Your website is the vital thing for your online presence. It’s the first thing people see when they try to find out more about your business, and it carries a lot of weight. So, it should be clear why it’s so important for it to be as good as it can be. Of course, a lot of things go into this. You have to think about its design, functionality, and the content you post on it. Not only it should be top-notch from the beginning, but you also should work on improving it at all times. And website widgets are what makes this possible. No one has time to overhaul an entire site every single week, so this is a much better solution. However, like anything else, these have their good and bad sides. We want to help you make an informed decision, so today, we’re looking at all the pros and cons of using website widgets.

Before we dive into all the technical things, let’s see what widgets are and why people use them in the first place.

What are website widgets?

By definition, a widget is a functional block that you add to your website. Usually, these are third-party apps that you embed into your site to add a function you wouldn’t have otherwise. As you can assume, there’s a wide variety of these, and you can find one for pretty much any purpose you can think of.

The idea behind using them is to provide your customers with the experience they can’t get anywhere else. And as such, they found their place in all kinds of sites. As a matter of fact, choosing the right widgets is one of the things to consider when setting up an e-commerce website. And things aren’t much different in other niches.

So, the internet would be a different thing without these, but what are their real-world advantages? Well, let’s take a look.

Pros

Right from the start, we can tell you that good widgets have a lot more pros than cons. At the end of the day, that’s why so many websites are using them. But let’s see why they are so good.

They’re free, quick, and easy to install

What most webmasters love about widgets is that they’re easy to install and actually work. When you’re adding a widget, you’re not making a big modification to your site. None of your pages will be down, and you don’t even have to put your website into a maintenance mode to install them.

So, with just a few simple clicks, you can have them up and running on any of your pages. It’s so easy to do this that companies like Movers Development offer to do it without any additional charge when they’re creating your site. And the best of all is that most widgets are actually free. There are, of course, premium ones that you have to pay for, but if you don’t need anything special, basic ones will work just fine.

A lot of functions to choose from

Depending on what your website is all about, you’re going to look for different ways to enrich the user experience. And although there’s no single widget that can do everything, there’s a widget for pretty much anything you can think of.

So, whatever you need, there’s a solution for it. And even if such a thing doesn’t exist, you can always hire someone to make it. They’re not too hard to design, and a good web designer should be able to do it in just a couple of days.

They’re customizable

Before we take a look at the later part of the pros and cons of using website widgets, let’s talk about few more pros.

Every widget is made to do a certain thing, and you can’t change that. However, most of them are customizable in one way or another. They need to be useful to many sites and webmasters, and people who make them know this.

So, most of the time, you can change their appearance or even how they behave. Hence, when you want to use a chatbot in your digital marketing campaign, you can choose how it will do what it’s designed for.

Cons

As we already mentioned, widgets, in general, have more good than bad sides. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no disadvantages to having them on your site. And here’s what those are.

Problems with browsers

One of the most common problems people encounter is compatibility. And here, we don’t mean installing a widget on your site but the issues that the end-user might experience.

Some browsers don’t support scripts, and if there are no alternatives provided, this can create one of the following problems.

• The widget might look differently
• It might not behave as it should
• It could even stop working altogether

To avoid this, pick widgets that support as many browsers as possible. Think about what devices your visitors use to get to your site, and choose according to that.

Development issues

To make sure that the widget is working as it should, there’s a lot of quality assurance and testing required. If you’re getting a widget from a well-known company, this shouldn’t be an issue. However, if you’re getting it from a less popular developer or paying for a custom solution to be made, you can expect a few bumps in the road.

So, prepare to spend some time working on it to get it where you want it to be. On the other hand, if you need it as quickly as possible, there are ways to cut down your UI development time. Determine what are the most important things for you, and choose accordingly.

Conclusion

Both pros and cons of using website widgets do exist. Luckily, there are a lot more of the former than the latter. We hope that this encourages you to try them and find the best solution for your site. The more time you spend trying to make it a better place for your visitors, the more of them you’ll get. So, it pays off to experiment.