Realespace

Recently, many companies that I talk to either have a widget concept in development or they are looking into creating a widget strategy. Unfortunately many of these companies are missing some main concepts about deploying a widget. Without the basics, your widget will not get the attention and user distribution that you are looking for.

1. Benefit all parties involved.
   If you are thinking about deploying widget, don’t just think about your company and how you want to get your information on as many websites as you possibly can. Widgets are all about adding additional features and benefits to the host site. A widget that only benefits the parent company is nothing more then a glorified banner ad. Good luck trying to get people to put a banner ad on their site to benefit your company.Your widget should add features and benefits to the host website. Provide benefits to the visitors of that host website, and in turn the widget owner will benefit from additional exposure. Put yourself third in the hierarchy of widget deployment.
2. Do not take visitors away from the host site.
   How simple can that be? Yet, the majority of all widgets do that. Web programming has come a long way. We can add full applications on host websites with only one line of code. The webmaster simply copies and pastes a line of code from the widget companies website and they have a feature rich web application on their site. If you are thinking about a widget, you really need to think about full applications running on the host site. Remember give that host site features and benefits and co-brand with the host site. The visitors will not leave the host site and all parties benefit!
3. Give the host site credit
   Everyone that puts your widget on their site should be given credit. Give them thanks by linking to them on your company website. Make a widget page that shows all stats for that widget. Another great way to give credit it to add a feature to the widget that shows random links to sites that have the widget. Be careful, of course, many people will not want to send people away, but I want to touch on a key aspect of widgets. That key concept is the viral aspect of widgets. Think of them as a snowball. Think of ways to give credit to all parties and that widget will grow and grow!

These concepts are just the tip of the iceberg, and give a very general overview. In upcoming posts, we will talk about better alternatives to widgets, how to deploy widgets, and all the components of widgets. So grab our feed if you want to stay up-to-date with widget strategies.