Things I’ve learnt about widgets
Over the last eighteen months or so I’ve been involved in defining strategies for, planning, designing, building and deploying widgets.
Widgets are one of those digital technologies that come along, all loosely defined, with the threat that if you want to succeed online you MUST divert your spend into them now. There’s a sense of panic-y ‘I need a widget, and I need it now’, in the same way that in the 90s some marketers needed a website - but couldn’t really say why or what it needed to do.
At the mashup event devoted to Widgets back in February there was a slightly aggressive undercurrent, with the audience (mostly made up of corporate marketers and VCs) demanding that the panelists ‘show me the money‘. I sensed that this atmosphere was largely due to a lack of understanding of what widgets actually are and how they might be used strategically as part of the marketing mix.
It doesn’t help that Google in its wisdom calls them Gadgets but for my purposes here I’m going to define a widget as a piece of content or functionality that can be sited and shared anywhere on the wider web. This is still pretty loose but we’re getting there - bear with me!
Broadly speaking we can then break it down further into ‘personal’ widgets and ‘public’ widgets. This refers to where the widget might be placed and for whose consumption it is.
Personal widgets would be placed on a private space, such as the desktop of your computer or a personal start page. As they tend to be of some utility they will typically have low reach - but more engagement and therefore longevity. For this reason they can provide an excellent branding mechanism.
Examples might include the weather widget I keep on my desktop (to save me the effort of looking out of the window to check if its raining) or the London Underground journey planner I have on my iGoogle start page.
STA (the student-focussed travel agent) have created a set of widgets that appeal to young travellers, including a trip countdown and a tool to check the weather at your destination.
So, a personal widget is a tool that provides ‘branded utility’ - a long and lasting connection with your customer that defines you as useful and helpful and keeps your brand front of mind in a very positive way.
A public widget is generally a very different thing. Ivan Pope, Brighton-based guru of all things widgetty, has called them the ‘bumper stickers of the web’ in that they are used as badges to proclaim belonging or afilliation. This might be easier to visualise if we think where a public widget might be placed - picture MySpace and it should all become clear. A successful public widget would typically see a very high take-up but with little longevity - making this type of widget better suited to campaign activity.
Bloggers also use widgets, generally to give a more rounded view of themselves and how they exist across the social web - so we can see what tracks Dan from Innocent’s been listening to via last.fm, who’s been reading Anthony’s blog via MyBlogLog, the photos the NM team has taken on flickr, Will’s minutiae via Twitter or even where Matt is visiting via Dopplr.
For these online properties share-ability is a key part of the strategy for success - last.fm and flickr are ubiquitously used amongst the blogging population not only because they are excellent services but because they are so portable - and each placement on an influential blog leads to more referrals for the service - a form of free stealth advertising.
As ever understanding the needs of your audience is key to deciding what kind of widget would best serve your business needs - but it’s fairly certain that if you do use online as a significant business channel (and who doesn’t?) then widgetisation is something you should be considering.
Why? Because it’s all about distribution - and we’re marketing to an increasingly distributed and fragmented world. It’s no longer enough to try and shout your message to as many people is as possible - money can’t buy as much influence as it used to, but participation and usefulness can more than supplement that
As a marketer it’s kind of obvious that I’m going to slip in a bit of soft sell alongside all this educational stuff - so of course I’m going to mention our expertise in the planning, design and delivery of wonderful widgets. So far, we’ve run educational workshops for clients (including one of the largest search agencies in the UK and a major clothing retailer), we built and deployed the Sugarscape widget for UK publishing giant Hachette Filipacchi (check out the case study) and delivered two campaign widgets for Oxfam. We know our onions and are more than happy to share them with you.
Thanks to Flickr user jyri for the pic
Jenni wrote this on 12.08.08 –
It's filed in the Marketing, Strategy, Widgets box
On August 20th, 2008 at 10:40 pm, Al Stevens responded:
Yay - Now I’m getting it. Thanks for articulating that article so well for me!
A couple of questions. Will Clearspring offer both a personal widget (ie add something to my Facebook et al page) OR public widget (share something),
AND if you wanted to create a desktop widget like your weather widget - how would you go about doing that?
On August 26th, 2008 at 9:50 am, Jenni responded:
Hi Alex
Sorry to leave it so long before replying - I’ve been trapped in a tent in soggy Wales!
Clearspring provides a ‘wrapper’ of code that contains a ‘grab this’ button. This enables the user to select a number of different services - including Facebook - where they can display your widget.
So a Clearspring widget will be built in Flash, hosted on your server, wrapped in the Clearpring code and then displayed anywhere.
One thing about Facebook though - it handles Flash like video. Facebook adds the widget as video, with a thumbnail display until it clicked on. It will then open the full version of the widget which can be fully interacted with. If Facebook is a key target then you’ll probably get better results with a native Facebook application.
Desktop widgets are a bit more complicated as are mostly dependent on a ‘carrier’ application like Yahoo widgets (Konfabulator as was) or Adobe Air. This means that if I want to install your widget I need to first have installed the carrier app - which is a bit of a barrier to participation.
In a previous blog post http://www.nixonmcinnes.co.uk/2007/11/22/i-can-see-clearly-now/ one of the commenters advocated the use of MDM Zinc as it includes a standalone installer - but I don’t know much about that.
Hope this helps.
On August 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm, Edward responded:
re: desktop apps.
Adobe’s air isnt so bad, you can create a flash movie that will check to see if you already have Air installed and install it if you dont.
Check out http://www.twhirl.org/ for an example.
Ive really been enjoying Air/Flex recently as they are based on Flash which is already a standard.