Product Tagging

Does the Consumer want to 'TAG'?

[Propools]

We all know about Amazon's and others' product rating scale right? Consumer buys a product then has the opp to rate it via 'stars', plus they've the option to post a comment on the PRODUCT.

What if we were to not only allow them to do that but also to 'TAG' the product. The consumer could make their own little tag cloud. Boy, the information we could glean from those clouds.

Has anyone considered or implemented in the E-comm space?
Does something like this have traction in the marketplace?

OK, I've been around E-comm for the past 11 years and I don't know of anyone doing this. I would like to think this topic would make it above-the-fold.....Brett :)

[edited by: Propools at 8:26 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2006]

[philbish]

I wonder if some of this stuff would distract the customer from your goal of getting an order.

I saw a site that had sort of a "shoutbox" for each product. Customers could post their thoughts or questions.

What kind of good information do you forsee by product tagging?

[Propools]

The Features:
1. Ability for consumer to use a Star Rating on a PRODUCT
2. Ability for consumer to comment on the PRODUCT
3. Ability for consumer to tag a PRODUCT
4. Ability for consumer to see other ways people describe a product w/ tags

The Benefits:
1. Sites can then move their more highly rated PRODUCT higher in the buy space - Increased Sales
2. Sites can use/edit comments on the PRODUCT - Testimonial Selling
3. Sites can use the tags in an effort to shape the way people search for their PRODUCTS - Increased eyeballs on their site at specific places
3. Sites can use the tags to evaluate keyword optimization based upon tag clouds - Increase in SEO ranking, increase acquisition and reduce cart abandoment
4. We have the ability help shape the way people use and evaluate the web for shopping

When we give consumer's an increased ownership in the site they do business with they will cause more referall's to happen, which will increase sales.

[Propools]

Let's say we allow consumers to do tagging on our site. Wouldn't it be slick if they were then able to optionally/automatically add those tags to their Reader. I would like to caviat this by recognizing the Google Reader isn't the only quality reader out there. I use Google Reader in my example because that's the one I use and now whole heartedly push.

I've really gotten into the Google Reader the past week and this morning when I was putting some tags in the Google Reader, I thought "WOW, I wish I could have the product tagging (when we do it) automatically added to my reader.

Then when one of our customers puts a tag on a product from our site which matches the tag another customer already has for a different product on our site, the customer's reader would be updated to show this new information.

Ex. A customer buys from us an Energy Efficient pump (Mostly Cali.) and tags it 'Energy Efficient Pump'. Another customer buys from us a different Energy Efficient pump and use the same tag. The Previous customer's reader I would think would then be updated to show this new product tag and "Product Page".

OF course all of this presumes that the customer uses Google Reader and they've subscribed to us.

Your thoughts please. Using tags this way along w/ readers may be a dynamic shift in information gathering for the E-comm customer. And it would be a tremendous asset.

I hope Mr. Kentucky (Matt Cutts) is reading this or gets copied on this thread.

[edited by: Propools at 3:03 pm (utc) on Oct. 11, 2006]

[8foldpath]

You might setup a particular department for Products with the tags X and Y which you display and promote. Then what if your customer start tagging other products X and Y just because they could be technically X and Y (but not really). All of a sudden you start seeing items in product groups that don't belong. And what about plural and singular versions of tags? For example, is this 'widget' an 'accessory' and an 'accessories', a 'ball' or a 'balls'. This is another technical issue that I've found brings some complications, unless you want to go around tagging items with multiple tags.

I've decided that tagging for ecommerce is fairly delicate and needs some standards. One person can easily maintain tags for 1,000's of items if your UI is setup right.

[8foldpath]

Now that I'm thinking about this more, it might be could to maintain two sets of tags. This would be easy to implement.

GROUP1 : Admin Tags (These determine which products show in your results)

GROUP2 : Admin Tags + Customer Tags (This is good for search, RSS feeds and other good stuff and may guide in adding new tags to Group 1)