Widgets/Things To Put On WP Sidebar?

Besides recent/popular post, what other widgets do you use to fill up your sidebar? I want to lower my bounce rate. I need a widget that is not a resource hog.

I also add an image link to some type of affiliate product and also place a Google Adsense block.

peter73 said:

Besides recent/popular post, what other widgets do you use to fill up your sidebar? I want to lower my bounce rate. I need a widget that is not a resource hog.

Click to expand...

Social images (fb, twitter, youtube, +1 etc.)
Subscribe to RSS (or enter email via feedburner)
Affiliate Banner (skyscraper or square)
You can also try some surveys to better understand your audience...
Categories / Tags (tags = cloud)
Latest tweets?
"Like us on facebook"
Paypal Donate
And the list goes on and on!

Peter,

I would say that it depends on who your users are that are visiting your blog. What would they find useful? If you know that they are active on certain social networks, perhaps having plugins that display their feeds if they are logged in would be useful. Are there any advertisements that they would find beneficial? I have always found that a contact form with a few fields, (i.e. first name, last name, email) is a great way to generate some contact info. If you have a physical location for your business you could place a map on that side bar.

In a nutshell, first try and figure out what would be beneficial for your visitors.

Maybe you can find some ideas here,

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/03/1...gins-of-2012-every-blogger-should-know-about/

Hope that helps,

Shawn

peter73 said:

Besides recent/popular post, what other widgets do you use to fill up your sidebar? I want to lower my bounce rate. I need a widget that is not a resource hog.

Click to expand...

First of all let us know what is the niche of your website?

Thanks for the suggestion everyone. Will definitely take this into account.

Music niche

gullsinn said:

First of all let us know what is the niche of your website?

Click to expand...

Check out the sidebar of my blog, I use the very first bit to build an instant connection with the reader before flowing them into a simple opt in form.

The optin form isn't to flash or attention grabbing with the idea that the quality of content will grab their attention and have them falling all over themselves to optin.

I then run the OIOPublisher plugin to sell Ad space before listing recent reviews (relevant to my audience) and popular topics from the forum (with the goal of the user registering and engaging with the site further)

Basically every section of the sidebar is used to aid conversion in one form or another.

Thanks to the tips