Designing a Unified Tag System for B2B Platforms: Insights from Baidu iCaiGou

Introduction

In the digital era, tags play a crucial role on shopping sites, social media, and search engines by providing key information that helps users make quick decisions. Designing a reasonable, standardized tag system is a challenge for many platforms. Baidu's B2B platform iCaiGou continuously optimizes its tag system to enhance user experience, and this article outlines the design and optimization approach.

Common Tags & Their Functions

Tags are used to display content, features, products, activities, prices, identities, etc., marking and classifying high‑priority information to assist user decisions.

Impact of Tags on iCaiGou

iCaiGou, a one‑stop procurement platform, connects buyers with a large number of products and quality merchants while providing sellers with an operation backend. Certified merchants and product information are labeled to ensure authenticity and credibility. These tags showcase merchant advantages and serve as valuable member benefits.

Why the Original Tag System Changed

As the platform’s slogan shifted to “customize, wholesale, find factories on iCaiGou,” four new tag categories—"Strength Brand", "Transaction Service", "Processing Customization", and "Qualification Certification"—were introduced. New tags were given higher weight to quickly build user recognition, but over time the priority order became unclear, affecting users' perception of tag value.

How the New Tag System Evolved

From a platform perspective, we reordered tag weights, unified tag composition, and established a collaborative mechanism to standardize updates and iterations.

Classification – Sorting – Convergence

Tag Classification

Existing tags can be grouped into six categories: membership, certification, service, transaction, guarantee, and qualification.

Tag Sorting

Tags are weighted into strong, medium, and weak tiers based on their contribution to helping buyers find quality stores and services. This hierarchy guides visual styling and optimization.

Tag Convergence

Style Convergence : Reduce the number of tag styles, retaining only those that align with tag weight and universality.

Application Convergence : Apply visual noise reduction principles (Occam’s razor) to avoid unnecessary non‑feature tags that hinder readability.

Components of a Unified Tag System

Shape

Tags come in large, medium, and small sizes, with width adapting to content length. Large (18‑22 pt), medium (15‑17 pt), and small (12‑14 pt) tags serve different density scenarios. A 16 pt height is chosen as the baseline for balance.

Two shape types are defined: regular rectangles (high readability) and irregular shapes (draw attention for special identities or promotions).

Color

Using the HSB color model, tag colors start from brand red (0°) and increment by 24° for different mental associations. Minor adjustments keep hue constant while tweaking saturation and brightness for consistency across light and dark backgrounds.

Typography

Standard tags use system fonts; high‑priority special tags use distinct typefaces to emphasize visual hierarchy while maintaining overall consistency.

Construction

Tag constructions combine dual‑tone or single‑tone, solid or semi‑transparent, outline or fill, and may include icons with text. Visual weight is increased by higher color saturation and contrast, forming strong, medium, and weak style layers.

Comparison of Changes

By aligning shape, color, typography, and construction with the established weight hierarchy, a new cohesive tag system is derived.

Embedding Design Standards & Collaborative Mechanisms

Deriving Common Design Specifications

After defining tag forms and usage rules, specifications covering shape, size, corner radius, spacing, font, and scenarios are created to guide future tag additions, modifications, and deletions, ensuring consistency across all contexts.

Building a Collaborative Tag‑System Mechanism

The tag system impacts the entire platform, so collaboration involves three aspects: people (cross‑functional cooperation), deliverables (clear requirement documents and design annotations), and key coordination points (a multi‑party mechanism to ensure systematic updates).

Conclusion

The tag system must align visual style with user mental models and maintain proper visual weight order to guide decisions efficiently. A well‑defined construction and collaborative process ensures the tag system remains unified, orderly, and adaptable throughout product evolution.