Widget: What It Is and How It Can Be Useful
It's hard to imagine a company in today's world without a website. In the competitive landscape, it's crucial for businesses to retain customers, so the convenience of the platform plays a significant role. Everyone aims to simplify navigation on the company's website, make it understandable, and maximize its potential as a sales tool. What helps the portal with both? The answer is simple — widgets.
Widgets are tools that encourage website users to be more active: to call a manager, chat online, or visit the company's social media profiles. They also increase loyalty from customers and improve conversion rates.
In this article, we'll explore how to use widgets correctly and how they can streamline communication with a company's potential clients.
Why widgets are needed
Widgets are small graphical applications located on the desktop of a computer, smartphone, or on the company's website page. They can serve purely informative purposes and be decorative, as well as perform a specific function, such as a search widget on the website. Widgets are always aimed at performing a particular action.
Search widget on Boohoo’s site
Widget installation is a process that won't take much time, and it can be done on both landing pages and e-commerce websites.
Overall, devices and web pages function perfectly fine without widgets, but it's worth noting that they are necessary for usability and to enhance website functionality.
Widgets have several important tasks:
- Interactivity. Widgets increase session time, with users spending more time on the page. Search engines take notice, resulting in the site ranking higher in search results.
- Attracting and capturing user attention through properly configured and placed widgets.
- Informing users. Widgets motivate customers to make a purchase and inadvertently encourage them to explore the product offerings.
- Stimulating sales. Widgets can inform customers that the current promotion is limited.
- Improving customer service and collecting feedback.
- Building a database. Widget forms are designed for visitors to subscribe to email newsletters or request a callback.
Widgets for websites and their types
Web widgets can vary in purpose and appearance. Let's take a closer look at what a widget on a website is.
- Email collection form and newsletter subscription. The website offers the user to provide their email address (and sometimes phone number), and then email marketing comes into play. In the future, subscribers can be easily segmented in newsletters using a special filter.
Email collection form on Altcraft's website
- Countdown timer. A widget is a digital counter showing how much time the promotion will last. Or counting down days until the New Year.
Countdown widget
- Various types of chatbots. The most common widgets on websites. For example, online consultants, chats with support or managers. These tools allow users to quickly consult with a company specialist or get a response from a bot. Instant response contributes to customer retention, improves conversion, and increases the likelihood of purchase.
A chatbot widget on Ferryscanner’s site
- Pop-up or overlay. This is a relatively new type of widget, and they often contain triggers or calls to action. Pop-ups are designed to engage visitors and motivate them to make a purchase. They also help collect contact information for future email campaigns. The key is not to overdo it, as they often become annoyances. Pop-ups can be set to appear when closing the site or after a certain amount of time spent on the page.
A popup on King Arthur Baking Company’s site
- Calculator. This widget is useful in financial business, construction, or tourism. With the help of a calculator, a potential customer can quickly understand the cost of a product.
A trip planner on the travel agency’s site
- Quizzes, surveys, games. Entertainment widgets are created to sort the audience and segment it in detail in the future.
A spin-to-win widget on a jewellery site
- Google and Yandex Maps: If you have offline locations, use widgets on your website with maps that allow users to plot routes. The more contact information on the website, the more offline visits increase.
Store locator on Pipcorn’s site
How to use widgets correctly to make them beneficial
There are a couple of important points to follow when installing widgets.
- When setting up, consider the tasks the widget will solve, as well as the needs and desires of the target audience. For example, a chatbot should answer customer questions specifically and to the point, increase conversion, and lead the user to make a purchase. And a properly configured popup should timely capture the visitor's interest and retain their attention, rather than prompting them to close the page.
- Do not abuse pop-up windows and other widgets that will deter website guests. Try to make them visually appealing, interesting, and unobtrusive — this will increase the percentage of sales.
Widgets for phones
What is a widget on a phone? A basic example of a widget on all smartphones is the time panel. By properly configuring the phone's home screen, you can significantly enhance its functional capabilities. Mobile widgets are customized to fit the user and their interests, displaying the date, temperature in different parts of the world, quickly translating text, showing our health status, the number of steps taken in a day, currency exchange rates, and battery charge level.
In a smartphone, it is easy to find another category of widgets — control services. Their main task is to manage Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other settings. Often, developers turn widgets into "mini-browsers," allowing users to see the necessary information without entering the app.
Widgets can be downloaded freely available for Android and iOS systems. The creators of these operating systems turn the phone into a smart assistant and, overall, a helpful companion through widgets.
A mobile widget complements the main application. To install widgets for Android and iOS, you first need to download a program with a set of graphic elements. Widgets on Android are more configurable than on iOS. That is, when a user adds a widget to the screen, they can customize it. iOS, on the other hand, does not offer users internal interactivity.
Here's how widgets look on the Android system and the iOS system:
Conclusion
In the pursuit of retaining customers, capturing their interest, and boosting sales, website content becomes more engaging and enriched, all thanks to widgets.
Widgets are small graphic applications, visual elements that can serve purely informative purposes and adorn the interface, or perform specific functions.
They accomplish a variety of important tasks: interactivity, attracting and holding user attention, informing, stimulating sales, enhancing customer service levels, collecting feedback, and building databases.
There are numerous types of widgets available, but it's important to remember their proper configuration and moderation in usage.