Social Shopping Widget: Check Before You Buy

We do create a lot of widgets and we like it, since widgets are an unique combination of a viral video, viral game and a micro site. So widgets challenge our creative and interactive minds. And widgets offer brands, agencies and consumers new opportunities.

Consumers like to add widgets to their social networks, mainly because it enhances their social status and makes them look cool in an environment of peers.

To get widgets spread faster, social media marketing agencies can fit widgets into important social networks seamlessly through natural and paid seeding. The good thing about widgets compared to online display ads: widgets can virally spread and become weapons of mass affection, display ads and banners not.

Although the CPM costs of display ads (banners) are lower per 1000 impressions, paid seeding is more expensive since you pay about 250 Euro for 1.000 clip views.

Off course a viral commercial has much more impact and branding awareness than i.e. a rectangle or smaller banner ad. And a banner ad can never get a viral spread and reach more people for free. A viral commercial will spread after the initial paid seeding. But, back to what I came online for: widgets.

Smart widget use alert! Most online consumers check product ratings and reviews from peers, before they will buy. We all check before we buy! So here is a smart widget example for retailers and e-tailers.

American media company TurnTo Networks, created a smart widget with enables users to look within their social network (i.e. MySpace or Facebook) for matching product reviews from friends that have already bought and review this product. Brand managers should understand peer reviews are much more powerful than a shouting commercial.

The social shopping widget can tell if your friends are buying at the same website(s) as you do. And the widget shows what your friends have bought at these websites.

With the widget you can import friends from your address books. Through this list you can ask them per e-mail or instant messenger (i.e. Yahoo!, MSN) how the rate the product / service they have purchased.

Do you think it will turn TurnTo Networks into the Google Adsense of social shopping?

Source: LaComunidad