Increasing user adoption with Google Widgets

As with all company websites and intranets, keeping users interested and engaged with content can be a challenge. Often sites are informative and well laid out but don’t entice users to stay within the site or come back to use it as often as you would like.

To increase intranet or website stickiness, you can add features such as news, events, polls and many other interactive features such as games and video. However, to really unleash a users ability to personalise their homepage on your site you can add apps or widgets. Widgets are small pieces of code created by various companies and individuals to show information in a small area or window of the screen. Usually a group of widgets can be chosen and positioned on a site or portal.

Giving users the ability to add widgets to a site has multiple benefits including increased traffic, more engagement,' fun factor', quick win and more. A rapidly growing set of widgets is available from Google.

Google Widgets come in many forms and can be added to a website or intranet. They can give information as simple as the weather through to showing Facebook, YouTube, news, maps and many other well known websites and services. Each widget has been created by Google to fill a specific task such as social networking, news, events and so on.

The clever part is creating an interface that allows users to add this to their existing company intranet or website. This needs to be simple and yet flexible enough to allows users to quickly search through the many hundreds of Google Widgets and then select the ones most relevant to them. They can then drag and drop them on to the page in any order they like.

Users can choose their favourite blogs, news, video, social networking sites, weather and see all of this information in one single interface or portal. By allowing users the ability to completely personalise their experience of your website or intranet they’ll keep coming back. Not only will they will view their chosen widgets but view company information too.

An example of this is the VYRE Unify based Lowe Worldwide Portal. They had a clear set of objectives to ensure users frequently visit ‘MyLowe:’ they wanted staff to have a ‘sense of belonging’ and the ability to provide relevant information on Lowe Worldwide company and culture. They wanted staff to be able pick and choose what they want rather than being forced to view just a limited set of information on the portal.

By utilising their existing intranet coupled with Google Widgets, it allowed their users to customise the homepage to suit them. This combined with Lowe news and Works makes the Portal relevant and a central location for Lowe employees. Users can now choose from hundreds of Google Widgets that appeal to them directly and place them on their own personalised homepage alongside Lowe company information.

To achieve this, VYRE worked with Lowe to build an easy to use drag and drop based interface built on top of their Unify portal intranet. Our solution allowed them to provide a personalised system that meant users were able to add Google Widgets on the fly without the need for additional help or configuration by technical staff. Feedback from Lowe Worldwide on user adoption and intranet stickiness is very positive.

VYRE has a dedicated innovation team to ensure Unify is at the leading edge of web technologies. The innovation team not only incorporates their own ideas when developing new areas of the system but also assists clients by adding their ideas, needs and enhancements to Unify. The Lowe Worldwide system is a classic example of incorporating business needs and adding in open technologies to the Unify solution to ensure it keeps users engaged and entertained!

MyLOWE Portal with embedded Google Widgets