Using "The Machine"

Have you ever heard about a "Widget"? Well let's talk about what this thing called a "Widget" actually is and what it can do for your business web site. If you want to know details and the history of web widgets I would recommend referring to the Wikipedia entry for a Web Widget.  I am going to focus on how a business can use Widgets and specifically the widgets from "Good Widgets".

A Widget has either functionality or content that might be useful to someone who has a web site.  However, the most important thing to understand about Widgets is that all it takes is a copy/paste and you can start using them. Did that catch your attention?? It should of because that is what makes a "Widget" special, it is the ease at which anyone can use a Widget that are really what make Widget's valuable. This is great for business owners as they can add great capabilities to their web sites very quickly for what usually is a very low price.

Good Widgets produces a line of photo display widgets, everyone of their Widgets allows the display of images or photos on a web site in various ways. If your a business how are the images displayed on your web site today ? Do you show a few or many ? How easy is it for your customers to view them ? These are the type of questions that you should be considering when thinking about how a photo display Widget can be used on your site.  They can very useful to companies in the landscaping business, pool construction or any type of service business where a portfolio of past jobs is displayed. I often think businesses that sell products often over look showing many images, how often have you seen a store on the Internet only show one image per product.  If you sell products a Widget is a great way to display multiple images for a product, showing different angles or views or the product in use in multiple ways. Regardless, of the type of business your in it would be useful endeavor to look at Widgets as a way to easily and quickly improve your business web site.

Good Widgets is different, why you ask... because unlike so many other Widget companies they are purely focused on providing Widgets that blend into your site.

About our Widgets
We believe a good widget should not stick out like a sore thumb, but instead integrate seamlessly in your web page or blog. That is why we give you maximum control over your widgets appearance. By using smooth animations and clean design elements, our widgets are built with one goal in mind...to enhance your photos.

This is not to say Good Widgets is the only company that produces great Widgets, there are literally tens of thousands of Widgets on the Internet and many great developers and companies that produce them.  Over time we will look at how to leverage other Widgets on your business web site.  

So let's take a deeper look at the Widget portfolio from  Good Widgets.   Basically, the primary difference with all the Widgets is how you want your images displayed.  They are all $2.99 from a price perspective... I would simply recommend going and looking at each one individually so you get a good idea as to how each one displays images and the animation used in changing the pictures. Most of the Widgets also have various configuration settings to change things like size and colors for borders and backgrounds. These settings are useful as they give more flexibility to match your colors and size constraints on your web site.

So let's Use The Machine and run through an example, I am going to purchase the  Lightbox Widget and configure it.  The Widget is configured in three easy steps.  First, you need to "Import Photos" for the widget, this is done by connecting to existing Internet photo storage services.  There are several to choose from including Flickr, Webshots, 23, photobucket and ImageShack. If you don't use any of these services currently, don't worry about which one you choose they all usually have some free version and are easy to switch between.  In a future post we will cover why you would choose one over another.  In the meantime, I would recommend learning about each by going to them and reading about their various features and pricing. In the example, I am using flickr which is a more common image hosting service.

The second step, is where you "Configure" the widget including the size and setting colors for borders and backgrounds.  The last step is the "Share" step this is where you get the embed code for your widget that you can copy and paste into your web site.   

Done, that was quick and easy.  My Widget is below showing some recent vacation pictures from DC and San Antonio. There is no reason why these images couldn't be pictures of homes, landscaping, menu items or even multiple views of a product. Think about how you can use Widgets to provide a better experience to perspective customers visiting your business web site.

 
Note: Good Widgets does have a call out to blog owners to help them generate publicity about their Widgets and are offering two pro widgets in return for a blog post review of their Widgets ($6.00 value).  I wanted to mention this just to be transparent, although I already had planned to write about them and have been using their Widget's on my personal family web sites for well over a year or so.