Please read both of them. We can really use your help with the first point. The second point is a much more subjective one. I won’t say which way to throw your support, but it’s an issue worth your time to have an informed opinion.

Share Your Blackout Details

As a small company, we test for as many scenarios as we can. There’s no way to prep for what we saw yesterday, and no way for us to understand it’s full impact. That’s why I’m asking for your help. I’ll outline some of the “known” issues or expected ones from a downed server, but if you want to share your experiences – especially if they’re not listed below – please email me directly at kevin – at – brandthunder – dot – com (substitute ” – at – ” with @ and ” – dot – ” with .). You can also make a comment in the Brand Thunder support forum.

Some things we know about:

• Toolbar buttons missing from themes – Many of the buttons are images that are pulled from our server. With the server down, the buttons won’t load. This is different from the theme image, which always has a locally saved version.
• Internet Explorer down in some instances – There was an early identification of a bug in an update that just released that required a server check. Oversight on our part that we quickly rolled back, but there may have been some instances where this was noticed.
• Installs not completing - Some of our themes are fully hosted on other sites. Examples include the Chrome Webstore and Addons.Mozilla.org. I know on Chrome, themes went through the install process fine, but the theme never loaded because of the blackout. If it’s not working now, I’d suggest uninstalling the first attempt then reinstalling. It should pull it up fine.
• Sidebar content missing – This may have been an artifact of the reconfiguration. I saw the outage today and is now working in some themes I’ve checked.

If there are other oddities, or issues you’ve identified, please share.

SOPA – The Long-Term Blackout

Good intentions don’t always make good policy. I’ll admit I’m not versed enough to talk to all aspects of the Stop Online Piracy Act, but for a company that has created an engine allowing anyone to instantly build a Firefox and Internet Explorer browser theme, and publish it to Brand Thunder’s browser theme gallery – it scares the heck out of me.

Despite the legal protections we put in place, like the user agreement stating a user has ownership of all images used in their theme, I’m sure there’s exposure somewhere. Just like with freedom of expression, there are those that will say things you don’t like. With a tool that allows you to express yourself via a browser theme and then share it out, expressions that approach the line of appropriate use will undoubtedly occur. Artistic license, satire or parody, we simply could not afford the legal costs of defending a series of challenges that can come our way.

Whether we willingly or accidentally participated in the SOPA blackout, we all got a taste of what may happen if it comes to reality.

The first desktop wallpaper, as used on the Xerox Star in 1975. -Image via Wikipedia

Community toolbars have been around for years helping online publishers build engagement with their fans and online community. The power of this tool has helped build Conduit, the leader in this space, into what some say is a billion dollar company. Engagement is a powerful tool.

For many years more, desktop wallpapers were the path to customization and personalization for the personal computer – from family photos to wonderful waterfalls – we’ve either seen or tried them. They are easy to install and change. There is no way to interact with the wallpaper, they exist simply for the visual enhancement they offer. The only real downside? Wallpapers spend the majority of time covered by the applications running on the computer. You get to enjoy that beautiful graphic when you start up and shut down your computer – hello and goodbye.

So, what’s it like to take two great ideas and merge them into one. It’s like asking the question, can you get two great tastes to taste great together?

Your Web Site on a Custom Community Toolbar

Conduit Platform gives all web publishers, regardless of size, the ability to create and publish a branded, customized Community Toolbar. Anything you can put on a website can also be deployed on a Community Toolbar including: applications, content, gadgets, feeds, social media tools, personal account data, games, services, links, and more.

With over 230 million publishers taking advantage of the Conduit platform, there’s no shortage of people that see the value of extending their web presence to the platform with the most Internet engagement – the Internet browser. There’s great upside to putting your content in the browser and creating a persistent presence whenever a user is online.

While toolbars are still core to their offering, Conduit has extended their approach of simplifying the build process of technical marketing tools and branching into the very hot category of mobile and browser apps.

Your Favorite Image on Your Computer

Your computer monitor is an elaborate picture frame. Picking the image is probably the hardest part of deciding how to customize your computer desktop. On my computer, I can literally right click on any image and “Set as Desktop Background.” It can be a bit overwhelming if you think about it. Every image you encounter is an option for you.

That’s where sites like Desktop Nexus come in. Between the site and their very active communities, they curate the visual selection for you. Landing on the web site gives you an immediate view into “Recently Popular Wallpapers – By Member Votes” so you can grasp what people like. They also offer Galleries, tags, sorting, creators and just about any other navigation method you may prefer. Really well done. And they’re well on their way to meeting their goal of the household brand-name to answer the endless demand for computer wallpapers.

Desktop Nexus provides a medium for members to share their desktop creations with the world. For designers, it’s a great showcase for their work and opportunity build their following. You’ll even find some designers using a site like this to cross-promote their work on other services. Like this 2012 Seasons wallpaper with links to browser theme options.

Toolbar + Wallpaper = Browser Theme

Whether you’re looking for the latest Chrome browser theme from Kelly Clarkson, the Firefox theme for BCS National Champion contender Alabama Crimson Tide, or an Internet Explorer theme featuring a favorite coupon and deals site like Presto Savings – Brand Thunder has been the place for online marketers to turn. What each one of these offers is a combination of community toolbar and desktop wallpaper.

While a browser theme can’t match the visual real estate of the desktop wallpaper, it is assured exposure whenever consumers are online – often hours a day. So no matter how many hours someone is spending on Facebook, they can be spending every minute of it in an experience you designed.

As for toolbars, there’s little in terms of functionality advantages that one product has over the other. Community toolbars and interactive browser themes each have the highly desired presence when someone is online, and enjoy the benefit of a persistent communication channel to the end user – and hence the ability to engage those users.

Following the lead Conduit established for its toolbars, Brand Thunder launched BT:Engage and put the power of creating interactive browser themes into the hands of any online publisher. Now any web site, online community or individual can build their own custom browser theme by simply uploading any images they want into BT:Engage and then dragging and dropping them into the theme. It’s just as simple to add buttons and content feeds.

When you combine the two great ideas of community toolbars and desktop wallpapers – you get interactive browser themes, the Reese’s cup of the Internet.

Related articles

• Conduit Community Toolbar vs. Browser Theme (brandthunder.com)
• Using Browser Themes to Create Free Desktop Backgrounds (brandthunder.com)
• Theme Spotlight: Digital Blasphemy Wallpapers & Background Themes (brandthunder.com)

This is an added bonus to the redesigned browser theme gallery for anyone seeking Chrome themes, Firefox themes and IE themes.

Theme Gallery

Brand Thunder browser themes were usually found on the websites of their clients. With the increase in demand for browser themes driven by the customization available in Chrome and Firefox, Brand Thunder is giving users a destination site to find the best themes for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

And why not? What we’ve seen over the years is users move across themes sometimes based on mood, other times by season, sometimes just for a change. Personalization is so easy with Brand Thunder. Whether you want a theme from the Buffalo Bills, Greyson Chance or something for the latest holiday, you’ll find something to enjoy. And once you’ve installed more than one theme, you can cycle through the convenient theme selector to choose the theme you want at that precise moment.

User Generated Themes

When Brand Thunder released BT:Engage, we offered a Share page giving the URL and quick access to sharing across Facebook, Twitter and more. Well, we’ve finally remedied one of the omissions – BT:Engage users can now publish their themes to the Brand Thunder Gallery.

It’s a simple as clicking the Publish to Gallery button. Once you do, it’s immediately pushed to the Gallery. Unless you publish to the gallery, the themes are kept private and only viewable by users with whom you share the URL for the download page.

Free Publicity

Who doesn’t like a little free publicity? With placement on our Gallery, it’s additional exposure for the theme and the designer behind them. We’re also using the Gallery homepage to feature some of the best themes we find. It’s our way of showcasing the amazing browser themes being generated from the community of Brand Thunder clients, designers and users.

Explore the Brand Thunder Gallery yourself to see the full range of styles your browser can enjoy. If you don’t see what you want, create your own at BT:Engage.

Now that we’ve released BT:Engage, the world’s first DIY browser theme creator for Firefox and IE, it’s interesting to see what small and medium businesses choose when they build a theme. The following are a few browser themes create by SMBs. Take a look and see if there are ideas that you can use for your own SMB marketing efforts.

SMB Marketing

Priv8teer

“I bleed for speed.” The Priv8teer is synonymous with a racing inspired lifestyle. They love that pit-in-your-stomach excitement you feel when you walk into the racing arena.  That’s the way they want you to feel about Priv8teer and they deliver it in all their efforts. The Priv8teer browser theme is no exception.

And it’s more than a selection of links to their brand of apparel and other racing inspired merchandise. Sure, they’ll get you to the store, but they honor the roots of the most passionate racers on the starting grid; the privateers. The Priv8teer browser theme delivers not just the essence of the track but gets you to the latest in motorsports and cycle news. It’s an excellent example of delivering a complete experience to your user base – if you know your user, you don’t have to lock them into links back to just your site.

94Fifty Sports Technologies

94Fifty helps improve the fundamental skill of any basketball player by using information to make skill development measurable. Whether an elite player or youth level, it’s a sophisticated product made accessible and cost effective. Cost effective can still offer superior service, especially when the team is discovering and exploiting free web-marketing tools like BT:Engage.

The 94Fifty browser theme is one component of the free offerings 94Fifty offers to players. The Member Login takes users directly to the free online community where they will find more than 75 ball-handling and shooting drills. It’s a great use of technology both on and off the court. And the Member Login is a great way to build a sense of belonging with your community.

SloDive Graphics & WebDesign Blog

SloDive is like a number of Brand Thunder’s clients in that it’s purely an online community. It might not be what you think of with small and medium businesses, but it’s definitely a growing segment of the SMB market.

The SloDive browser theme captures the look and feel of the community site, and helps get users to key areas for participation. When you’re dealing with a community, make sure you get them back to the interactive areas of your site. And like SloDive did, include a feed reader of your latest news. Giving your community easy access to breaking news is a great way to strengthen your relationship.

These are a few of the SMB browser themes made available with BT:Engage. Tell us about your company and browser theme in the comments below.

Image by zhouxuan12345678 via Flickr

We should have known how popular BT:Engage would be with the gamer community based on our official browser themes for IGN and Major League Gaming.

Especially for Gamers

The IGN and MLG browser themes are among our most popular, and just like many of our browser themes from our professional clients – they’re available for Google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Launching our DIY browser theme creator, BT:Engage, we’re starting to see the range of offerings from game fans and the supporting community. Here’s a quick look at what some of the game forums and fans of a game are building for their browser themes.

Game Forum Browser Themes

GoW Nation

Gears of War sold over 5 million copies and currently stands as the 5th best selling XBOX 360 game of all time. So, why shouldn’t it have it’s own browser theme? It does. It’s sleek, dark and gets you quickly to the best of GearsNation. Check out the GoW Nation browser theme.

Halo 3 Clan – Dropshock Brigade

If I’m spilling military secrets here, I think my posting days may be limited. The Brigade might claim to be the best trained, best equipped, and craziest outfit in the collection of colonies called the UNSC. I can attest that the DSB browser theme is the only theme that’ll take you “Feet First Into Hell!”

Game Dragoon

Game Dragoon is a place for all kinds of gamers to come and have a banter and relax. It’s a growing community and is sparking engagement across different games and genres. If you like to help create the personality of a site, it’d be a good place to frequent and the Game Dragoon browser theme is the point of entry to your participation.

Browser Theme for a Game

Aleris RPG

Aleris RPG, a Medieval fantasy-themed RPG, explores the ancient line of Kings who ruled the land of Aleris and the great sacrifice through which the Kings obtained their immortality. The Aleris RPG browser theme is optimized for Internet Explorer. So, while you may encounter a dragon in this realm, you won’t likely find a Firefox.

How are you using browser themes to meet the needs of your community? Let us know in the comments.

Image via Wikipedia

What’s it take to grow your user base and build awareness for a business partner? CBS College Sports and Fathead found using the browser theme for marketing promotions is a great way to convert users and deepen engagement.

CBSSports.com College Network is a leader in delivering web services, e-commerce, streaming and mobile services for college and university’s athletics websites. Fathead is a leader in sports and entertainment wall graphics. Nice set up for bringing companies together that serve similar audiences.

The results – SPECTACULAR!

KILLER CTR

Online banner advertising CTR (click through rates) run below a tenth of one percent. Email CTR will get you roughly five percent but you have to factor in the 23% open rate. And Electronic Arts was apparently thrilled with the 11% engagement they received with their first batch of Twitter ads. Marketing Magazine described EA’s Twitter ads as exceeding all expectations.

The results for the CBS and Fathead promotion were over 60%. Yes, almost six times better than the engagement that EA received with their Twitter ads.

STELLAR CONVERSION

Of course getting users to the front door of an offer is one thing, but can you convert? Depending on your method of marketing promotion and what you’re asking of the user whether it’s a registration or purchase will make your conversion rates vary widely. For Fathead, their goal of contest entry and email opt-in netted them 43% conversion. I’m proud to see marketers across the Internet are getting their expectations exceeded.

You can find out more about the promotion on the CBSSports.com website and their article: Contest grows CBS Sports user base and gains awareness for Fathead. You might find some of your own ideas for using a browser theme to engage your audience.

Image via CrunchBase

Patrick Murphy recently did a Brand Thunder interview with Shoestring Ventures, The Startup Bible Blog. One of their questions was “What other web-based products would you recommend to entrepreneurs, business owners or freelancers?” I realized the recommendations fell into categories discussed in our blog post about Sales Strategy: Browser Theme – Hunter vs. Farmer.

Given that start, here’s a short list of tools useful to that category of startup, small or medium business or freelancers. Tools to help you and your clients. Add your favorites in the comments.

Tools for Business Development

FREE LinkedIn.  Using LinkedIn has been a great tool to farm for contacts and actual names with targeted prospects

FREE Jigsaw for sure.  Jigsaw has been a great source for getting the contact information after you’ve identified who to contact, and sometimes even to identify who to contact.

CHEAP Less Annoying Software.  A great CRM to manage contacts and sales process.  Very simple, not overwhelming, and easy to use. Less Annoying is tailored for smaller businesses.

FREE Follow Up Then.  This is a unique email-reminder service.  When sending out emails, Bcc @followupthen.com and get an email reminder to follow up with that recipient.  Example, 2weeks@followupthen.com will send a reminder email two weeks after the original email.

VARIES Smart Phone.  This sounds silly, but making yourself available and reachable at all times throughout the day has been key.  Responsiveness to emails has been very beneficial as well.  When a desired brand emails me, I want to email them back within minutes while I have their attention.  If I am targeting West Coast and they want to chat at 4pm pacific, making the call at 7pm my time is essential.  I could be out of the office, some emails me back a day after I emailed them, they say they have a few minutes to chat now, you want to do it.  Having a smart phone makes all of that possible.

Tools for Relationship Management

FREE Facebook. Sure, this is an obvious choice, but ignore it at your own peril. This is where the time online is spent and the more easily and seamless your customers can interact here with you, the more they will.

FREE Hootsuite. This is a great tool for managing your social presence, especially for Twitter. The free product has served my needs well, having tried the Pro version it seemed to have enough inconsistencies and not enough value for me to stick with it.

FREE Google Alerts. An easy way to keep aware of discussions about you and your brand across the Interwebs. Set up your account to track your company name, your name, Twitter handles, top keywords and refine as you see what works for your business. You can also set up different time frames based on urgency of information, which can help manage information overload.

FREE Conduit. I went into this some in my last post. It’s incredibly valuable to extend your content beyond your web site and engage audiences where they are. Conduit does an excellent job at this by allowing you to easily drop your most compelling content or functionality into apps that you can extend across their ecosystem of mobile, browser add-ons and more.

FREE BT:Engage. The browser remains king of meaningful Internet engagement and an interactive browser theme provides a huge advantage of maintaining awareness and sparking engagement with your audience.

That’s the quick tour of my list. What’s on yours?

Here’s an overview of toolbars, browser themes and what each can do for your web site, business or community.

One point I’d emphasize, these products are not mutually exclusive. It’s never a question of which one to implement, but what each brins when you offer them to your audience.

Conduit.com Community Toolbars

Conduit.com is the leader in the community toolbar space, and they have an amazing product. In a matter of minutes, anyone can register at their site, upload a logo and start building a custom community toolbar that they can share with their online community. Additionally, the web publisher can choose from a host of web apps and tools to make the toolbar serve the wider needs of their audience.

The toolbar gives the web publisher a toehold into the online experience of the user by placing a small piece of branding, some icons and feeds for your site. Then it strives for retention (continued use) of the toolbar by adding icons to other products like email, Facebook, YouTube videos, MochiGames or whatever that publisher feels is best for their user.

It’s a proven strategy of rolling the attraction of brand affinity with personalization that gives the user the elements of the Internet they use on a daily basis. Conduit offers thousands of ways to personalize the toolbar experience. The web publisher defines the default experience for their community, but the user can adjust the toolbar to their own liking over time.

Browser Themes

Brand Thunder, long the leader in the interactive browser theme space, offers similar capability with its BT:Engage DIY browser theme creator. In a matter of minutes, a web publisher can build a unique browser theme full of visuals and interactive content.

Where the Conduit community toolbar goes wide, the Brand Thunder browser themes go deep. The brand and theme provide a visual immersion complemented by integrated content and functionality. It’s a rich experience between the web publisher and their online community. A suite of personalization features have been added like Facebook and Weatherbug, but not to the full extent offered by Conduit.

Core Value Proposition of Toolbars and Browser Themes

The basic promise of both the toolbar and the browser theme is a persistent connection to your online user, which has huge value. Think about the expense that goes into building and maintaining a web site, then add in cost of getting people there. Then consider that while people spend hours online, they spend seconds on a web page. And, unless you’re Facebook, you’re not likely getting a large percentage of that time.

With persistent placement in the browser, you capture awareness and interaction the entire time your user is online. That drives up exposure, engagement and return visits. Without that exposure, at best you’re one stop among many. At worst, you’re an afterthought.

Affinity Marketing – Visual Identity

Both toolbars and browser themes fall under the concept of affinity marketing tools. Visual identity plays a large role with affinity groups and both toolbar and theme play to that connection to varying degrees. Also, each of your users will have a level of comfort as to what they like.

You can put a toolbar on your computer, and like a bumper sticker, you eventually look past it. It’s present but doesn’t always capture your attention. If you trick out your car, you’re not going to miss it. I can no longer find the traffic increase data point for toolbars, but if my memory is correct, the contribution difference is similar to the difference in visual impact of these two images. And while I don’t have any data to compare, my gut tells me the toolbar has the edge in terms of lifespan of usage. I’ve seen the dips when our sports teams lose.

vs.

Pros & Cons – Shared

There are pros and cons to both approaches, and there are those shared by both.

Pros

• Free and easy to set up.
• Free tools for promoting and sharing.
• Increase site visits, commerce and engagement.
• Great for mainstream and passionate audiences.

Cons

• Web development community tends to avoid products like these. If that’s your audience, may not be the best fit.
• Require ongoing promotion to grow audience – like most products.

Pros & Cons of Toolbars

Pros

• Toolbar apps for every conceivable use.
• Revenue sharing.
• Available for four major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari

Cons

• Limited visual presence.
• Added to bottom of browser chrome.

Pros & Cons of Browser Themes

Pros

• Entire browser chrome part of experience .
• New ad inventory including sponsorships within the browser chrome and sidebar ad inventory.
• Available for three major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer.

Cons

•  Apps limited to most popular.
• DIY product has limited feature set in its early stage of release.

Related articles

• Browser Toolbars & the Added Power of Branded Themes (brandthunder.com)
• BT:Engage How To: Make Money Online with Your Browser Theme (brandthunder.com)
• 4 Ways to Unlock the Traffic Driving Power of the Web Browser (kissmetrics.com)

Image by TerryJohnston via Flickr

Brand loyalty is nothing new, but we usually think of Coca-Cola or Nike. Huge global behemoths that consumers ask for by name and wear proudly on their heads, lips, body and feet.

But online marketing has changed the way brand loyalty is acquired and earned.  With the explosion of social media, businesses are making a solid attempt to be honest and open in their marketing communications. This plays to the strength of the small or medium business (SMB) since SMBs don’t have the deep pockets for huge marketing spends and agencies leading the social media charge. We do it ourselves and we’re the most knowledgeable and open about our products and companies.

When you’re open and honest with your consumer, the side effect can be the creation of trust, brand loyalty and even brand advocacy. And these non-transactional communication efforts are highly linked to purchase behaviors. So, whatever your business metrics, time spent on brand loyalty is time well spent.

Is Brand Loyalty Achievable?

If you abide by the American Marketing Association, brand loyalty is the situation in which a consumer generally buys the same manufacturer-originated product or service repeatedly over time rather than buying from multiple suppliers within the category. To me, if you’ve got people tattooing your logo on their backside, you’ve got brand loyalty.

While you might think large companies own the domain of brand loyalty, it’s not true. This has been studied on a global level where multinational companies don’t necessarily rule in every market. There’s strength for the local brands – the home-field advantage. And local brands that market themselves successfully remain formidable adversaries in those markets. (For extra credit, read: The Myth of the Invincible Global Brand)

The Internet is like having that home-field advantage. As an SMB, you are an expert in your category. When it comes to your web site, your industry and your community – you have a powerful starting point to build your brand loyalty.

Trust as a Part of Brand Loyalty

Robert Passikoff, President, Brand Keys, Inc, makes a pitch that brand trust makes a high contribution to category engagement, loyalty, and profitability – even more than how good the product is. If a brand doesn’t really stand for anything beyond category efficacy, then the consumer is going to find alternatives.

Building trust is important, but once you’ve earned it, you need to make sure you keep it. The open communication you start, the transparency you exhibit and the trust you build are not a one-time thing. They’re an ongoing effort.

Browser Themes Build Loyalty and Trust Through Engagement

Consistent and open communication is a great target, but in the world offering torrents of information from social news feeds, mobile apps, TV, radio and more, what do you do? Engagement with the brand is your ultimate goal. It will ensure your brands survival and outreach of all kinds — conversations, experiences, advertising, and every touch point possible and imagined are required.

Among these channels, the browser theme ranks high in terms of presence, impact and length of exposure. Every hour spent on the Internet builds that connection between you and your consumer. It’s not seconds on a web page, or moments in an app that is soon forgotten and buried several menus deep on a three-inch screen. You gain a real footprint into daily activity and enjoy the benefits of that engagement.

With the growth of web-based social networks and a desire for transparency, trust and peace-of-mind messages, it shouldn’t be surprising that relationships now form a cornerstone of marketing efforts. When you leverage the browser theme to build relationships with consumers, you’re creating brand loyalists that drive word-of-mouth marketing, brand advocacy and brand guardianship.

Brand Thunder’s BT:Engage, a build your own browser theme wizard, will ensure your business has an easy to use tool for your ongoing brand loyalty efforts.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Think of widgets as little single-serving pieces of your web content – easy to pull from your web site and put them wherever they can best boost traffic to your web site.  When you first go to create your own browser theme at BT:Engage, you’ll discover a features tab called Widgets.  You’ll also uncover how powerful a browser theme can be at increasing traffic and visits to your web site.

Here’s what you need to know.In this early stage of BT:Engage, you’ll find only a couple options under the Widgets tab, but think of this as the 20% of features that result in 80% of the value to you and the users of your browser theme. More is on the way to get you the full 100% of value.

Widgets

The term “widget” had its heyday a few years back when Clearspring, Widgetbox and Konfabulator (acquired by Yahoo!) were all the rage. “Apps” is the current hot phrase, but the two are essentially the same thing – an application, or a component of an interface, that enables a user to perform a function or access a service.

What a widget or app forces you to do is compartmentalize the value of your web site. Most web sites are a broad stroke trying to address a lot of business objectives. They try to interest, inform and sell. With the singular focus of a widget, you drill down to a individual value proposition and deliver it to your audience. These are the elements of content your users can’t resist, and by encapsulating them and extending that content beyond your web site, you help drive traffic back to your web site.

Increase Your Web Traffic

You’ve probably already started to think about your content in high-level categories that are important to your users. It’s your site navigation. You probably have sections of news, galleries, community, blogs and more. These are the natural breakdown of toolbar buttons to include in your theme. As you do this, keep a few things in mind:

• Limit yourself to no more than five buttons.
• Keep the names short, example: Gallery, News, Shop.
• If you have a lot of categories, pick the five most popular or most important and skip the “one-time reads” like your About page.
• Don’t forget to include a link to your affiliate shop or one of your e-commerce destinations.

You also need a news feed. You can easily find a ton of discussion on why Content is King. This is a mixture of keeping your audience interested and coming back to your site, and the search engines seeing you as an active and vibrant web site worthy of pointing searchers to. The more new information you create or offer, the more reason your audience has to return to your web site.

Your news feed can easily be added to your browser theme and will quickly become a large driver of traffic back to your site. Think of it as a persistent invitation and compelling reason for your users to return.

Facebook and Twitter

The next feature we’ll be adding are Facebook and Twitter icons you can add to your browser theme toolbar. We’ve seen our partner themes drive a lot of traffic to their social media presence on Facebook and Twitter using the same method. It’s an easy win for your browser theme and one we’ll turn on soon.

From the user experience, the themes offer the ability to customize the exact pages those icons point to. For example, as the default URL, point to your  Facebook icon to your site’s Facebook page (like http://facebook.com/brandthunder). Many users will be fine with this experience. Others will want to go straight to their homepage and they can change their browser theme preferences to point to Facebook.com instead. The flexibility boosts retention of your theme by giving the experience each user wants, whether its the theme as you designed it or a more personalized one that they fit to their unique needs.

Your Most Desired Widget

What follows the Facebook and Twitter additions is up to you. Post your comments to let us know the widgets you need most to increase traffic to your web site and we’ll get those added to BT:Engage as well.