Whispering witches of marketing, witness the Wondrous Wizardry ReferralHero! With wildly wondrous website widgets and magically mystical marketing methods, you will wow customers and whip up whirlwinds of referrals right away! Say that one ten times fast.
While website widgets are a wonderful base for a tongue twister, integrating them into a website is even more fun. (If that’s even possible) These tools allow even first-time website designers to craft sites that are brilliantly functional and elegant.
Whether you’re wading into website widgets for the first time, or you’re hoping to upgrade your website widget game, these top widgets are sure to delight your audience while providing unmatched functionality.
What is a Website Widget?
Creating a truly spectacular website has never been easy, but with the rise of low and no-code options, it’s become a lot more achievable, no matter your experience level. Website widgets are one of these non-coder-friendly options.
A widget is a small app or tool that your team can quickly and easily install on your site to achieve a specific goal. They can offer information, engage your users, and enhance the overall user experience.
This allows you to include things like a search function, an interactive calendar, or even live chat boxes without going through the hassle of coding it yourself. When used effectively, widgets can help you with
- User Engagement - When customers can interact with your site, they are likely to stay longer. They can easily get in contact with you and even engage with your social media page directly from your site
- Personalization and Customization - You can add a level of uniqueness to your site by including different widgets, and choosing where and how they interact with your users. What’s more, you can customize the widgets themselves to align with your branding
- Increased Conversions - If you choose the right widgets, you can dramatically boost your website conversion rate. This could be anything from a newsletter signup widget to a countdown creating a sense of urgency
Ultimately, if you want a pop of fun and functionality on your site, but aren’t sure how to make it happen, there’s likely a widget for that.
Types of Website Widgets
The library of widgets is truly massive, but there are a few types that are essential to any business. Here are a few of the most common widget types that you’ll want to take a look at.
- Subscription Widgets - Visitors can subscribe to newsletters or updates from the business
- Share Widgets - Users can instantly share your content to various social media platforms, helping to boost brand exposure and drive more traffic to your site
- Contact Form Widgets - Allow customers to reach out to you instantly by filling out a form. This is an excellent way to get qualitative data from your users
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) Widgets - Either collect data to determine your net promoter score, or showcase data for customers who have been working on their referral grind
- Search Widgets - Enable your users to easily search your site without needing to program the feature yourself
- Social Media Widgets - Provide a window to your social media profile, allowing visitors to see and engage with your posts directly from the site
- Testimonial Widgets - Easily showcase positive reviews or feedback from satisfied customers, helping to build trust and credibility for the business through social proof
- Live Chat Widgets - Allow customers to easily communicate with customer support or an AI chatbot
- Appointment/Scheduling Widgets - With an interactive calendar, folks can immediately book an appointment on your site. This reduces the back-and-forth communication and streamlines the booking process
- Video Widgets - Embed videos directly on the website, making it easy for visitors to watch promotional videos, tutorials, product demos, and more
- Image Slideshow Widgets - Showcase products, highlight key features, or share visual stories with a rotating set of pictures
- Countdown Widgets - Showcase the time left for limited-time offers, special promotions, or upcoming events, creating a sense of urgency
Using these and other widgets allows you to weave together your website in whatever way makes the most impact on your target audience.
Website Widget Best Practices
When you first start integrating website widgets, it can feel like a shiny new toy that you want to use as much as possible. However, there needs to be some method to the widget madness.
Over the years I’ve learned a lot about best practices for website widgets, and want to pass along my top tips.
Tip One: Keep it Simple
If you want users to be as excited about widgets as you are, you’ll want to ensure they don’t clutter your user interface. It’s always possible to have too much of a good thing, especially when it gets confusing for your audience.
Tip Two: Match Your Site’s Style
One of the most powerful features of widgets is how easy it is to customize them. If you don’t want these little bits of functionality to stand out and break the immersion, you’re going to want to fit them into your branding with color, font, and style.
Tip Three: Provide Value
Slotting in a widget just to have one is an easy way to bog down your user interface. Make sure every single addition brings functionality and solves a problem for your customers.
Tip Four: Optimize for Mobile
53% of web traffic comes from mobile, meaning that if your website widgets don’t translate on a phone, you’re going to alienate over half of your audience. Lots of widgets are fully mobile-responsive, but even then, you need to ensure that your entire site is optimized.
Top Widgets for Your Website
As I said, there is a virtually endless amount of widgets available to you, and even when you know what kind of widget you’re looking for you’ll have a whole host to sift through. I’ve compiled a list of my absolute favorite widgets to help you flesh out your perfect website.
ReferralHero
If you want a mountain of functionality, complete customization, and a sleek interface, ReferralHero’s widgets are just what you need. By combining multiple types of widgets into one, including subscription widgets, share widgets, contact form widgets, and Net Promoter Score widgets, they keep your site clean from clutter.
What’s more, the sheer power of these widgets can upgrade your referral campaign with ease, making it that much easier to gather and engage leads. Whether you want to focus on free or paid leads, gain email subscribers, or just ask your happy customers to tell their friends about you, we’ve got you covered.
Calendly
Want to offer your customers and leads the chance for a real, personal connection? Then integrate the Calendly widget into your website. Calendly allows you to easily embed a booking widget onto your website and let visitors schedule appointments, consultations, or demos with you quickly and easily.
It saves time, makes scheduling simple, and gives prospective clients a sense of assurance when booking appointments with you. These widgets even integrate with your existing calendars through Google, Office 365, and more, so you'll never miss a meeting.
Intercom
Intercom is a powerful customer communication platform, and it offers widgets to help integrate this functionality into your website. You can add a chat widget to your site to engage with visitors in real-time, and automatically funnel users into your CRM.
The widgets from Intercom are fully customizable, so you can have specific chat triggers for every page of your website. This specificity will help you turn casual views into sales. There's even an AI chatbot function to ensure customers have someone to talk to 24/7.
EmbedSocial
Looking for a way to increase your social proof and engagement? EmbedSocial's widgets can help you display your social media content directly on your website. This means that any updates or photos you post on social media will automatically be showcased on your site, keeping it fresh and engaging for visitors.
Plus, EmbedSocial's widgets offer a unique feature – the ability to turn your website visitors into your brand ambassadors. With their "Album Covers" widget, you can encourage visitors to post their photos on your website, increasing user-generated content and promoting your brand to a wider audience.
Elementor Search Bar
The Elementor Search Bar widget is an essential addition to any website with lots of content to sift through. This powerful tool allows visitors to quickly and easily search for specific content on your site, increasing user engagement and making it easier to find what they’re looking for.
With a sleek and customizable design, Elementor’s Search Bar widget seamlessly integrates into your website to make navigation a breeze.
The Bottom Line
Website widgets are not only a fun addition to any website, but also an essential tool for enhancing functionality and aesthetics. Whatever your site needs, you can get from widgets without needing a degree in coding.
By incorporating these tools, you can create an engaging and user-friendly website that will leave a lasting impression on your visitors. So why wait? Dive into the world of website widgets and watch your website flourish.
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