The results of the study show that even with reduced traffic, tagged products experienced a consistent increase in sales through the test period, and most notably - sales almost doubled for the tagged products 

INTRODUCTION

As ecommerce’s popularity continues to grow, new patterns appear in how customers shop online. Although most customers begin shopping with a basic search, the vast majority continue to refine and narrow their search results by selecting the specific attributes of the products they look for. However, a customer’s decision whether to use navigation or not, is mostly dependent on the number of products the store offers, and the scope of tagging in the website.

Lisuto has undertaken to investigate how navigational tagging impacts page access numbers, sales and average conversion rate, and for this purpose cooperated with one of its clients to conduct a three-months case study.

The case study demonstrates the radical impact of navigational tagging on business performance and showing how tagged products consistently outperform untagged products in terms of page access numbers, sales and average conversion rate. The case study also demonstrates that the tagged products not only exhibit a lot more resilience to decreased website traffic, but can generate a different sales momentum

METHODOLOGY

This case study’s main objective was to monitor and analyze the effects of tagging on page access numbers, sales and average conversion rate. In this case study, Lisuto worked with RyuRyu, a major Japanese online retail store, a part of Belluna network that lists tens of thousands of different products for online sales. In the scope of the case study, Lisuto randomly tagged a sample of 1018 Ryuryu products which were resubmitted to Rakuten marketplace after the tagging

Distribution of tags in RyuRyu products before and after tagging by Lisuto (X - # of tags; Y - # of products)

The histogram illustrates the tagging distribution (amount of products with specific amount of tags) in RyuRyu product feed before (represented in blue) and after (represented in red) the feed was tagged in Lisuto Xtag. 

It can be clearly seen that prior to tagging, the vast majority of the products (916 out of 1018) in the feed were not tagged at all, and only a handful of products had one or more tags, which brought the average tags per product to below 1. Conversely, after the tagging, there were no products with 0 tags and the average number of tags per product moved up to 11 tags while products with 15+ tags comprise the biggest group (224 products). In essence, we see how processing in Lisuto Xtag brought RyuRyu product feed from a position in which it had almost no tags, to a very high level of tagging, where every product is accurately and fully tagged. 

The study reviewed page access numbers, sales and average conversion rate for a period of three months - one benchmark month in which no products were tagged, and two months after tagging the products. In order to get an accurate picture, only the that consistently appeared among the top 1000 viewed products in each month of the study have been taken into account. Untagged products that appeared in the top 1,000 most viewed products throughout the test period served as a control group. The test period began in December 2019 and ended in February 2020. 

THE STUDY

Page views

Total page views

The page access totals show an interesting phenomena: in January, both tagged and untagged products experienced a decline in page access, which may be attributed to seasonal decline in overall traffic in the website.

However, in February, while untagged products continued their decline in page access numbers, tagged products exhibited a significant recovery, and their page access numbers surged significantly, emphasizing the added resilience of tagged products in times of reduced traffic.   

Sales

Total sales

The test results for total number of sales again demonstrate the performance superiority of tagged products. The reduced website traffic during the test period significantly hurt the sales of untagged products, but it did not affect tagged products negatively. Actually, the results show that even with reduced traffic, tagged products experienced a consistent increase in sales through the test period, and most notably - sales almost doubled for tagged products  in February. 

Conversion to sale

Conversion to sale

In this category, Lisuto examined the changes in the average conversion rate of both tagged and untagged products. The results for this category once more show the resilience of tagged products from a different angle.  

As the table indicates, in January, while untagged products' average conversion rate plummeted sharply, the average conversion rate of tagged products not only didn’t drop, but actually experienced an uplift.

The website traffic remained relatively low in February, but again tagged products clearly outperformed untagged products in average conversion rate. Indeed, both types of products decrease in average conversion rates, but the tagged products’ decrease was significantly less substantial than that of the untagged products.

CONCLUSIONS

This case study solidifies the assertion that tagging has a significant positive impact on products, in terms in all performance parameters that were examined. As shown above, tagged products have consistently experienced increases in exposure on the website, generated much more in sales, and demonstrated much better average conversion rates. The case study also demonstrated that tagged products are much more resilient during months of reduced website traffic, compared to untagged products, which experienced sharp declines in all categories.

Tagging increases the product’s exposure because it enables it to come up in narrow and refined searches and navigation. Since tagging increases exposure, it follows that increased exposure would contribute to increased page access numbers and sales.

In addition, the reason for tagging’s positive impact on the average conversion rate is pre-qualification. When customers know exactly what they wish to buy, they will most often use the navigation refinements to narrow the search results in order to find it. Tagging in effect guarantees that your products appear in such refined searches, and when you give your customers exactly what they are looking for, it drives the conversion rate up in comparison to untagged products, which usually disappear in refined searches.

This case study proves that tagging definitely gives your online store an advantage. By tagging, sellers may significantly increase their products’ exposure, which in turn helps drive up page access numbers, sales and average conversion rate.