case for earrings,” “trinket holder,” “necklace case,” or any other search terms a customer might use. Therefore, having products tagged with all the relevant product tags allows for more accurate search results and filtering abilities within the site.
Including additional relevant product tags also enables customers to find your product when they may be searching for another, but similar, product. This is especially the case for discontinued products and their replacements. If a customer goes online to search for a projector lightbulb that has been discontinued, but your lightbulb is also compatible with that projector, you can tag your product with the discontinued lightbulb's part number.
When your lightbulb shows up in a search for the discontinued one, the customer can see that your lightbulb is compatible with their machine and purchase it. Without the correct product tag, your lightbulb would never come up in search, the customer would never know they can use your lightbulb instead, and you would have lost out on that sale.