As an online seller looking at widgets and their potential role on your blog or website, it is helpful for you to examine them in light of three important and related business drivers:

• Traffic generation: For an online sellers, the direct or indirect purpose of blog or website is attract potential customers. This is done by generating traffic. There are many components to generating traffic and widgets can definitely impact some of them.
• Stickiness: This involves creating a online property that end-users (prospective clients) spend a lot of time on or visit frequently. Stickiness can be creating a number of different ways including having unique and enticing content, providing value and functionality to end-users, and creating a strong sense of community that gets people to come back. Widgets can be used to enable or accelerate some of these strategies.
• Revenue generation: This is the logical end-goal for most online sellers. Most sellers would like to see their investment of time, energy and money in building a blog generate some ROI (Return on Investment)

Now let’s examine how different categories of widgets can help enable or accelerate some of these business objectives and drivers.

Business Widgets
These widgets help you promote your core business objectives such as listing property and inventory for sale or actually allowing you to do transactions through your site. These are designed to advertise and promote your business products or services with a goal of revenue generation.

• Listings: vFlyer (Listing Widgets)
• Transaction: Paypal

Communication Widgets
These widgets allow end-users to more effectively communication with you. When you have a direct or indirect business object behind your site, this is extremely important, since communication is directly related to lead and revenue generation.

• Instant Messaging: Plugoo, Meebo
• Voice/Voicemail: Jangl, Jaxtr, SnapVine
• SMS: txtDrop

Media Widgets
These widgets enable the display, distribution and sharing of rich media such video (interviews, walk-throughts, videocasts, i.e.) and audio (podcasts, i.e.). When used correctly that can be a source of both traffic generation and stickiness.

• Video: YouTube, WellcomeMat
• Audio: Odeo

Application Widgets
These widgets add end-user utility and functionality to your blog or website. If they create enough unique value, they too can be a source of stickiness.

• Analytic and Valuation Information: Altos Research (AltosCharts), Trulia (TurliaStats), Zillow
• Calculators: vFlyer (Mortgage Calculator)
• Floor Plans: Mapwing
• Maps: Trulia (TruliaMaps)
• RSS and Email: Feedburner, Technorati, WidgetBox (Blidgets)

Community Widgets
These widgets allow you to build a sense of community and interest on your site. Fundamentally, community widgets function both as traffic drivers and a source of stickiness since they encourage people to visit and stay on your site. Some communicate who else has visited (or is visiting) your blog, while others focus on your sites popularity or traffic stats or what you are currently doing.

• Social Networking: MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog
• Presence: Twitter
• Statistics: Technorati, Who’s.Amung.Us

Self-Expression and Profile Widgets
These widgets fall into the bling and information category! They add can uniqueness and a sense of personality to your blog or simply communicate business or personal information about yourself. These probably have the least impact on the drivers we have discussed.

• Avatars: Meez
• Profiles: Linkedin, Facebook

Administrative Widgets
Most administrative widgets are not end-user facing. They allow the owner of the blog or website to manage, improve or performance administrative tasks such as reducing spam, improving performance, tracking users, generating traffic, and improving SEO (search engine optimization). Most of these directly or indirectly focus on generating traffic and reducing cost (with relates to increasing revenue). SEO, for example, generates traffic. Understanding traffic stats can help you improve traffic. Translation widgets can lead to increased traffic. Most of these are specific to the blogging platforms (such as Wordpress, Moveable Text, TypePad).

Widget Resources
There are a number of sites that are marketplaces for widgets for online sellers

• WidgetBox – Directory of widgets
• HousingWidgets – Real estate widgets

I have to run to my Blogger Connect panel so I will update this post when I get back!