Automated Product Tagging in eCommerce: How this can Increase Sales

Currently, rapid retail is more important than ever meaning that businesses are constantly challenged by the ever changing nature of the industry and consumer behavior. To stay ahead of the game, retailers need to go beyond just providing a platform to create conversions, and instead focus on engaging with their customers to fost trust and credibility which leads to repeat customers. This is why retailers need to have a complete guide for automatic product tagging in eCommerce sites, especially in the fashion industry where the importance of product tagging cannot be overstated.

Fashion is an industry which is incredibly reliant on online business. According to recent studies, it has been predicted that the fashion industry will top $2.55 trillion USD while it’s eCommerce impact will be over $520 billion, figures that are only set to rise by 11% annually. The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak has led to 27% of internet users saying they are avoiding public places, with 58% saying they will avoid them in the future making online shopping the only alternative to brick-and-mortar retail.

Meanwhile, on-demand fashion has changed the retail landscape for good. Retailers now have greater choice and variety in their product catalogue in order to meet rising customer demand so customers can find exactly what they want. This is crucial to success, but so is how you process and present your catalogue to enhance the overall customer experience. This is where automatic image tagging plays a key role in the visual AI eCommerce sector, as well as a fashion as a whole. Here is a complete guide for automatic product tagging in eCommerce.

What Are Product Tags and How Do They Work?

Basically, product tags are a set of additional attributes that add detailed definitions and information to enrich base-level product data. In this case, your product title and description would be base-level data. Every product on an eCommerce store is made up of several tags that are set to describe its characteristics, features, and the category it’s a part of. These products all have different tags making every product unique and will include everything about the product. This can be the: color, size, type, brand, sale, or anything else. So, for example, a dress could have these tags - black, maxi, evening, summer, silk, strapless, summer sale, and so on so the tag provides all the necessary information influencing a shoppers buying decision and filter products based on their specific needs.

By adding attribute metadata to your products, you improve search functionality, product ranking and product recommendations all at once, while helping streamline your inventory management process. This can all be done through automated image tagging.

Traditionally retailers would manually label their catalogue. This meant hours of repetitive labour and lacked the necessary depth to drive conversions while also being subject to human bias. This is where AI and automated image tagging helps.

Automated image tagging handles everything automatically, increasing operational efficiency and catalogue processing times by up to 90% while also providing a higher quality of tags. It is a true win-win for any retailer looking for an improved fashion brand marketing strategy. 

The Benefits of Automated Image Tagging

Alongside improved product discoverability and increased search engine click-through rate, automated image tagging helps customers seamlessly browse your entire catalogue, quickly finding products that meet their needs. Increased levels of friction are one of the main causes of people leaving your site to go elsewhere so by layering multiple tags per product, you enable customers a better onsite experience.

It’s important to group and manage your entire inventory depending on different customer segments, tiers and locations through the use of regional and segment-specific tags. By incorporating flexible, adaptable and responsive tags you’ll be able to more effectively target a specific audience leading to better rates of conversion rather than just looking to target everybody possible.

AI and machine learning can also identify and review past performance on specific products to help you better understand customer behaviour, style and preferences allowing you to continually update and hone your tagging abilities. By analysing key trends at both micro and macro levels, you will better position your eCommerce site towards generating increased sales.

This will also help you inform future business decisions relating to design, merchandising and pricing all which will be backed by tangible evidence that is removed from any potential bias. Essentially, with a complete guide for automatic product tagging in eCommerce you can lower price deductions, prevent overproduction and reduce any product waste, creating a more sustainable, financially efficient online strategy. 

Setting Up Automated Product Tagging in Fashion Retail

Automated image tagging can help brands and eCommerce enterprises become much more efficient while also reducing the number of errors usually caused by human mistakes. Setting up automated image tagging also reduces turnaround times between catalogues while helping businesses react and adapt to new market trends in real-time.

Accurate, SEO-ready tags, titles and descriptions for products will boost product discoverability on search engines due to the increased quality of information available per product. When combined with customer ratings and reviews, these factors form a fully connected marketing strategy that can push a product to the top of search results, immediately elevating the sales of the product in question. This is why understanding and following a complete guide for automatic product tagging in eCommerce is necessary part of your business, now more than ever especially.

Final Thoughts

Automated image tagging shouldn’t be viewed as a nice, additional part of an online marketing strategy, instead it needs to be a core element of your eCommerce platform. An organised catalogue with proper tags improves everything about your online presence by giving your customers exactly what they want without having to ask.

Also, this approach has many positive secondary effects such as reducing bounces on search result pages, and allowing for incredibly personalised suggestions to users which encourages repeat purchases. Moving forward into 2021, automated image tagging should be a high priority for your online store.