20 best uses of the HTML snippet widget

Celebrating the Swiss Army knife of our web design tools

Need a social feed on your website? That home page missing a great slideshow? How about a booking form for your online clients?

Well, step this way my friend and take a look at the tool that can perform all these tasks and more. The HTML Snippet widget.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the HTML Snippet widget is one of our most popular and useful tools.

On the surface, just a simple box, it allows you to paste HTML code into any page of your website.

This means that hundreds of third-party features and applications that otherwise wouldn’t be compatible with our software, can actually be used.

Come with us then, on a tour of our best and lesser-known uses, as well as saying hello to some of the lovely Moonfruiters putting them to good use.

Rollover images

Since the debut of the HTML widget there have been some awfully creative discoveries by some of our users. Not least designer Matthew Bick, who created a new way of adding interactive rollover images and buttons to his site.

Pretty snazzy hey?

Well, he’s generously shared his secret. Thank you Matt.

FAQ section

And we dive straight into another great bit of code, this time written by long-term user ‘Dino’.

This snippet allows you to add an interactive FAQ section to any page in your site, so any visitors can visit your website, access a list of questions and click to reveal the answer to a particular query.

Not bad Dino, and thank you for sharing.

MailChimp

The Internet’s most popular email marketing tool.

You can create multiple mailing lists and generate the sign-up forms that can be embedded into your website. It’s a great way of bringing you closer to your visitors and keeping them informed.

Just ask keen Moonfruit user Marije Oostindie, artist and founder of Ateliera Andact for example.

Marije uses MailChimp to create mailing lists for her followers and to let them know all about her latest incredible art work and designs.

To help you do the same, we’ve created a step-by-step guide.

Payloadz

So, you’re selling e-books and you want to allow your customers to pay and instantly download their purchase? Enter Payloadz!

The perfect digital download tool, you can set it up to take payments for files, guides, graphics and software,  then sit back as the automatic delivery service takes over.

Click on the image below for more info.

Facebook feed

Yeah, you can embed a Facebook feed.

Simple to set up, it makes your Facebook status updates and activity appear automatically on your site too.

Here’s fancy pub snack purveyors McStrongs using it with aplomb.

You can see how they set that up here.

Twitter feed

Not to be outdone by Facebook, Twitter is also compatible with our little snippet box. Much to the delight of writing blogger Chloe Wright.

Phone number link

So, say a customer needs to call you, what’s the best way of making sure they get through? By adding a direct link to your mobile from your website of course.

Incredibly easy to implement, but really very useful if you’re running a business from your website.  A phone link  allows clients viewing your website on a mobile to  press the number on screen and their phone will immediately start calling you.

Interior design aficionados Silk Interiors demonstrate:

Photosnack

Slideshows, albums and portfolios. Yep, you can set up them all up through the HTML widget.

For example, Photosnack is a popular choice for interactive homepage slideshows…

Comslider

An equally impressive slideshow provider is Comslider.

You can find illustrated guides for both here.

Then there’s…

CoolIris

Which lets you add beautiful effects to your photographs and also integrates nicely with Facebook.

Issuu

And Issuu. Great for all sorts of publishing, but do check out the Visual Inspiration section.

Getty Images

Finally, to round off our image sub-section we have Getty Images. One of the biggest suppliers of stock images and film, they have recently made 40,000 of their images free to embed on websites.

You simply browse their library, copy the code from your chosen image and drop it into the HTML widget. A fantastic resource.

SoundCloud

That’s your visuals sorted then. Now how about a bit of music?

Well, you can create playlists and share your musical tastes by adding SoundCloud to your website.

You can even use it to record and upload your own tracks, which has certainly proved essential for audio and visual media designer DigiBoy Design.

To find out how DigiBoy made it happen, check out our recent article.

Next up…

Polldaddy

Create surveys, polls and competitions with “the most powerful and easy to use survey software around”.

Whether you want to gage genuine opinion or just have a bit of fun with your visitors, it’s a pretty cool app for an interactive website.

We’ve gone and made a fully illustrated guide to help you set it up too.

Tables

Sort your text into nice rows and columns thanks to online tinkerers Text Fixer. They allow you to create and embed tables of various sizes and styles in just a few minutes, which means you can customise them to totally fit your websites aesthetic.

Here’s our own ‘how to’ for doing just that.

YouTube

Yay. Home of countless funny cat videos and instigator of procrastination, the world’s favourite video host is also one of the treats found in our tool box.

Here’s one we made earlier.

Vimeo

…And do check out Doozy Media using YouTube’s arch enemy Vimeo to balance things out.

BookingBug

An old favourite now, one that lets you take bookings and schedule events through your website.

Again, BookingBug can be fully customised, so the the appearance of the booking form matches your page design.

Here the lovely team behind Travelholics show us it in action.

And BookingBug themselves show how it’s done.

Google Maps and Calendar

Last on our list we have 2 more favourites courtesy of Google.

There’s their famous map feature. Essential if you need clients or customers to locate you.

And Google Calendar.

So, what you going to try first?

Maybe you have your own suggestion for the list or even something you’ve created yourself. If so, do feel free to share in the comments section below and we’ll gladly add your discovery to the mix. More the better we say.

And, if you haven’t got a website with us yet, but really want to try out these features, then you can start a free trial today. What you waiting for?