The Internet is most often included in marketing strategies as simply a campaign on websites, or portals.However, for a long time now, many people in the industry, have been trying to convince customers that the Internet is a little more than websites and portals after all. One example is certainly such a tool as a widget.
Under this magic word is a desktop application, the etymology of which is: window+gadget = widget. The purpose of this application is to take selected data from the web, such as news, exchange rates, match results, the latest promotions from our favorite e-store, etc., and place them on the computer desktop, on our personal websites, blogs, popular landing pages, or social network profiles.
Perhaps for many, widgets are associated only with gadgets, however, ingeniously designed can provide a large number of loyal users.
What kind of marketing tool is a widget?
The use of widgets in marketing is gaining popularity. These small applications serve brilliantly as a channel of communication with Internet users, plus they are simply useful to them. Whether a widget is more of an image or sales tool depends directly on its functionality. If we take the example of eBay’s desktop application, which allows users to track auctions in real time without logging into the site, it is definitely a sales tool – it generates an actual online purchase. This is most likely because users are even more up-to-date with the auctions they are interested in and more auctions are generated, (other companies that have used a similar solution: Toys’R’Us (toy manufacturer), American J.C. Penney or even the French FNAC (the equivalent of our Empik)).
And the example of the UPS widget, introduced in the West in 2007, in Poland last year, is an example of an image tool that perfectly builds relationships with the customer. On the one hand, it attaches him due to functionality, and on the other emotionally – after all, who wouldn’t like such a friendly creature. However, this tool in itself does not cause us to order more packages than early on.
So the use of this tool will be defined by the designer’s idea, however, it seems that the easiest way to use widgets is to achieve sales goals.
How much does such a pleasure cost?
Widget prices vary widely. First, depending on the functionality they have, and second, depending on the provider. While looking for cooperation partners as well as at the time of the benchmarking, we had the opportunity to check the prices of widgets with different levels of complexity, and what in a company specialized in this field costs several thousand, already at a freelancer (programmer/flash developer) costs a few hundred zlotys.
Widgets can also be very expensive. For example, it is worth mentioning VPBubble, which cost the French service operating in 5 European countries Vente-privee.com tens of thousands of euros. At the same time, this widget brought the company 100,000 loyal users who installed the desktop application for themselves.
For whom such a gadget?
In Poland, it is still most common to use widgets integrated with a website or blog, and we rarely see “company” widgets.
De facto, any industry can be interested in this topic. Whether it’s the entire e-commerce category, which is a natural customer for this tool, or any company with a B2B target audience that requires regular contact (as part of creating more and more loyal customers for itself), i.e. the construction industry, advertising, etc.
In order for the widget to have its real use, it is necessary that our company provide regular and high-frequency information on the selected topic. Information, of course, related to the content of our website or our service.
