Walking in a Widget Wonderland

[Marianne]

Widgets are extremely portable, come in all shapes and sizes and, according to Eric Friedman author of the Marketing.FM blog, will be the weapons used to wage the next great competitive online marketing wars. Widgets, which are basically chunks of code that allows us to interface with applications and operating systems, are critical part of most marketing plans and a critical part of my holiday planning.

Buttons, dialog boxes, pop-up windows, menus, lists, icons, selection boxes, tear off menus, toggle switches, the special features are endless. There is not a finite type of widget, nor is there a finite way to incorporate them into a marketing strategy. Providing useful widgets, such as a countdown to Thanksgiving clock, widgets that help shop for the best deals and the increasingly essential personal wishlist widget that allows you to email your top must-have gifts to all of your friends and family, makes my holidays a snap. No longer do I show up late for family gatherings, “Thanksgiving was when?”, or have to re-gift unwanted presents, but I also come with a bottle of bargain wine (thanks to my wine woot widget) to impress the host or hostess.

It is a wonderful world full of widgets for every type of person. Better yet, for marketers, widgets of all varieties provide useful information about me, the consumer. There are as many ways to take measurements from widgets as there are features. Companies can hone in on metrics to determine the effectiveness of their widget strategies. Following are just a few that Friedman mentions:

1. Time spent
2. Driving people back to your site
3. Interaction with the widget (playing video, viewing pics, filling out a form)
4. Embedadability - do people spread it around and re-seed?
5. Number of times it is emailed
6. UGC uploaded

With all of these widgets marketers have new methods to grab their audience’s attention and I have a new way to celebrate the holidays. What’s on your widget wish list?

[Siwar Bandar]

Thanks Marianne for providing such an interesting snapshot of the widget world. I have to admit that I've never really considered widgets as part of marketing campaigns - but our readings and your blog shows that widgets can be a creative and interesting way to bring people back to your website, as well as providing a new and interesting service. For example, I noticed that wedding websites have been promoting new widgets for brides and their families. For example, countdown to the big day with planning tips. marriage quotes, wedding etiquette, hidden wedding costs widgets, and the list goes on.