CardMarketing 2.0

Web 2.0 isn’t only about social networks, collaboration and user-generated content. It’s also about ease of use, making all the information out there easier for people – for you – to access in a fun and super-efficient way. In short, it’s about making the world wide web your world wide web, enabling information to be brought to you rather than you having to go off in search of it. In fact, in Web 2.0, you could argue that browsing is for bums, surfing for suckers, googling just sooooo passé.

But how do you turn the web into your web? How can people access what they need without trawling through the internet, without visiting the sites that are important to them one at a time? One approach, and this is a path taken by a growing number of progressive websites and early adopter companies in an effort to enrich their customers’ experience, is … wait for it… the widget. “Widgets!?!”, you exclaim. “What the hell are they?”

Well, according to those at the cutting edge of online marketing, widgets and the ‘widgetization’ of the web are the next big growth area — so big, in fact, that in an article at the tail end of 2006, Newsweek even wondered if 2007 was set to be ‘The Year of the Widget?’

If you work off Mac Os 10 Tiger, and are familiar with Dashboard, you’ll have known what widgets are for quite some time. But if you don’t, they’re essentially funkily designed gadgets, mini-applications, portable chunks of code, call them what you will, that can be dragged and dropped – or ‘dynamically embedded’ in the unlikely event you want to get technical – on your personal home page, desktop, MySpace page or blog.

In fact, widgets are so flexible and easy to use that they can pretty much be dropped anywhere by anyone — you just need to know how to copy and paste. The moment you’re online, the widgets go live and stream the information or services that are important to you, to you — in real time. This makes the web experience far richer, saves time and provides people with a lot more control.

For example, you might have a weather widget, which gives you a constantly updated forecast for your area, or a widget providing a daily ski or surf report for a particular resort or beach. If you like to keep up-to-speed with current affairs, you could have a BBC or Sky News widget, and, if you like to keep an eye on your share portfolio, how about a stock quote widget feeding through stock prices in real time? Similarly, if you like to respond quickly to any incoming emails, why not download a Gmail widget that shows whether or not you have any unopened mail? You get the idea.

In an article entitled ‘Widgets and Web 2.0’, blogger Frank Gruber explains why widgets are set to become the future of the WWW. His main point is that there’s simply too much information out there and that, to make any sense of it at all, you simply have to narrow it down: “Widgets are the wave of the future of the web as our attention continues to be overloaded with too much information. With widgets, users are able to customize a page to be able to get their sites and services in personalized homepages.”

But you don’t have to be on a Mac to get a taste of what widgets are about. Google, Yahoo and Netvibes (the custom made Web 2.0 home page solution — check it out, it’s superb) all now offer personalizable home pages using widgets and Google has already gone public on the fact that the personalizable home page is its fastest growing product. But that’s enough on what widgets are. Now what could widgets mean for you?

Widgetizing the Card Space

For creative online card marketers, there are dozens of ways issuers can widgetize their cardholder base (although many will depend on the correct security measures being in place). For instance, why not create a ‘Call Me in 10’ widget that a person can insert on their desktop or personal home page? If they click on this branded button – let’s say they have a query on an individual transaction – they’re guaranteed to get a call within 10 minutes.

Or how about ‘Send me a Statement’, a widget designed like a tiny statement (again, branded) that requests a statement covering a time period outlined by you. And if you want to increase your credit limit, or overdraft level, why should you have to go to the trouble of logging in or phoning through? That takes time. Instead, simply tap your account details, your preferred limit and the reasons for your request into a ‘Give Me More’ widget and you’ll receive a response within 24 hours.

But why offer a dozen widgets when all the information a cardholder needs could be accessed through one? A branded, stylishly designed ‘CardMaster’ widget, for example, could do all of this and much more, like provide an instant balance, allow people to make a transfer or payment, or enable them to tap in any general questions they have and get an instant, real-time response.

Alternatively, why couldn’t CardMaster be used to market new products and rates? This isn’t blind marketing, it’s the most targeted marketing you can get —straight onto your cardholders’ desktops or home pages, right in front of their eyes. The possibilities are endless. But the message is this: by facilitating the day-to-day banking needs of your cardholders, you’ll make them a lot more happy about your service, and a lot more loyal.

Of course, a loyal cardholder is a brand advocate, who will forward your widgets to friends, family and online buddies, explaining the joys of having a card with X, Y or Z. For a stylish, helpful and informative widget, the viral potential is clear. Look at widgets as ambassadors of your brand.

Note: At some point in the Spring, Apple will be releasing ‘Leopard’, the latest version of its Mac OS 10 operating system, which will allow users, even those that are technologically challenged, to create their own widgets and share them with their friends. If consumers are going to be creating widgets of their own in the near future, shouldn’t you be creating them, too?