Building a Widget? Read this First.

I had the opportunity to speak at Pubcon last week on the viral marketing panel on a lineup that included Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz), Aaron Wall (Seo Book and Clientside), and Louise Rijk (Advanced Media Productions).  It was a solid panel, and I was flattered to be up there with Aaron and Rand – who I have long considered to be two of the best minds in the biz.

Not surprisingly, I devoted my entire presentation to widgets – specifically, how widgetizing your Web site is an important step towards giving your users the tools to help your business go viral.

In preparing for this presentation, I went through all of the widgets and widget related businesses that I have grokked for Sexy Widget, and I came up with five principles that every widgetmaster should consider while laying out the specs for their widget.

1)    Accessibility

It sounds like a no brainer, but make sure that you choose a format for your widget that works for the demographic you are trying to reach.  If you are trying to reach MySpace’ers, don’t make a JavaScript widget.  If you have a widget that will be used primarily in blog sidebars, make sure it fits in a blog sidebar.  Don’t be like these guys, or these guys.

2)    Customization

Every widgetmaster will have to navigate the tightrope between making their widget easy to grab, and providing widget customization options such as colors, styles, dimensions, and customized output code for each of the primary widget aggregators (MySpace, Bebo, TypePad, etc.).  Ajax preview tools will help your users visualize what their widget will look like before taking the time copy and paste it in.  Some folks who I think have done an especially good job with this are Widgetbox and Tourb.us:

3)    Content / Experience

Will your widget provide a snapshot of content / links, or will it provide an embedded experience?  In either case, most Web sites will have to make their choices carefully, based on their target market, and based on the most likely destination for their widget (blogs vs. SNS).  What aspect of your Web site’s content or functionality is most likely to work in a small piece of real estate?  What aspect will be easiest to understand?  What aspect is most likely to make viewers want to grab it and put it on their own sites?  As time goes on, I expect all widgets to move towards a more integrated, contextually aware experience.  To better understand what I mean by embedded experience, check out Bitty Browser if you haven’t already.

4)    Branding

To me, widgets are all about extending your site (and brand’s) reach beyond the confines of your domain.  Clearly, you don’t want to miss the branding opportunity afforded by the potential proliferation of your content all over the Web.  But at the same time, you don’t want to overbrand and make your widget look like an ad.  While this is a subjective area, I do have strong opinions on this.  I think that the ThisNext widget is very elegantly branded.  I think that the FavoriteThingz widget is overbranded.  I think the Snipperoo brand is too tough to read, and I like the way that ChipIn provides a tab that lets the viewer learn more about ChipIn within the body of the widget.

5)    Sharing

In terms of viral marketing, this is the big one.  When someone sees your widget on another site, how easy do you make it for them to grab it and put it on their own site?  Do you force them to click through to your site to grab the code?  Do you force them to click through and register (shudder)?  Can you grab the code right from the body of the widget?  Or are you blessed enough to be able to provide one click adds for your widget?  Streampad does a nice job of letting folks grab widget code right from the player.

(One area that I intentionally ignore in these five principles is the backlink potential associated with a successful widget execution.  The SEO implications of having a successful widget are massive.  I don’t know of another medium with a comparable potential for organic, one way, inbound links with customizable anchor text.  From what I've seen, none of the mainstream widgets have solved this yet, though I've heard whispers from savvy guys like Receptional and Oilman of people doing creative things in this area. This merits its own post, I think.)

Comments

[aaron wall]

Your presentation was probably my favorite of the conference Lawrence. Am trying to think up a few widget ideas.

Will be moving out your way soon, and am trying to get Dr. Trose to move westward as well :)

[Ivan Pope]

Snipperoo - hard to read, wonky UI - guilty! But, watch out for a new and funky UI for the new year and a load of new functionality and sexyness. This thing is only just started. And we believe that the power of what we offer is the best of the bunch by a mile. Thanks, Ivan

[lawrence]

Aaron, good luck getting the good Doctor Trose out here. I've been working on him for a while.

Give me a ring when you get out here... would love to catch up.

[lawrence]

Ivan, looking forward to the new UI. Poking around Snipperoo again is on my list of things to do this week.

[Ryan Richards]

Great post. Since yahoo, google, and many others have their own widget development api or framework, which are the safest frameworks to go with (as for the vendor being around for years to come)? Thanks for any help!

Ryan

[lawrence]

Hi Ryan, I think your first step is to not go through any framework. MySpace / Blogger has trained a whole generation of folks to grab code from a site and paste it into another. I'd start with a Flash, image, or static html version of your widget. Once you've done that, you can modify your stuff for distribution with the big platforms like Google, Widgetbox, Snipperoo, AOL AimPages, MuseStorm, etc - if the development is not overly onerous, there's no reason not to make the required tweaks to get your widget into the flow with all of the big platforms.

[jim Birch]

We have an online music company that would like to provide a music jukebox widget to affiliated marketing partners. Any suggestions for how to get started? We're good on content but stuck with tech issues. Is there any off the shelf music widget software you would recommend?. TX and great article. Jim