Supportsoft Glossary

Interactive Elements Enhancing User Experience

Widgets are specialised components of graphic user interfaces that provide additional functionality and/or information within the website/application space. They provide specific functions and tasks such as providing the current weather, searching, or providing recent blog posts or user feedback, as well as integrating third-party services into your website. Widgets are also modular in design; they can be moved about, removed, or added, thereby not creating an effect on the core structure of your website/application.

As it pertains to the user experience/user journey, widgets allow users to access relevant features and functionalities at the right time, and instead of jumping from page to page searching for a feature, the user has direct access to the functionality or information they want to view from their dashboard/homepage/sidebar. This improves overall user experience and increases the efficiency of the user by reducing the "friction" associated with using websites that contain many pages of content.

Widgets have become widespread in content management systems (CMSs), mobile apps, and dashboards (OS) developed for mobile and desktop operating systems, such as Android and iOS. In the case of CMSs like WordPress, for example, widgets allow non-technical users to configure the layout and functionality of their CMS site without having the ability to write code, and developers can then build/customise widgets for their clients and/or end-users according to their unique business and end-user needs.