It often seems like bloggers either have a really cluttered sidebar full of widgets or a really minimalist sidebar that could probably be used more strategically. What’s a widget, you ask? A widget is just a piece of code that makes really cool stuff show up on your blog. Before you get all worried because I said the word “code”, rest assured that for basic widgets, you don’t have to know anything about HTML. Both WordPress and Blogger have drag and drop options for most common widgets (or “gadgets” as they are called in Blogger)!
Today’s assignment
Reevaluate the look and feel of your sidebar(s) and the widgets you’ve chosen to put there. Do each of your sidebar widgets serve a purpose or did you just put them there because you saw everyone else doing it?
Widgets should serve at least one of the following purposes:
- Help readers navigate your site
- Encourage readers to go deeper into your site
- Help readers connect with you beyond the blog
- Encourage readers to leave comments
- Provide “social proof” that your blog is the best ever (i.e. Alltop recognition or the number of readers you have via Feedburner)
- Help make you money (with advertisements or affiliate products that your readers may be interested in)
Examples of common widgets:
- Recent posts (shows readers the latest blog posts you’ve written)
- Recent comments (show readers that people actually comment on your blog)
- Popular posts (gives readers a place to start and also dig deeper into your blog)
- Blogroll (share link love to fellow bloggers in your niche)
- Archives (drive readers to dig deeper into your blog by previous months or years)
- Categories (shows readers what topics you write about)
- Tag cloud (this one is annoying to me, but it can be used to show readers what topics you write about the most)
- Widgets linking to your social networks like Twitter or Facebook (give readers a way to connect with you beyond the blog)
- Text widgets (can easily paste HTML code from Google Adsense or other ad networks)
Which widgets are you using to improve your blog? Are you finding that readers stay on your site longer as a result? Please share your experience in the comments!
I have two sidebars on my blog. I did some updating to refresh the look. I am always editing it anyway. I have a few ideas that I am working to add to the sidebar to keep my readers engaged.
Ok so most of my widgets are to help readers connect with me outside of my blog (twitter, bloglovin', weardrobe, chictopia), plus followers and an archive. I started my blogroll there, but then it got cluttered so I broke it out to 2 separate pages (Professional and Style Inspiration). Anything else I need? I sorta want to get a counter, more for my own knowledge…
http://employedpanache.blogspot.com/
I added a Twitter widget to my page but I think I would like to add a links page to remove the blogroll. How do you balance putting enough widgets but not too many on a page? Any suggestions would be appreciated. http://www.npgold.wordpress.com
I rearranged some widgets on my blog. The theme I use in WordPress only has one column on the right, so I'm trying to keep it clean and not fill it with so much info that readers have to do a lot of scrolling. I'd love to add a blogroll but I don't want it to get so cluttered, so when I created the blog, I added links to blogs and websites that I enjoy on the “links of interest” page. http://adriannerussell.wordpress.com/links-of-i…
On my sidebar, my widgets go down like this:
Email subscription
RSS posts
RSS comments
Copyright
Top posts
Blogroll
Archives
Categories
Tags
Search
Archives
My Facebook and Twitter widgets are on my “Contact Me” page
Does anyone have suggestions for which widgets or what order work best for them?
nevermind, i found it
I LOVE how big and bold everything is on your site. Very user friendly as I go more blind every day.
I think you have enough content to support all that you have in your sidebar. If you were new out the gates and the only scrolling for your site was to read the sidebar content, it would be a bit much.
I think depending on the stages we're in with our blogs, we'll have various widgets for various purposes. For instance, as you have more and more recognition, maybe you rotate out the top 1 – 3 recognition badges (defined by you) and hold the rest on a separate page that people can link through to see.
What I need to do is evaluate which of my widgets are for me and which are for readers. This comes up with your site because you mentioned the visitor locations is interesting to you at least. is it also interesting to your readers? If it is, then static in the sidebar makes sense. If not, then you balance having people scroll down for what else with streamlining the sidebar.
All said, love your site. Easiest blog to read I've come across in a long while.
Thanks for sharing!
bernadette
b3homedesigns.blogspot.com
I like it. A blogroll will not only help you to highlight others, but will really drive traffic to your site. Do you get a lot of your traffic from twitter? Per your sidebar, I liked how I could see your most recent tweets. Gotta admit that I'm a bit lazy and though you start with great strong content on your blog homepage, I didn't click through to read more. But I did love your most recent tweets and figured that if I had one more click to take with you, it would be to your twitter profile. Love your niche and commitment to it.
I have a ton of “widgets” on my blog. Will likely end up streamlining most of the project based ones into an actual page (that lists under my header) once I get to creating that page. that will free up a ton of space that I will then convert to advertising spots.
I also have “widget placeholders” for polls, reader comments, a calendar of events, and a photostream. I say “placeholders” because these all too will (or currently do) link up to pages that detail those out as I have more info to include there.
As for actual real widgets, I have a blogroll of 50+ Must See DIY blogs (I think I need to alphabetize that or actively shuffle it and post about why it was shuffled each week…once I get into scheduled posts, I'll do that). I figure that will generate traffic by telling those bloggers I've listed them in the top 10 of the top 50 because of x project they did. They'll blog about being on the list and drive traffic my way. Especially the smaller blogs in my niche.
I have a blogfrog that lists most recent visitors and when they visited.
I have an archive
I have a blog widget that cycles through my most recent posts and allows folks to follow me.
I have a Followers widget (lonely me, following myself)
I have a tag cloud
I'll need to take some time to figure out, of the real widgets, what I want to consolidate to. Having too many followers in too many different pages – can be good, but can also just be a lot of unnecessary work.
Got the widgets though. From my blog, you can tell I way love widgets. And most of my posts are long enough (which is probably, actually, a bad thing) that my long sidebars actually get scrolled down to (and past).
Bernadette
http://www.b3homedesigns.blogspot.com
As always, comments and suggestions greatly appreciated and welcomed.
okay so i found the twitter widgets but I'm not sure where to put the code. when i go to the widgets page in the back end of my site i don't see an option to add code so you can put a new widget in. i'm confused now lol
I'll probably switch things up a bit more as the blog grows, but even with a few more posts under my belt now, I'm feeling comfortable enough to putting categories further up on the page (because I do actually have more than one post per category, yay!). I do have a tag cloud, archives and search since I think there are people that like these but as they're less essential in my mind, I've put them at the bottom of the page rather than have them clutter up the sidebar.
On the top of my wishlist for better widgetizing of my blog? A blogroll. I really, really want to have one of these, but it's part of a bigger project for me to develop better connections with bloggers in my niche. I'd hate to put people on my blogroll that I don't actually follow regularly and at the moment (due to a disastrous need to clean up my RSS Reader), the people I actually follow are still not really people in my niche. This needs to change, but I haven't had the time to do it yet.
What do you guys think? Take a look: http://www.medicineforchange.com/
Hmm… I'm trying to decide if I'm too cluttered or not @ http://blog.moredonors.com
Here's what I have:
Logo (which links to homepage)
iPhone gadget for further ways to engage (which I love… post on it: http://bit.ly/bnE1S8)
Current poll question (engagement)
“FollowOfTheWeek” (engagement)
Twitter & Facebook gadgets
Topic cloud
USA Today recognition badge
Goodwill, Mobile Active & Bloganthropy badges
Flickr photostream
Blogroll
Subscriptions
Visitor locations (I find it interesting, at least…)
Archive
Creative Commons language
It seems like too much when I type it here, but I don't know if it really is all that cluttered. Thoughts?
You can find Twitter widgets at the bottom of your Twitter profile called “goodies”
I noticed you didn't mention the common Blogroll or Favorite Blogs widgets. I have one because I love to help promote blogs I think are awesome (including a few I discovered via 31bnb!)
So far, I like the widgets and features I have on my sidebar. However, this post has inspired me to add a “category” section, to help readers find subjects they might be interested in. I also need to reorganize my sidebar. Ive been putting that off because I think its gonna be a beast to do. Especially the blogroll, but it needs to get done, so Ill probably complete it this weekend!
L
how do i add a widget for following me on twitter?
I had an ugly “Meta” tag on my widgets, so I was glad to finally take it off my page and add a Twitter feed instead! Since I was checking out widgets, I also added a couple of plugins and finally backed up and upgraded WordPress.
Hi Tanya
Personally I like to keep my readers on my site so I set all links ot opne in a separate window/tab.
I've tried to keep my sidebar relatively uncluttered. I have a subscription button, new posts, categories, popular posts, archive and feedback widgets. I have 3 footers on my page: left side is my blogroll, center is facebook fan page and weblog badge and right side is my twitter feed.
I've actually done quite a bit of changing and adjusting my widgets. When I first started I just put what I saw on other sites but now that I've been up for a while I see what works best for me and my readers.
So I've been trying to build out my new blog site and have been stumped with the Feedburner widget. Followed the process step by step process and still get error messages when trying to subscribe via email. I am determined to get this fixed ASAP!
To your point, I want to start on the right track with the most useful widgets, so I plan to only include those that allow the readers to stay connected to me via the blog or Twitter, access previous posts, and link to other useful resources.
Speaking of linking to other resources, should these be set up to open in a separate window to keep readers on your site, or does this just lead to a cluttered desktop for your readers?