The ways and means of widgets

Previous Page: Desktop vs. mobile

Web widgets get social

Given their reliance on user-generated content, Web widgets have a strong affinity for social-network sites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr and the communities that thrive there. This lends them a quality and strength that is different from the widgets developed for the mobile and desktop spaces.

According to Forrester Research, 59% of adult social-networking-site members use Web widgets. The penetration is even higher in the youth demographic, at 64%.

The chief distributors of Web widgets are content creators themselves — bloggers and users of social networks like Facebook and MySpace — who publish widgets and badges to their online properties to promote their affiliation with sites with which they have an affinity.

“Affinity” in this instance generally means that the user has posted unique content to the parent site in an act of self-expression. The photo-sharing site Flickr makes it easy for photographers to share their photos on other Websites through a variety of interactive badges that can be customized to the user's preference.

This customized content links back to the parent domain in an act of colonization — badges act as conduits that provide an easy path back to the parent Website in an effort to attract and win new users.

Amazon lets customers publish and share widgets that promote their Amazon wish-list items. Its affiliates can publish badges; a click-through on the badge earns the affiliate marketer a revenue share from any immediately resulting purchase.

ITunes also taps into the social-network badge paradigm with its My iTunes widget offering that allows customers to publish widgets broadcasting their iTunes purchases, favorites or reviews.

Widgets serve as a broadcast platform that generates more links back to an item and elevates search-engine link equity. But researchers are beginning to understand that merchandising widgets published within the context of social-network neighborhoods have the potential to influence conversions at three to five times the rate of standard marketing messages within the same channels.

The strength of this social equity varies according to the influence of the content creator within his or her community. But the social space will be an important channel for retailers in the months and years ahead — especially given the volume of content being created daily. (Technorati reports that 1.5 million blog posts are created within an average seven-day period.)

Because they are frequently compact and often serve a single purpose, widgets can be cost-effective — an added advantage in this climate of constrained budgets. Just remember that the rules of solid Web design and usability still apply when designing and developing a widget. The compact footprint recalls the tight constraints of first-generation Web browsers, and mobile applications must be sensitive to download speeds that are reminiscent of ancient dial-up connections. As always, every click matters and any frustration can turn your users away.

Widgets are one of the first compact expressions of the changing nature of how information is found and shared online. We're stepping out of an era when single-site domains dominated content distribution and into a period when content will be more fragmented, dispersed and edited by many different hands and voices.

Widgets make it possible for online retailers to tightly control how their brand stories are told in this changing landscape — while still taking advantage of the rising tide of viral content distribution.

Dayna Bateman is a senior strategic analyst at Fry Inc., an e-business systems and services provider based in Ann Arbor, MI.