Blogs and Widgets -By BUMPzee

April 10th, 2007

12 comments

Posted in: Blog Bash Expert Posts

Expert: Scott Jangro, BUMPzee

#10 of 30

2007 has been called the Year of the Widget. Visitor stats, news headlines, weather, cartoons, and video all pulled in from various sources on the Net are dressing up the sidebars of blogs everywhere like rock posters on the walls of a teenager’s bedroom in a web 2.0 world of user-generated content.

What is a Widget?

In the web context, a widget is a small bit of code, usually JavaScript, that a non-technical blog owner can paste into a the template of a blog. This code serves up fresh content delivered from other servers, such as news headlines or product information.

Widgets can serve up virtually anything, but what they have in common is that what they display can be controlled and changed at any time by the service that provides the widget.

Why would a blog owner give up this control? Because the information provided through that widget is fun, interesting, or useful to their readers.

There are many types of widgets:

Fun - You can put a sudoku or a crossword puzzle on your blog, pictures from Flickr, even a retro game of Pong. There are dozens of frivolous widgets you can include in your blog just for the fun of it.

Relevant Content and Information - One of the most popular uses for widgets is to pull in timely and relevant information, such as news headlines or related blogs. You can serve up google news headlines related to any topic, or related blogs from a service like Technorati.

Monetization: Widgets like Chitika’s eMiniMalls display product information to your readers, based on relevance or keywords chosen by the blog owner. Google Adsense, BlogKits, and AuctionAds are essentially widgets that display advertisements. The idea is that these will display information that is useful to the blog reader while providing some revenue to the blog owner.

Community: Widgets that display information and visitors related to a specific interest group can add a social aspect to a website. If you have a widget that displays the most recent visitors, that shows that other people find your blog interesting, lending credibility. And being part of a community can bring extra traffic from related blogs through links served up in widgets. Some examples of community widgets are MyBlogLog and BUMPzee.com.

Where do you find widgets?

If you’re looking for widgets for the sake of widgets (for fun or dressing up your website), check out resource sites like WidgetBox.com and Snipperoo.com. Yahoo and Google have their own widget directories as well. Even better, discover widgets through the services that you use or feel that your readers will be interested in. Finally, read up on widgets. Blogs like CostPerNews love widgets and love talking about them.

Test, Test, Test

Nothing belongs on your website that doesn’t benefit you and your readers. Try out some widgets and evaluate whether your users are interacting with them. Try out some page tracking tools like CrazyEgg to see if your visitors are clicking on them. Or if your widget is community-related and you’re sending traffic to other related blogs, watch your website stats to see some extra traffic coming your way as well.

Finally, keep an eye on performance. Remember, widgets are loaded in real time from other websites which can be overloaded if they become popular. A slow loading widget can cause your page to stop loading while it catches up. This may send your visitors away dissatisfied by the slow load times of your blog.

Widgets can be fun, but make sure they’re worth the valuable space that they consume on your website. Go get some widgets, but make them work for you.

12 Responses to “ Blogs and Widgets -By BUMPzee ”

1. 
   Ron Franscell Says:
   April 10th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

   I’m a media blogger at Under The News and I am becoming more and more fascinated with search engine issues, not from a commercial standpoint but from a social networking and cultural-artifact perspective.

   I am intrigued at what words (Googled, Yahoo’d or Jeeved) cause paths to cross, and why.

   I blogged about that issue today at Keywords in a Bottle at my site. I welcome more comments on this fascinating subject.

2. 
   SoulFire Says:
   April 10th, 2007 at 4:33 pm

   Great call Scott… I love me some widgets. As you mention, some of them can slow down the loading of your page, so that’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

   But for the most part, widgets provide a cool, fun way to “spice-up” your site.

3. 
   farroutdood Says:
   April 10th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

   I’m seeing widgets everywhere. I agree with you in that they should be there only as a benefit to your readers– otherwise they can be a distraction.

4. 
   shaneY Says:
   April 11th, 2007 at 4:26 pm

   “A slow loading widget can cause your page to stop loading while it catches up!” This explains a recent problem I had. I need to seriously watch out for widget performances. Thanks for the tip Scott.

5. 
   Kdubs Says:
   April 13th, 2007 at 11:51 pm

   Hey Scott, thanks for the tips on these widgets… a thing I sometimes do is put the widget at the bottom, so if it’s slow, the page will have already loaded…

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8. 
   Christine Says:
   April 24th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

   I wuz here..lol and i’ll bb
   ttfn

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11. 
    Chess Openings Guru Says:
    January 10th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    The Fun Widgets are definitely my favorite. One of my favorite things about the Web is the gaming that is available.

    Also the Monetization Widget (although I’ve never heard it called that) has proved to be useful to me… those are always showing up at the top of my Gmail window. Most of the time they are linked to very interesting websites.

12. 
    同声传译 Says:
    July 8th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    In the web context, a widget is a small bit of code wrote by JS. right?

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