The 6 Essential Elements of A Great Website Widget

More than a year ago, I made a list of what I considered the 6 essential elements of a website widget in these web 2.0 days. It’s a simple list, but nonetheless I’ve used it multiple times when developing widgets, and it has in most cases helped to increase gains from pushing a widget. I then wanted to write about these 6 elements, but as with many of my other posts, I’m slow at finishing it.

But now came the perfect time to do it, as Lawrence of RateItAll invited me to test a new rating widget (as seen to the right). And why does that make it the perfect time? Well, I’d say that their rating widget includes each of the 6 elements in an almost state-of-the-art kind of way, so I see it as a great example.

A Widget’s 6 Essential Elements

1. Incentive
   It’s crucial that a widget offers an incentive to webmasters and bloggers otherwise you’ll have a hard time having them include your widget on websites and blogs.

   The RateItAll widget offers the benefit of promotion through a listing with the reviews on the RateItAll website.

2. Interactivity
   A static widget is boring and doesn’t provide much value. So make sure that your widget offers new stuff on a regular basis, and give users the ability to actually use it. Consider that webmasters won’t place widgets on their website just so you can get free advertising.

   In the RateItAll widget you’re able to post your own rating and review. And you’re also able to see who else reviewed it along with what they wrote and rated it. All without leaving the current web page.

3. Viral element
   You want a website widget to spread as far as possible, so offering users to get the widget on their own website or blog is a must.

   In the RateItAll widget there’s a clear “Get This Widget” text that leads to the sign-up page (currently closed beta).

4. Traffic element
   You still want people to visit your website where all your content and features are available (and it’s likely where you earn your revenue).

   The RateItAll widget drives traffic by making clicks on users and reviews lead to the corresponding pages on rateitall.com.

5. Linking
   Widgets are great for link building to increase search traffic as I’ve covered before in my post on link building with widgets. So including hard links to your website is a must.

   The code for the RateItAll widget includes both a link to the RateItAll website, and a keyword rich link to the category in which a blog is listed.

6. Branding
   Whenever you’re promoting a website you should also increase brand awareness. So including both logo and name in a widget is important, but for the most benefit, make the widget contain strong associations with your “service”.

   Brand awareness is increased by the RateItAll widget through the logo and mentioning of ‘RateItAll’. Furtermore, the widget has ‘rating’ and ‘review’ clearly mentioned which make users able to associate the brand with the service.

More Great Elements of Website Widgets

1. Sign up element
   Making users sign up, or just giving them the ability to do so, is a great way to increase your user base. So if possible, you should look for ways to do this with your widget.

   The RateItAll widget requires users to register to submit their rating and review. But the process is quick and simple, so many will likely do so.

2. UGC: User Generated Content
   Having users contribute with content is all the rage nowadays, and for many good reasons. If your widget provides opportunities to gather user generated content, it’ll add a whole lot of value to you.

   The ratings and reviews submitted through the RateItAll widget are a great example of useful UGC.

Can you mention further elements that one would benefit from including in a website widget?