Smart widget promotion greatly increases your widget’s adoption – and your website traffic.

It’s not difficult to get 30,000 installs of your widget within your first month. Publishing your widget in widget galleries and download archives will help you boost your widget installations. The main source of installations for your widget is Live Gallery.

Follow these simple steps to get 1000 daily installations:

1. Create a widget from any web content, or convert your existing web widget to the desktop.
2. Make a nice screenshot, 60×60 pixels.
3. Add your widget to Live Gallery.
4. Attach the screenshot you created in Step 2.
5. Add tags to your widget profile, so users will be able to find it. Use as many tags as you need, and use different keyword variations.
6. Ask your users to vote for your widget and leave comments.

How does this affect your website traffic?

You can place an ad or link to your website on a widget, or make a widget that interacts with your website and sends users directly to it. For example, send users of your widget to your website database search.

The average CTR (click-through rate) on a widget ad or link is 10%. You can increase this value by interacting with widget users, sending desktop alerts, and making special offers and promotions.

Example:

Let’s assume that your widget receives about 30,000 installs each month. In 3 months it will get about 90,000 installs. Predicting that you have a 10% CTR, you can expect about 9,000 visitors to your website who have a high chance of becoming constant users.

Desktop widgets are great way to stay in touch with your audience and promote your content. The more downloads and installs of your widget, the more visits and clicks you’ll get on your website. Desktop widgets are highly adopted by users, and are lightweight and easy to install – especially Windows Vista and Windows 7 gadgets which don’t require the “installation” that most of us are accustomed to. You simply “add” the widget to your desktop.

Content

Value
Content is king, and it’s important that your content provide value to your users. This rule applies to widgets, too. Your widget should be interesting and valuable to your users. Give them something that they’ll love and can really use.

Uniqueness
Users can install many widgets on a single desktop, so don’t try to put everything into one widget. Give them unique widgets with your own content, and don’t make just another clock or RSS widget. Also, offer users choices by making several widgets and letting them choose the ones they they want to install.

Distribution

Your website
This is your primary distribution point of your widget. Whether it’s their first time at your site or they’re regular visitors, if users find your content valuable there’s a good chance that they’ll install your widget so they can access your services any time from their desktop. We prepare code to paste at your website – you’ll get this code in your confirmation email after you create your widget, or you can always come back to your Dashboard to retrieve it later.

Galleries
You can also post your widget in the Desktopify gallery to expose it to other users who are looking for widgets. To do this, you need to add thumbnail of your widget when you create it, and make sure that your widget operates properly. There are also other widget galleries out there, such as Widgipedia, and to promote your Windows Vista or Windows 7 gadget, you can add it to Live Gallery. All Windows users have access to this gallery from the Gadgets menu in Windows. This is the most popular gallery, and top widgets there have been downloaded by millions of users.

Directories
Desktopify also provides you with widgets that run like a regular application. This allows you to submit your widget to download directories. There are hundreds of these directories: CNET Download, Tucows, Softpedia, and many more. Submitting to these directories not only increases widget downloads, but also has positive effect on your SEO.