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Have you ever noticed how widgets on websites make surfing more accessible and more pleasant? The implementation of widgets in modern websites is becoming more and more popular. Now it doesn’t need much effort from developers to install it to web apps. Adding widgets to your website brings a lot of advantages and engages more users as they give your software more functions and abilities.
Let’s go into details and define what a widget is and how it works inside the website. Also, we would like to inform you on how to build the widget on the examples of our own developments.
What is a Website Widget?
Widget is an application that is implemented in the body of a website page. It is a small and functional block located in a narrow website column. It can have a look of a button, banner, text line or block, etc. Usually, widgets are displayed on all pages and are always visible to users. So it is an excellent way to show critical information in the column. There is a wide range of widgets – calendar, clock, translator, video or music player, search bars, etc. Every widget fits a particular industry and makes it more efficient—weather forecast widget for travel or booking websites, basket widget for online shopping, and others.
Common types of widgets
As we have already said, many different widgets can be embedded on your website. They make the interaction with the site more exciting and straightforward. It is a kind of customization for your solution. Widgets influence the user experience and bring more excellent value to your website. It means that your website will be on top of searches and attract more potential customers.
So the most popular widgets are the following:
Our expertise in custom order creation and calculation
We would like to mention our success stories of embedding calculator widgets to custom websites that have been on the market for a long time and needed changes. These improvements gave a lot of benefits and made the workflow more efficient. So we described how exactly the calculator works for these particular websites and what benefits they give.
HDR Print Case – order calculating
HDR Print is a vast printing company that prints all types of documents, banners, posters, and others. As the number of orders has started to increase rapidly, the owners needed to digitalize their business and automate some work processes. Altamira team built a customized website for HDR Print. One of the main features is a calculator for orders. What functions does the calculator offer? They are the following:
- ability to choose the size of future printings according to categories like banners, posters, docs, etc.;
- preview of the future printings on the required size and type
- typing the required sizes of customers` printings and counting the prices
The calculator widget decreases the need for personal communication with customers, as they always can find suitable printing, type their size, and know the final price they will pay. It helps to reduce the costs of additional services for customers and make the work of the whole company more productive. On top of that, it makes customer service way better.
Soljets Case – ERP system
Soljets is an aircraft selling company whose website was developed by the Altamira team. Before contacting us, they had an old version of the website that wasn’t productive enough and had a poor design. Besides the providing of renewed design with colors, and patterns suitable for their industry, we developed a complex ERP system. So what features made the website gain after our work?
- search for aircraft by filters – price, model, manufacturer, size
- comparing the chosen model to other existing on the platform
- ability to know the approximate price of the airplane and perform a range mapping
Moreover, customers can find a detailed description of every model of airplanes like weights, operating costs, cabin interior, performance. So all required information by customers can be found on their websites, so the owners don’t need to spend many costs to contact every customer personally.
Benefits of custom software for calculating on your website
Today with the development of technologies and implementing them into business, most business owners want to make the experience for their customers as excellent as it is possible. If your company provides online services for customers, most of them are curious to find out the price for the service they would like to choose in advance. Calculating is useful in many industries like insurance, clothes stores, real estate, etc. It helps customers to control their spendings and count how much they would need for a particular service. It also saves your and customers’ time and reduces unnecessary costs.
We would emphasize the main advantages of embedding a calculator into your website and how your business can profit from using it. So here are the benefits:
- Attract the target audience
The calculator helps to receive orders only from your target audience. You won’t get excess questions from people who don’t need your services. Also, it will raise the general number of orders. Who uses the calculator on your website? Customers interested in your services or goods will use the calculator to discover the final price. A customized calculator attracts more users and makes them sure about the reliability of your company. It shows the latest information about your services and prices and lets your customers stay informed in a simple and fast way.
- Stand out from competitors
Today there is a wide range of different websites with various designs. A crucial step in creating a website is to make it custom. Individual and unique design that will attract more customers is what you need to build. So you have to hire a team of experienced designers to produce it. The unique design stays in memory for a long time and differs your company from hundreds of others. Exclusive options, simple interface, striking design – all these components build your reputation. Widgets are essential elements not just of the website interface but also the functionality.
- SEO and traffic improvements
When your potential customers spend more time on your website with an embedded calculator, the bounce rate drops, and the site’s behavioral metrics improve significantly. Your website can attract more organic traffic by correctly selecting keywords for the website pages that have an online calculator.
- Saving time
Embedding a calculator into your website saves a lot of time. There is no need to answer a vast number of questions of your customers about prices, sizes, models, and other filters. It saves time for both of you as the client can know if the service is affordable to him and worth ordering. Customers independently select the needed option and calculate the final cost.
- Scalability
Embedding a calculator makes your business wide-scale. Imagine if tomorrow instead of 10 orders, your company will get 100. Would your employees cope with that?
- Automatization
Calculator automates your work processes and reduces the need for human resources. sales team
- Saving money
As we mentioned above the decrease in human resource needs, means you will save money because you don’t need to pay a big number of employees.
Also, the page of the calculator shouldn’t be blank. It is better to add ad banners, a description of the value, and benefits of your company. Discounts and bonuses are a great way to keep the attention of any potential customer and further encourage them to make orders.
Common features for the calculator widget
As we have already found out, the main task of the calculator is to count the total price of services for customers; there is one more question – how to create and customize it. Your calculator should be simple and flexible. We prepared a list of key components that your calculator should contain. Among them are:
- fields or buttons for selecting sets of materials, services, delivery services;
- rates of exchange;
- drop-down lists;
- checkboxes;
- option buttons;
- options for sending the result.
Moreover, there is a type of calculator that not only counts the total price of services but collects data of potential customers. How does it work? When a visitor wants to know the price but hesitates about the choice, the final price will be sent to his or her email. So customers have to type an email or phone number to receive it. So in case if the particular customer still doesn’t make an order, you can always contact him to know the reasons or to advise something suitable to his heeds. In such a way, you get an opportunity to expand your customer base.
Of course, there are some visitors who are afraid of their data to be announced to third parties, but mostly it works profitably for your company.
There are many companies that already have calculators on their websites. So your calculator has to be customized as we mentioned before.
Services where you can create a calculator
For creating a calculator, you don’t need to write code or involve the efforts of the whole team of developers. It is all about design and customization. There are platforms where you can create a calculator for your own website with individual features and design elements. So here is the list to top used calculator creators:
uCalc
This is an online construction for calculators. It is available for desktop and for mobile devices. uCalc is simple in usage and flexible as it is suitable for different websites. It is divided into several categories, like healthcare, real estate, beauty, delivery, and others. This calculator creator is suitable for people who are not strong from the technical side. All you have to do is to register and choose a template. Moreover, you can create your own calculator from scratch and make it fully customized. Despite the options of a simple calculator, uCalc provides integration with payments online through your website. It also can show discounts, special offers, bonuses that are in complex with buying the service. There are several plans for using uCalc. The free one provides only a testing variant of your calculator and no special functions. However, there three another paid plans for one month:
- Basic
$3.20 per month for up to 5 projects with all fundamental features but no chat support. - Standard
$8 per month for up to 15 projects with over 1 000 Email and 10+ SMS notifications. - Pro
$19.20 per month for unlimited projects, extended features, and chat support.
Also, you have to understand that readymade templates and calculator builders can not be unique fro 100%. There is a huge probability of creating the same calculator as your competitors did. It undermines the confidence of your potential customers and makes them hesitating between several companies.
Calconic
Calconic is another one online calculator builder that contains a set of widgets to create your own calculator. This service provides the ability to create an entirely individual and customized calculator that can be easily embedded on your website. The registration is free, but Calconic provides a 14-day free trial period for using the platform with five calculators. Then you need to choose the premium account to use these advanced features.
Despite the easy way of building a calculator on this type of platform, you have to remember that it is not really secure. As these paid services get data about your website, confidential information about your company and save it. So this data easily can be announced to third parties.
CMS calculation
OpenCart provides a builder of an online calculator for a particular product or category. It can suit an online store that sells a wide range of materials. This tool helps to count the total price for all products.
Calculator builders can not give the full opportunity to create an individual and unique widget. You may face some limitations that won’t let you build what you want. So it better to invest in the custom development of a calculator. Nevertheless, it demands more costs and time; custom calculators are more advanced and functional. It is the investment in the successful development of your website.
The best way to build a calculator for your website and avoid most problems with uniqueness and security is to develop it from scratch. Designers will build an individual design of a calculator and it will suit your needs and requirements perfectly.
How to create a calculator?
Before the start of building your own calculator, you have to take into account several main steps that are crucial in creating this tool. They are the following:
Investment needed
The need and the amount of investment you will require to depend on your target audience and business strategy and aims. You need to know if a calculator gives your company value and what advantages it will bring. As you may know, most websites that sell their services use calculators in their work. From the beginning, you have to understand if your potential customers need this tool, what features are crucial and need to be implemented.
Way of building
If you decide that a calculator is mandatory for your business, the development process and its complexity depend on the range of features. Building a business plan is a critical step in the creation of your calculator. You and your Business Analyst have to combine an individual plan of development, with its strong side and potential problems, detailed description of every requirement, the average cost of your project, and other functions that should be embedded into your tool.
Your calculator has to be customized as there is a high level of competition in this field. Unique design attracts more users than a simple template. Planning in advance helps to avoid some problems and reduce unnecessary costs. Our Business Analysis and designers have a rich experience in creating individual and exciting designs for the websites and tools implemented. Contact us for a professional consultation and build your business strategy.
Promotion
After all stages of development and launching a calculator on your website, you need to promote it and inform all visitors about its existence and advantage of using it. Here are several tips on how to do it:
- Place a link to the calculator as a separate category in the website menu, and also put it on your blog articles if you have them to make it more eye-catching
- It is good to use it for sales manager while communicating with potential customers to show the benefits and prospects
- Promotion via social media is considered to be the most efficient way of advertising your tool as you can always use paid ads.
Improvements and maintenance
There is one more thing to mention about a calculator. It needs updates, changes, and constant improvements as the competitors take care of it too. With the development of technologies, it can be optimized with time to engage more users and make them stay on your website longer.
Conclusion
A calculator is not just a tool for counting. It is an excellent service from the marketing and leads generating sides. It attracts more customers to your services as people tend to know the total price from the beginning. Of course, you can build a calculator for your website on your own. But would it be so good? So it is better to hire Business Analyst and experienced designers to create a customized and unique design for your widget.
As the design is the first thing, the visitor pays attention to and decides whether he needs to buy your services. Business Analyst will help you to analyze the modern market and competitors` websites to reveal the strong side and advantages that you can take from them and what you need to add individually. It will give you a better understanding of how to attract more visitors and promote your services more efficiently. Besides having the individual design, the calculator should be simple in usage and convenient for every visitor. It increases the time of surfing on your website. For more details about your case and building a business model suitable for your industry, contact us as soon as possible.