Jim Bruene, on the Netbanker blog analyses the usage data for Google Gadgets and makes the point that there is an opportunity for banks to do widgets themselves and get them out for very small investments in code.
He argues:
Most of the gadgets at Google were developed by outsiders. In its instructions to developers, the company claims you could write a gadget in five minutes (see instructions here). Even if it took five days, the payoff could be impressive. For example, the only financial brand with a Google gadget is Quicken Loans <quickenloans.com> which posted an attractive rate tracker and payment calculator. Although its gadget had only 7,000 pageviews last week, that's still 350,000 annualized. An impressive return for a trivial programming expense.
I think that, whilst it might be simple to do a rate tracker and payment calculator, the real game is played when you deliver personal content to an audience of one. Such as, for example, the balances of your accounts. I don't for one minute underestimate the technical and security challenges inherent in this, by they way, but the sort of thing I am going to have blinking at me constantly on my desktop is not going to be the latest credit card rates from my bank.
On the other hands, alerts and transactions delivered as I work would probably interest me. I am, for example, a very heavy user of alerts on my American Express card, and have them set up to email for every condition they support.
Actually, the more I think about this, the less I would be interested in a widget that shows only my balances with one bank. I would like one that shows me my whole financial picture, updated as and when transactions arrive.
Probably, that means that the widget I want will come from someone like Wesabe. That would have the added advantage of providing tagged transaction information as well as well as all that great user-generated content that provides targeted advice.
In the meantime, I did a Google search on the terms "Financial Services" and "Widget", and came up with quite a few early rate-tracker type offerings. Let me not decry these early first steps, but I just can't see very many people deploying these to the desktop (perhaps to some targeted blogs, though). I'm ready to have a widget/gadget on my desktop, but will be waiting until it talks to me personally about things I care about.
HSBC in HK now offer a simple desktop gadget in three flavours - Vista, iGoogle and Yahoo!
http://www.hsbc.com.hk/1/2/special/gadget
Posted by: Anon | May 27, 2008 at 02:28 PM
I did a Google search on the terms Financial Services and Widget and came up with quite a few early rate tracker type offerings,actually, the more I think about this, the less I would be interested in a widget...........
http://www.electrocomputerwarehouse.com
Posted by: Cheap Computers | July 14, 2009 at 02:28 PM