Building a Widget Marketing Strategy From Scratch
With Facebook's platform now open to outside developers, embeddable widgets are having a real moment. A step-by-step guide to building one worth installing.
Facebook opened its platform to outside developers back in May, and the rush of small applications and widgets that followed has made one thing clear: embeddable, self-contained mini-apps are having a real moment, not just on Facebook but across MySpace profiles, iGoogle pages and personal blogs through networks like Widgetbox and Clearspring. Here’s how to build one that earns a place on someone else’s page instead of getting deleted within a week.
Step 1: Pick one job the widget does, and only that job
The widgets spreading fastest right now do exactly one thing: a countdown, a slideshow, a quiz, a live weather readout. Trying to cram a full product catalog or a broad brand message into a widget makes it slower, less focused and far less likely to get installed in the first place. Pick the single utility or piece of entertainment your audience would want sitting on their page, and build only that.
Step 2: Build for where your audience already lives
A widget built specifically for Facebook’s new platform behaves differently from one meant for a MySpace profile or an iGoogle gadget, and trying to make one version serve all three usually serves none of them well. Figure out which of these your actual audience spends time on and design for that surface first.
Step 3: Make installing it embarrassingly easy
The single biggest driver of whether a widget spreads is how little friction stands between seeing it and having it. Copy-paste embed code, or a one-click add through a syndication network like Widgetbox or Clearspring, removes the excuse to not bother. Any extra step, a signup, a download, a confusing setup screen, kills adoption before it starts.
Step 4: Design the viral loop directly into the widget
A widget that just sits quietly on someone’s page doesn’t spread on its own. Build a small, honest “get this widget” link or badge directly into it, so anyone who sees it on a friend’s page has an obvious, one-click way to add it to their own. The widget itself needs to be the distribution mechanism, not just the content.
Step 5: Track installs and active use, not downloads
A widget can be installed thousands of times and quietly abandoned by most of those people within days. Watch how many stay active, checked, clicked or updated regularly, rather than treating the initial install count as success. That decay curve tells you far more about whether the widget is worth having built.
Step 6: Keep feeding it new content
A widget that shows the same static message forever goes stale fast, and a stale widget gets deleted the next time someone cleans up their page. Whatever data or content sits behind the widget, keep it updating, so there’s a reason for it to still be there a month later.
The pattern behind widgets that last
The ones still installed months after launch all share the same trait: they kept being useful or interesting after the novelty wore off. Build for that, not for the initial install spike, and the widget earns its place on someone’s page instead of becoming this year’s version of the app nobody remembers uninstalling.
More strategy coverage is here, along with everything published in 2007 and the Digital Business Marketing Awards.
