Hi Marcus,
Yeah, I have seen the official Shopify app. It probably works fine for a single use-case (embed a single product on a different page) but ProductWidgets does so much more:
- Multiple products per widget
You can add as many products to your widget as you like:
And you can set the size to standard banner sizes, e.g. Full Size Banner (468px x 60px):
or Skyscraper (120px x 600px):
- No need to pick specific products
A major difference to the Shopify Widgets is that with ProductWidgets you don't need to select specific products for your widget. You can select one or more categories and one or more keywords, and these will be used to fill your widget automatically. Or, if you don't select anything, a widget will simply rotate through all products of your shop.
- Tracking stats and self-optimizing
Each widget tracks how often each product has been displayed and how many clicks it has received. This ratio of views to clicks is used every hour to decide which products are being shown in the next hour. That way the good products (which receive lots of clicks) are automatically displayed more often while the shelf warmers (which receive only a few clicks) are not shown anymore.
The stats can also be a important tool for the shop owner to see which sites that have a implemented widget do well, and then remove them from the sites where they don't work.
- Geo-targeting
Each widget checks the IP of the visitor and only displays products that are available for them. If certain products are only sold in the US, and I visit a page with a widget from Germany for example, I will never see those products. If a US visitor visits the same page, s/he will see them.
I think all those features would clearly differentiate ProductWidgets from Shopify Widgets.
I would still recommend Shopify Widgets for simple use-cases but the goal for ProductWidgets is to be a comprehensive tool for product marketing.
Would love to hear your opinion about these points! :)