I love web widgets. I like them because they enable me to add new features to my websites without any kind of coding. Just copy/paste and publish!
But I also think that these small javascripts and flash-objects posses an unleashed potential – at least here in Denmark. Web widgets are truly underestimated on Danish websites. E.g. American websites are leveraging the web widget strategy far more than we do (which you certainly will face in this post).
A good web widget should have at least to sets of qualities. It should add some value to the websites on which it is implemented e.g.:
- add small pieces of functionality to the website. E.g. a website on weight-loss could include a small widget for calculating your body-mass-index (BMI).
- make money by promoting contextually relevant products (affiliate)
- refine content on the site by showing different media content from other sites without losing visitors. Often used e.g. with video sites.
- otherwise no one will implement it on their site. And it should provide some kind of commercial benefits for the person/org. that developed and distributed the widget:
- Brand-awareness: if you create a good web widget, that people want on their sites, your website and brand is present on multiple sites
- Promotion of feature: if your widget has a unique feature, people might go to your website next time they need your feature.
- Product promotion: Serve contextual products promotion on other sites to increase sales. This one often goes with an affiliate setup, so that affiliates are payed for each purchase they generate.
- SEO: if web widgets are made the right way, they can be a very powerful linkbuilding tool. Everytime someone embeds your widget, they also place a backlink to your website … and search engines love backlinks!
Here are my 10 favorite web widgets in random order. To me they all live up to the qualities I’ve mentioned before and some of them are even funny to configure and implement. So enjoy my tour de web widget and go have some fun on your own site with these web widgets!
1) Feedburner headline animator
The first one I’d like to present is a very simple, but useful widget. I think it’s technically the least complex one. If you have a RSS-feed and you use feedburner, it is pretty simple to setup this gif-animated widget which can be inserted into both websites and email because of its simplicity – no javascript required.
2) Amazon affiliate banners
I really like how you can customize your own affiliate widgets at amazon. You can put every product or product category into the widget and make it look as you want it to. How much money have I made out of it until now? 2$ I guess!
3) Grooveshark music player
The Grooveshark widget offers you to put music on your website. It is very easy and it looks like an MP3 player on your site. You can either add one track or a whole playlist. Try it here:
To be continued…
You can read the final part of this post in a few days, so stay updated with my RSS-feed or Twitter.
