Widgets
Widgets are on-site messages you design in Personizely and show to visitors when a trigger fires: popups, bars, callouts (slide-ins) and widgets embedded in your page content. You use them to capture emails and phone numbers, announce offers, show discount codes, recommend products, run surveys and prevent cart abandonment. Every widget tracks views, clicks, form submits and conversions, can be A/B tested, and is credited with the goals and revenue it helps produce.
Available on: all platforms. Some elements, triggers and automations need an ecommerce platform; see Platform availability.
Widget types
Type | What it is | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
Popups | A centered box over a dimmed page | Exit-intent offers, email capture, spin to win |
A full-width strip at the top or bottom of the page | Announcements, free-shipping messages, countdowns | |
A box anchored to a corner or edge, without a backdrop | Gentle nudges, product recommendations, chat-style prompts | |
A widget placed inside your page, where you put its code or a placeholder | Inline forms, banners in product pages, blog sign-ups |
See Widget types for a side-by-side comparison.
Building blocks
A widget is made of these parts. You design the first four in the widget builder, and set the rest on the widget's page.
Part | What it does | Where you set it |
|---|---|---|
Screens inside the widget, such as "form" and "thank you". The first step is shown first | Builder → Steps | |
The content: headline, text, image, button, form, survey, coupon, countdown timer, wheel of fortune, products, cart progress, video and more | Builder → Add element | |
A small tab or box that opens the widget, before it triggers or after it's closed. Popups and callouts only | Builder → Steps → Teaser | |
Size, colors, position, animation, close button, backdrop and custom code | Builder | |
The moment the widget appears: on landing, after a delay, on scroll, on exit intent, on click, when adding to cart and more | Widget page → Triggers | |
Where and to whom it appears: pages, audience, frequency, schedule | Widget page → Rules | |
Close the widget automatically after a time or scroll depth | Widget page → Close triggers | |
Element actions and Widget automations | What happens when a visitor clicks, submits or wins: go to a step, open a URL, add to a list, apply a discount, track a conversion | The element's settings in the builder |
The goals the widget is credited with, and the primary goal | Widget page → Goals | |
A/B tests between variations of the widget | Builder or widget page → Experiments |
Steps, the teaser, styling, display options, mobile behavior and your brand defaults are grouped under Design and display.
How a widget goes live
- Create it under Widgets → Create a widget. Start from a guided setup (list building, cross-sell and upsell, cart abandonment, sales motivator), a pre-built template, or a blank widget. Templates follow your Branding, templates and themes.
- Design it in the builder: steps, elements, style and display options.
- Configure when and where it shows on the widget's page: triggers, rules, close triggers and goals.
- Preview it on your live site with Preview on the live site. See Preview.
- Start it, or schedule a start and end date. Your site's snippet is updated within moments; you don't need to change your theme.
- Visitors see it when its rules pass and a trigger fires. Views, clicks, submits and conversions are recorded, and goals reached afterwards are credited to it. See How widgets load and display.
Statuses
Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
Draft | Never started. Not on your site |
Scheduled | Started with a future start date. Appears from the start date |
Running | Live for visitors whose rules pass |
Paused | Stopped temporarily. Not shown; stats are kept |
Ended | The end date has passed. Not shown |
Start and end dates are compared with the visitor's device clock.
Managing widgets
From the ⋯ menu on the Widgets list:
Option | What it does |
|---|---|
Export contacts | Downloads a CSV of the visitors who submitted a form in this widget. See Contacts and form submissions |
Export widget | Downloads the widget as a file you can import into another website with Import on the Create a widget page |
Clone | Copies the widget, including its design, triggers and rules |
Reset stats | Clears the widget's statistics |
Delete | Deletes the widget. It's removed from your site's snippet within moments |
Preview
Preview on the live site in the builder opens your site with ?ply_preview_widget=<widgetId>.<variationId>. The widget appears immediately, whatever its status, rules or triggers. Nothing is recorded during a preview, so it doesn't affect stats or frequency. Use the variation picker to preview each variation of an experiment.
Platform availability
All widget types, the generic elements, the Landing, Time, Scroll, Exit intent, Inactivity, Click and Hover triggers, page and audience rules, forms, contacts, experiments and static coupon codes work on every platform. Ecommerce features depend on the platform:
Feature | Shopify | Shopify Hydrogen | Wix | WordPress, Webflow, Square, other sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Add to cart trigger | Yes, with product and variant filters | Yes, through the Hydrogen package | Yes, product filter only | No |
Proceeding to checkout trigger | Yes, holds checkout while the widget shows | Yes, through the Hydrogen package | Fires, but can't hold checkout | No |
Product pages rule | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Product pages with tags rule | Yes | Yes, when you pass product tags in the page context | No | No |
Products element (cross-sell, upsell) | All sources | Yes | Manual and Rules sources | No |
Cart progress element | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Unique discount codes and auto-apply | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Platform automations | Add customer, Apply discount, Add a product to the cart, Set cart attribute, Change user consent | Contact support | Checkout, contact actions | No |
On WordPress with WooCommerce, purchases can still be tracked as goals through the Google Analytics integration or the JavaScript API. See Install Personizely on WordPress and WooCommerce.
Related
- Widget types