outbrain: Overcoming 6 Widget Syndromes

I’ve recently ran into a great post by Glen Stansberry. I couldn’t agree more on the things you have to consider before installing a widget on your blog. Glen points out some (6 to be exact) valid concerns and I wanted to point out some of the things we do at outbrain to address them…

Slow loading pages…Widgets on the other hand typically use larger javascript files or flash

It only takes one bad widget…a slow or unresponsive widget can drastically increase the page load time, if it even finishes loading at all.

One of the principals we follow is GRACEFUL DEGRADATION. Simply put - If we have any issue serving the widget, we degrade gracefully…We disappear as if the widget was never installed. We wait for the most important thing on the page (your content that is) to load before we even call our servers. We keep the Java Script file size to a minimum, our code is highly cache optimized and we use a high availability CDN. If that’s not enough, we are also using what we call internally LAZY LOADING - We only call the widget if the user scrolls to the area where the widget would normally be visible. Great for those homepages with multiple posts.

Widgets take attention away from the most important part: Content

Well, this is a strong statement. I have to argue that this statement is false when it comes to outbrain. You are still reading this sentence but the outbrain widget is right here, just a few lines below. Typically, the recommendation/rating widget will appear at the end of the post. We want the reader to interact with the widget, but only after they’ve consumed the content. The purpose of the widget is to provide THE READER the best possible experience. Once your reader has finished consuming the content and is ready to leave the page, you want to drive them to what THEY will find most interesting.

They take up ad space

We’ve recently introduced Sponsored, But Good. This will enable you to enjoy both worlds - enhance your readers’ experience and make some $$$s. The ads that we show are quite unique…we show links to interesting content which is frequently a blog post speaking positively about a product or service. We assume your readers are in reading mode rather than shooting ducks… Of course that participation in the program is optional in case you don’t want any sponsored recommendations to appear on your site.

They can frustrate users…. Unappealing site designs add to the user experience, and bad experiences can turn users away.

I can’t really claim that our widget is beautiful…it inherits your CSS in order to blend perfectly with your site design. The widget will be as beautiful or as ugly as your site is

Does anyone still look at them?!

Hell yeah! I can’t share our exact numbers but our click through rates are constantly on the rise.  While contextual recommendations will do the job in some cases, the click through rates will stay flat. Our recommendations are personalized for each reader. As we gather more data and use it for personalization, the CTR gets better with time.

I’ll finish with another quote from Glen’s post.

As long as the widget is improving the user’s experience, keep it. Otherwise dump any widgets that don’t achieve that goal.