Following on from my previous blog post about Easy Content Units, I have been made aware of a similar product. widget:builder has been built by Medifusion.
A bit of background: Medifusion have been around in the affiliate space since 2003, focussing on price comparison in entertainment and electronics, and for the last few years have been syndicating their comparison data to other affiliates on a rev share basis. The rationale behind their comparison content widget is to allow affliates with limited programming skills the option to feature professional looking animated content units into their site .
So can someone with zero programming skills get it to work – let me have a go.
A single product price comparison widget (really good book by the way):
A dynamically updating carousel widget:
A horizontal slideshow widget:
How did I find it?
Incredibly easy. Putting together all of the above three widgets took me less than 10 minutes and hopefully you agree that they look very professionally done. The building of the widgets is virtually idiot proof, but support is provided if you need it. I really like the way that some additional information is pulled from the datafeed in some instances, eg availability, delivery times.
Any qualms?
A couple of things. Affiliates are not given the opportunity to select which merchants they wish to work with, and all available merchants are displayed for all products. Therefore links are potentially being displayed for merchants with whom affiliates are not signed up, leading to loss of commission in some instances. What would be helpful is a list of all the merchants featured so affilaites can attempt to sign up for all of them. Also a couple of the larger networks are still not integrated, namely DGM and Affilinet.
Conclusion
A great tool and a way to augment quality content. I think the content units add a touch of professionalism to a blog or basic content site. I am assured that there are many more developments to come so go and have a play for yourself at http://widget.find-services.co.uk/
