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5 thing to include on a product tag
Tracking products throughout the ecommerce supply chain is important for keeping your ecommerce business running smoothly. One way to do this is with product tags, also known as “hang tags.”
For warehouses, product tags can be used to keep ecommerce inventory organised and well-documented. Although product tags are mainly used for products sold in physical retail shops, online stores can still benefit from using product tags.
In this article, we’ll go over how product tags work and some of the surprising ways ecommerce businesses can use them.
What are product tags?
Product tags are descriptive tags put on products to help organise and track them throughout a warehouse, store, or shipment. Product tags may include the name of the product, a barcode for tracking, product information, and sometimes the SKU number.
5 thing to include on a product tag
For ecommerce business, one of the biggest benefits of a product tag is to quickly convey information, whether it’s a warehouse employee picking an item or a customer trying to find details about the product. Here is what to include on a product tag.
1. Product name
This shows the actual name of the product. If your business uses unique names for your products, tags can help differentiate between them. A simple example is that a red shirt could simply be titled ‘red shirt.’
2. Product information
This includes a summary of information about the product including the materials it’s made out of, sizing, descriptions, your company’s values, and more. These are usually short and sweet, so consumers don’t have to spend too much time reading them.
3. Barcode
Barcodes are essential for tracking products throughout the retail supply chain. By adding a barcode to a product tag, it makes it easy to track how much inventory you have on hand and where in the warehouse it is located.
4. Price (optional)
Having your product’s price point on the product tag lets consumers know how much the product will cost. If you’re a DTC brand, you likely won’t need pricing on the tag. However, if you’re considering fulfiling B2B orders, it’s recommended that you have pricing on the tag for in-store use.
5. SKU (optional)
Adding a SKU to a product tag can benefit your warehousing, manufacturing, and customer service teams. By having the SKU number on the tag, your employees can locate a product by SKU to investigate issues or further track where products are located. If your online store has a high SKU count, consider adding the SKU to your product tags.
3 reasons to use product tags
Product tags can help keep products organised by communicating details and information about the product. Not only do they make inventory tracking easier, but they also have the benefit of being a great marketing tool for your business.
Organisation
Product tags describe exactly what the product is. This helps physical retail stores and ecommerce warehouses differentiate between products and keep them organised. For apparel businesses, it might seem easy to keep jeans with jeans and shirts with shirts, but as your business grows, this becomes tougher to track over time — especially if you have a larger SKU count. With product tags, you can ensure all your products are stored correctly.
Tracking
Another way to make use of product tags for ecommerce is to place a UPC (universal product code) barcode on them, which helps businesses and logistic partners track products. By adding a barcode to your product tags, it can help reduce the need to manually track how much of a product you have in stock and where it’s located.
Marketing
Product tags can also be used as a marketing piece too. When customers visit your physical stores, they often look at the product tag to learn more about the product. As long as space allows, you can include anything from a branded tagline or even a note from the founder. You can even add social media accounts too, encouraging your customers to stay in touch post-purchase.
Product tags for ecommerce
Product tags are used for both retailers and ecommerce tagging. You’ll hear the word “product tag” a lot online; that’s because many ecommerce businesses use product tags, but in a different way. Product tags used on a store’s website helps identify product by type so it can easily be searched for and found on your online store.
Think of ecommerce product tags as categories. A T-shirt might be in a product tag called ‘shirts.’ So if someone searches ‘shirts’ on your store, any product tagged with ‘shirts’ is going to show up in the search results. Or it can be by season or collection, such as ‘Summer’ or ‘Spring 2019.’
Setting up product tags for your ecommerce business is a pretty easy process. Most of the major ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, allow you to tag products as you add them to your online store. You can keep track of all your tags in a spreadsheet to further manage which tags need to be used, and which ones are outdated.
If you’re selling solely online, you can still make use of physical product tags to not only keep inventory organised and easily trackable, but as a marketing/branding tool to enhance the “unboxing” experience.
Manage and track your inventory with ShipBob
If you’re looking for a more robust solution to track and manage inventory, ShipBob can help.
ShipBob is a tech-enabled 3PL with a robust fulfilment centre network powered by our proprietary technology. With built-in inventory management, we can help you manage products across channels, merge SKUs, provide real-time inventory counts, easily create product bundles, automatically reorder inventory, and much more.
With ShipBob, you can easily integrate your store with leading ecommerce platforms and connect with your entire tech stack with our Developer API. By partnering with ShipBob, you’re able to streamline the entire order fulfilment process while saving time and money.
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Product tags FAQs
Tracking products throughout the ecommerce supply chain is important for keeping your ecommerce business running smoothly. Here are some answers to some common questions about product tags.
What are product tags?
Product tags are descriptive tags put on products to help organise and track them throughout a warehouse, store, or shipment. Product tags may include the name of the product, a barcode for tracking, product information, and sometimes the SKU number.
Do product tags help SEO?
Not to be confused with product tags used for organising inventory, ‘product tagging’ is also a term used to organise products on your online store. To optimise SEO, you organise products in your store using the product tag in the URL. This helps search engine identify what type of product you’re selling, so buyers searching product terms can easily find it on your store.
How do you make product tags?
Creating and setting up product tags is a pretty easy process. Most of the major ecommerce platforms allow you to tag products as you add them to your online store. You can keep track of all your tags in a spreadsheet to further manage which tags need to be used, and which ones are outdated.
