6 Widgets Every Website Should Have In The Sidebar

The sidebar of any website is a crucial part to the website. Other than the content, it is the next most exposed area of a website since the contents of the sidebar can still be viewed when scrolling down the page. But, for bloggers, it is an area where we need to make sure it is as useful to web users as possible. The more useful a sidebar is to web users, the more chance they will click onto the contents of the sidebar, stay on the site or click onto an advert. With this in mind, here are six widgets websites should have in their sidebar.

1. Search box – The search box is the absolute must have for every sidebar. Giving the web user the power to search for any article on your website will enable web users to stay on your website for longer, which is never a bad thing. If possible, try and make this an active and responsive search box, which shows results when typing into the search box, a bit like Google does – this will really improve your website ten-fold.
2. Popular posts – If you have articles on on similar topics, then it is definately useful to the web user to see what the most popular posts are on your website. If you choose to include this, I would stick it at the most popular posts for a week, so that the posts always stay up to date with the real world as much as possible.
3. Advert – The sidebar is an area that can be monetised on most websites. For this reason, I reccomend that you stick at least one advert in the sidebar, such as a 300×250 advert. Anything larger than this, like a skyscraper advert, will ruin the look of the sidebar and take up too much space, reducing the ‘usefulness’ of it too.
4. Social media connections – Web users want to connect with the websites they like. Therefore, make sure you include some links to the website’s social media channels, mainly for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (if the website has one) and a RSS feed, for those that still use RSS feeds as a source of gaining information.
5. Categories – It is a good idea to stick a list or a drop down (if you have too many categories) into the sidebar. The web user might not know the specific type of article they want to read. But, if they know the category they are interested in reading in, you can provide them that portal to view related articles to a category to browse.
6. Subscription widget – Although you can say this is related to social media connections, I feel email marketing deserves its own widget to get web users to subscribe. This is because if you gain a  good following via email marketing, the possibilities of using that following to benefit your website are endless! Once you have a loyal following via email, you could then promote useful things to the web users to buy, and include affiliate links to make money from it.