Analyze and summarize the experience details of label design from three aspects!

In mobile products, labels are not the core content, and even a little inconspicuous, but no one can ignore its existence. Especially in e-commerce platforms, labels have become an indispensable design form. Today we will summarize the details of label design.

The article is mainly divided into 3 parts:

• What are tags?
• What should the label say?
• Key points of label design

What are tags?

1. Function Label

The explanation given by Baidu Encyclopedia is "Tag is a more flexible and interesting way to categorize logs. One or more tags can be added to each log."

For example, when publishing articles on a network platform, authors can define multiple tags to help readers better understand the content of the article. At the same time, the platform can also aggregate similar articles based on tags, create a directory index, and guide readers to quickly view tagged articles.

Another type is the more flexible "topic tag", which usually takes the form of "#+any text" and can be used as a hyperlink to jump to a special topic or information aggregation page. For example, the topic tags of WeChat, Weibo, and Toutiao.

The above two forms are more from a functional perspective, focusing on classification and indexing functions.

2. Label component

On the design side, the information transmission and expression of tags are more important. AntDesign, TDesign and other Web-side specifications have dedicated Tag components, which can be seen to have three main functions: marking, classification and selection.

What should the label say?

In mobile products, tags usually appear on the "Discover" or "Recommendation" page, or on the search results page. Through simple and concise expressions, they assist in expressing information in a limited space, allowing users to understand the content in more dimensions, attracting their attention and stimulating their interest.

Therefore, the content expressed by the label is crucial, mainly including the following three information directions.

1. Features of products or services

For e-commerce platforms, products, prices, services, logistics and other service links will affect user decisions, so it is necessary to convey the value points of products and services to users as much as possible. However, the screen space of mobile products is limited, so various types of information need to be displayed in layers and in an orderly manner.

Labels can highlight product discounts, preferential information, and service features to attract users without taking up too much space, so they have become important auxiliary information for product display.

2. User Conduct

Recently, when I was using Alipay to pay, I found that the other party’s account information had added an auxiliary label of “frequently visited”, which allowed me to complete the payment with more confidence. Simple labels can alleviate the anxiety of users’ misoperation and enhance their sense of security.

When logging in to Tencent Cloud on mobile, a "Last login" label is added to reduce the memory cost for users with multiple accounts and provide users with a better user experience.

Similarly, on e-commerce platforms, user behavior has also become an important label symbol. Labels such as purchased, subscribed, and browsed can awaken users' memories, shorten the distance between products and users, and help bring in better clicks.

3. Herd mentality guidance

When users are unable to make a decision, herd mentality will become an important factor affecting their decision-making. Therefore, on e-commerce platforms, sales volume is displayed separately as a very important sorting condition to facilitate users to operate quickly. Similarly, other users' collections, orders, and playback data will also have an impact on user behavior. Therefore, this type of information is widely used in label design to actively guide users to click and convert.

Key points of label design

1. Refining

Labels are usually small in size and are mainly used as auxiliary or supplementary information to help users better understand the main information. Therefore, they need to be concise and easy to understand, and are not suitable for displaying large sections of content. However, labels that are too simple cannot provide users with enough information, which can easily make users confused and confused.

For example, the labels in Meituan Food. What does "book" mean? Book in advance? Book a table? What does "buy" mean? Pay the bill? Buy a coupon? Of course, it may be because I don't use Meituan often and don't understand the labels very well. So these label information does not serve the purpose of conveying information to me.

2. Visual prominence

Due to the small area, labels usually add background colors, or use bright colors and graphics to attract users' attention. However, different products have different ways of visual prominence. We can understand the subtle differences through the cover labels of the following three products.

Tencent Video uses a fixed background color label. The label itself becomes an information symbol, focusing on expressing the characteristics of the product video and emphasizing prominence.

In Meituan, labels use a transparent background color, and the information is mainly sales volume and praise rate. As auxiliary information of the dishes, more consideration is given to reducing interference with the pictures and assisting the transmission of label text information.

In NetEase Cloud Music, the label uses the main color of the cover as the background color, trying to blend in with the cover to reduce interference with the cover and ensure the effective transmission of the label text information.

3. Consistency and differentiation

Do labels need to follow consistency or differentiation? Different platforms give completely different answers.

On Taobao, labels are basically fixed in the same color scheme and use similar visual forms. Of course, key service features such as first-order discounts and next-day delivery use significantly differentiated forms of expression. In addition, advertising labels on e-commerce platforms are more of a last resort to meet the requirements of policies and regulations, so they are significantly weakened compared to labels of interest points such as price discounts.

On JD.com, different types of labels are clearly differentiated, with different overall forms and colors, and the company strives to assist in the delivery of label information through differentiation.

How do you view the consistency and differentiation of labels? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss ~

The above are my thoughts on labels, and today’s sharing ends here.