Content Tagging for Better UX – Complete Beginner’s Guide

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by a large amount of qualitative data? A structured tagging strategy can help you make sense of it.

Learn more in our guide:

• Content tagging and why it’s worth the effort
• The role tagging plays in UX research
• How to build a tagging system from scratch
• Top tips to follow to help in building an efficient taxonomy

Tagging might have a reputation for being complex, but the HeyMarvin AI research software has made it a breeze. 

Our AI-powered tool can automatically tag content from live sources or passive channels. The tags and insights flow across third-party tools you already use, like Google Drive, Asana, and Zoom, so you can be sure no data gets lost.

Try HeyMarvin for free today and level up your content tagging.

What Is Content Tagging?

Let’s first define a tag. It’s a keyword, label, or other metadata assigned to a piece of information to help describe and locate it easily.

So, content tagging is used to categorize your content using tags.

Before we proceed, let’s get a few related definitions out of the way:

• Categories: They are a hierarchical, broad content group and form the basis for organizing information.
• Keywords: These are specific terms that directly relate to the content.
• Metadata: This includes additional information beyond the keywords and labels, like publication date, author, or file type.

A real-world case of successful tagging implementation: Microsoft used HeyMarvin to synthesize 80 hours of research and 2000 notes from 47 interviews.

They leveraged our AI tagging capabilities to apply consistent and meaningful tags to the data. The team identified patterns and themes across the data, and everyone could locate information quickly.

The results? They used the strategic insights from tagging to create a Responsible AI Maturity Model.

Benefits of a Structured Content Architecture

So, what are the specific advantages of a good content architecture for UX teams?

When done right, tagging has these pros:

• Clean and Organized Content: A good architecture makes data easy to read and uniformly guides all stakeholders throughout the marketing campaigns and design cycles.
• Identifying Opportunities in Their Designs: With a proper content architecture, product developers and marketers can quickly identify the missing parts of the user experience and take steps to fill them.
• Collaboration Around Shared Goals: Stakeholders in the relevant workflows — say, developers, designers, the content team, and the marketing team — can use the content architecture to collaborate and generate better products.
• Build a Research Repository: By systematically building a bank of quotes and tasks that you can use on future projects, you can increase the life expectancy of your research by years. The tagged data can inspire UX and marketing copy.

How Does Content Tagging Improve User Experience?

A structured content framework benefits your organization and trickles down to an enhanced customer experience.

Here’s how tagging content can boost user experience:

• Reduces Bias: You might have assumptions that cloud your judgment when generating concepts or optimizing designs. Tags reduce this bias in analysis, helping you to factor in user feedback and preference to meet the customers’ expectations and improve their experience.
• Allows You to Make Quick Decisions: Strategically tagging content allows UX teams to track repeated themes and analyze systems efficiently. Ultimately, they can make decisions quickly to adjust or improve their designs.
• Collaborative Approach to UX Designs: With tagging, the UX team can collaborate with other teams to ensure their designs are based on a unified understanding of customer feedback. 

Labeling hundreds of user interviews can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.

With HeyMarvin, the process can be relatively effortless. Our AI assistant tool can:

• Capture and organize feedback from diverse sources, including interviews, support tickets, and sales calls.
• Act as a research repository, ensuring every team member, from the UX designers to customer support and the marketing team, has access to meaningful, tagged insights in real-time.
• Secure your data and remove sensitive data automatically so you get peace of mind when tagging.

Want to learn more? Grab your free copy of our 2025 State of Research Repositories report and see how teams use tagging to uncover insights faster.

How to Create a Scalable Content Tagging System

The process of labelling hundreds of lines of user interviews and survey responses can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.

With a well-designed framework, the process can be relatively painless.

Here are the four steps to creating a scalable tagging system: 

1. Host a Kick-Off Meeting with Stakeholders

Hold a meeting with your fellow team members to get it right. This will help you align your tagging system with their needs.

You should collaborate to define the categories and tags that are significant to your team. You can all agree on a structure for your tags by content topic, the type of entry, department, or the intended audience.

2. Ask Guiding Questions

Ask questions to determine what’s valuable in order to capture and align your tags with your research strategy.

Consider how you want to classify customer feedback and what research method you will be using. You should also understand how your team members use the tags, why they are searching for something, what they are searching for, and how they filter a list.

All these considerations will help create a cataloging system that resonates with their needs.

3. Automate Tag Creation with HeyMarvin 

Explore our tag templates for inspiration. You can use them as is or tailor them to define the important tags in your organization.

Our AI tool can create project-centric tags related to the research your team is conducting. You can also create workspace tags to allow each team member to share the knowledge base.

HeyMarvin streamlines your research efforts and automatically makes all your tags available for stakeholders. Our software standardizes your research process, making it easy to find research insights across your workflow. 

4. Revisit and Review Your System

You should continuously assess your research tagging system based on your team’s feedback.

Identify popular tags with high usage and consider removing or consolidating underused tags. Alternatively, create new tags as new themes emerge and update the tag names according to the research you’re doing.

How to Organize Content With UX Tagging

Once you have a system to tag your user research, the next step should be implementing it to organize the content appropriately and effectively.

Here are the 4 steps to follow:

1. Start with User Research: Conduct interviews and surveys before tagging content to understand how your team searches or describes content.
2. Group Tags Accordingly: Create a clear system of tags, which might include intent tags, topic tags, or user journey tags.
3. Create a Tag Vocabulary: Build a list of approved tags that align with the content and meet the team’s needs. Your vocabulary should be comprehensive yet simple for your team to understand. Use existing keywords to organize content.
4. Test and Improve Tags: To unlock the power of your user research, you should monitor how your tags help you meet goals.

Tip! Consider using our AI research tool to automate your tagging across interviews, survey responses, and sales calls. Our software will automatically suggest tags and organize them into themes. 

Best Practices to Maintain Consistent Tags

Although there are no hard and fast rules for creating tags, some top tips can help you maintain their usefulness.

Here are some best practices to follow:

1. Be Specific: Create tags that accurately describe the key information or themes.
2. Avoid Confusion: Don’t create tags that are too similar to each other or to existing category names. 
3. Use Familiar Language: You should use everyday language that your UX team will likely use.
4. Avoid Overtagging: To avoid overwhelming yourself and diluting the effectiveness of your tags, limit the number of tags to 7 to 15 per piece of content.
5. Avoid Tagging All Content: You should only tag quotes around beliefs, values, and attitudes relevant to your research goal. You can also tag emotions.
6. Educate Your Team: Ensure all your team members understand the tagging guidelines.
7. Maintain Consistency in Tagging: You should have a regular tag style to help your team learn the tagging system quickly and keep your tags professional and organized.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Now, let’s answer some of the commonly asked questions about content tagging:

What Is the Difference Between Categories and Tags?

Categories are broad groupings of topics that define the main themes, while tags are specific labels and keywords for content details. 

Let’s say you are researching users’ experience using a food order app. A possible category can be ‘menu navigation.’ Possible tags under this category can be ‘overwhelmed by choices’ and ‘couldn’t find item.’

How Do You Choose the Right Tags for Research?

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to choose the correct tags:

1. Align your core tags with the key research questions you’re trying to answer.
2. Create a tagging hierarchy based on functional, emotional, behavioral, or intent-based categories.
3. Add tags that you can use later in your analysis.
4. Keep tags relatable and use language that is easy for your team to interpret.

Can You Automate Content Tagging in UX Projects?

Absolutely!

You can use HeyMarvin, which uses AI to transcribe your data from various sources, such as interviews and sales calls. Our tool detects key themes and sentiments and automatically applies the relevant tags based on the predefined categories.

With our tool, you can reduce manual tagging and ensure accurate, standardized tags across all your data.

Why Does Consistency in Tagging Matter?

Consistent tagging is vital because:

• It makes it easy to draw reliable insights and make stronger recommendations
• When everyone uses the same tags, they can collaborate without confusion.
• It keeps all the feedback organized and clean, making it easy to manage over time.

Conclusion

As you can see, content tagging plays a massive role in organizing large data sets, improving searchability, and delivering an exceptional user experience. 

To implement your tagging system effectively, talk with your team members, determine what you should capture, automate the process, and review your framework. Follow the best practices to ensure your tagging system is clean and organized.

Remember, you can accelerate your tagging process with our AI tagging tool – HeyMarvin.

With it, you can automatically create tags across surveys, interviews, or sales calls in minutes with minimal effort. As a centralized research repository, HeyMarvin ensures you can find the right insights fast and make data-backed decisions.

Register for free and uncover meaningful insights about how your users perceive your products.