Design and development Widgets are almost unlimited in terms of creative execution and functionality. Available real estate notwithstanding, anything that can be done in a website can be done in a widget. The tradeoff is time and expense.
For a really slick, high-end design, nothing really replaces a good interactive designer. However, if you have graphical assets you're looking to pull into place, or are building a feed-based widget, then you may be able to skip the designer and leverage the great volume of stock photography and other images that are available. If you're on a tight budget, be sure to choose images that are royalty-free.
On the development side, if you don't have resources in-house, your options are to use a creation tools company or a specialized development shop to build your widget.
Why use creation tools?
Creation tools provide pre-designed, tested and often innovative functionality that can potentially save you time -- in development and QA -- as well as money.
"With Flash, you have unlimited ability to build what you want," says Carnet Williams of Sprout. "The tradeoff is time and cost. To build by hand you need creative and engineering teams. Creation tools take out the engineering team so you can remove resources from the process."
There are quite a few options out there, ranging from the general to the specialized, free and self-service to premium. Mixercast, ReverbNation and Kyte are some of the companies that focus on music and entertainment. Sprout and Musestorm provide all-purpose tools to advertising agencies. Newsgator provides solutions for media companies with dynamic content that they require to be constantly in-sync with their website content, and who are looking to monetize that content.
Whatever your needs, be sure to ask any potential vendor about their cost structure for both upfront creation as well as ongoing maintenance and hosting of your widget.
Why use a development shop?
Working with a shop gives you the ability to build custom functionality, and they typically handle both design and development. Original games, database connectivity, and custom APIs, among other functionalities, require custom work. When choosing a shop, be sure they are proficient in both ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0. Obtain samples of their work to see if you like look and feel of their designs, and pick a partner with solid references; working with an established company is typically more reliable than working with contractors.
Remember the sharing platformWhichever design and development solution you choose, your widget needs to incorporate a distribution and tracking platform so your users can share it, and so you can track how and where they are using it. Most creation tools have them built in, and if you're building from scratch those same technologies are also available for your developer to use, free of charge, from companies like ours. Check that your distribution technology ensures your widget is compatible with the destination platforms, such as Facebook, which may be important to you and your target user.
Reporting and analytics are important considerations. I typically track metrics like interaction rate and impressions, along with custom metrics for each creative execution, and review them several days into a campaign in order to optimize. For a recent movie launch widget, I found that video views and viral pass-along increased significantly when offered in conjunction with other activities, rather than as stand-alone areas.
Widget as rich media ads
If you are planning on running a rich media ad campaign where your ad unit can be grabbed and installed by a user as a widget, then working with a rich media technology vendor is another option for your project. 300x250 is the size that allows the most flexibility for running your widget as a rich media ad unit, but be aware, you can always run a rich media ad unit that when grabbed installs a widget of larger dimensions. Also, a creative execution that garners the highest clickthrough or interaction rate as a rich media ad is not necessarily the same creative that will perform best as a widget. So be sure to test and incorporate some introductory frames and messaging that can deliver the best of both worlds.
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