Wibiya toolbar review

Wibiya is a small floating toolbar, which remains at the bottom of the browser (only on the website, on which it is installed) and provides a customizable array of features (mostly social media related) to help engage website users in a not too intrusive manner.

I first thought of using this toolbar, after seeing it on NDTV.com and thought of implementing it on BCMTouring.

Signup process and creation of the toolbar was simple and straight forward, and though I wanted to start with pro package (branding free), I had a query and thus I sent an email to Wibiya support team and in the meanwhile, integrated the toolbar on BCMTouring (a simple matter of adding java script code in the footer).

At the same time, I decided to start a thread on BCMTouring to garner feedback from the members, since they are the ones, who would be using it.

While the views were mixed, the usage of the toolbar though ok, wasn’t all too great. However we did managed to increase the number of fans of BCMTouring’s Facebook Page by around 8% in a matter of 3 days and I did see a few more pages from BCMTouring, being shared by BCMTians on Facebook.

However, Wibiya toolbar did have a negative impact on the end user speed and responsiveness of the site and that along with the fact that one member was almost caught in office due to this toolbar, was reason enough to discontinue the usage of the toolbar, though I do think it is a nice idea and requires following changes, before I can think of implementing it again:

• Ability to integrate within applications like WordPress and vBulletin, which would ensure flexibility for the end user, on whether or not they want to keep using it or completely disable it.
• Ability to run the code from your own server, ensuring performance to match that of other local apps.
• Better customer service, since I haven’t yet received a reply to my email.

As for the last response, I guess it worked in my favor, as I might have signed up for the Pro plan and would have then had to go through the cancellation procedure.

Overall it was a nice experiment, even though things didn’t go exactly the way I wanted.