Widgets

What is a widget?

A widget is a reusable, pre-built content component that can be added to a web page and configured by content editors, without writing code. In practice, a widget might render a hero banner, a call-to-action button, a product listing, or a testimonial block. Developers build the widget once, and content editors then reuse it across as many pages as they need, adjusting its properties through a configuration dialog rather than through code.

Widgets are a core building block of Page Builder-style, drag-and-drop editing experiences. They give non-technical users, such as marketers and content editors, direct control over what appears on a page and where, while developers retain full control over how each widget is built, styled, and governed.

What are the key features or benefits of widgets?

Reusable by design – A single widget can be placed on any number of pages, so developers avoid rebuilding the same component repeatedly.
Editor-friendly configuration – Content editors adjust widget properties (text, images, links, layout options) through a visual dialog, without touching markup or code.
Drag-and-drop placement – Widgets can be added, moved, copied, or removed directly on the page, giving editors a near-WYSIWYG experience.
Developer-governed guardrails – Developers decide which widgets are allowed in which page areas, keeping design and brand consistency intact even as editors self-serve.
Personalization-ready – Individual widgets can support multiple variants, so different audiences see different content in the same widget slot.
Faster page assembly – Because the building blocks already exist, editors can assemble new pages and campaign landing pages in hours instead of waiting on a developer request queue.

Industry Insight

Gartner has found that nearly 60% of custom applications are now built by employees outside the IT department, part of a broader shift Gartner projects will see 70% of new applications rely on low-code or no-code approaches by 2025, up from less than 25% in 2020 (source).

How do widgets work, and why do they matter?

On a technical level, a widget is a piece of reusable markup, along with an optional set of configurable properties, that gets inserted into a designated widget zone on a page. A developer builds the widget's logic and view once, registers it with the system, and defines which properties an editor is allowed to adjust, such as a heading, an image, or a number of columns. Once registered, the widget appears in the page-building interface as an option editors can drag into place.

This matters because it separates two concerns that used to be tangled together: how a component is built, and how it's used on any given page. Developers keep control over code quality, structure, and design guardrails, since they define which widgets exist and where they're allowed to appear. Editors keep control over content and layout decisions, since they don't need a developer to change text, swap an image, or rearrange a landing page. That separation is what lets marketing teams move at the speed of a campaign rather than the speed of a development sprint.

How does Xperience by Kentico support widgets?

Widgets are a native part of the drag-and-drop Page Builder inside Xperience by Kentico's content management platform. As Kentico's own multi-site management page puts it, teams can design pages using a drag-and-drop interface and use widgets to personalize content of any size and type. Through Page Builder, Kentico enables:

Editor-driven page assembly – Editors add, move, configure, copy, and delete widgets directly within a website channel application, without developer involvement for routine changes.
Developer-defined widget zones – Developers build widgets as partial views or view components and register them so they render correctly wherever an editor places them.
Built-in system widgets – Xperience by Kentico ships with default widgets covering common needs like rich text, out of the box, alongside the option to build fully custom widgets.
Widget personalization – Individual widgets can have multiple personalization variants, so different visitor segments see different content in the same widget slot, part of the platform's broader personalization capabilities.
Content modeling guidance – Kentico's architecture guidance helps teams decide when a widget should store one-off page data versus reference reusable content from the Content Hub, so widgets stay easy to reuse across channels.

This combination gives development teams a governed, reusable component library, while marketing and content teams get a visual, self-service editing experience on top of it, empowering marketers to build responsive, branded web pages with intuitive drag-and-drop widgets, no dev required.

How do companies benefit from widgets?

Organizations that rely on widget-driven page building move faster on both routine updates and larger campaigns.

For example, a marketing team launching a new campaign landing page can assemble it themselves using existing hero, form, and testimonial widgets, publishing in hours instead of waiting on a development queue for a one-off page build. Companies running frequent A/B tests or audience-specific promotions can use widget personalization to serve different variants of the same widget to different visitor segments, without duplicating entire pages or requesting new development work for every variant. This kind of self-service page building is one of the must-have features of a modern CMS, since it removes reliance on developers for every page update.

How do widgets fit into a digital experience strategy?

Widgets support a modern digital experience strategy by helping teams:

Give editors and marketers day-to-day ownership of page content and layout, reducing developer dependency for routine changes.
Maintain design and brand consistency, since every widget is built and governed by developers even though editors configure it.
Scale content production, since a well-built widget library lets a small content team assemble many pages quickly.
Support personalization and experimentation without requiring separate page builds for every audience segment.
Keep development effort focused on building and improving reusable components, rather than one-off, page-specific code.

In Kentico, widgets built on Page Builder combine with the broader composable architecture of Xperience by Kentico, giving organizations a scalable foundation where developers build the building blocks and editors build the pages. This kind of widget-driven flexibility is also a recurring theme in Kentico's web content management trend coverage, which highlights no-code and low-code tools reducing reliance on developers for structural content changes.

Frequently Asked Questions.

A page template defines the overall structure and layout of a page, while a widget defines an individual, configurable piece of content placed inside that structure. Templates give editors a starting point, such as a landing page layout with predefined sections, while widgets are what actually populate those sections with specific content like a hero banner or a product grid. In practice, a single page template can host many different widgets, and the same widget can appear across many different page templates.

No, using widgets is designed specifically so that non-technical users don't need coding knowledge. Editors add a widget to a page using a simple button, then adjust its properties, like text, images, or a number of columns, through a configuration dialog built by developers. Any code required to make the widget function, render, or style correctly is written once by a developer ahead of time; the editor only ever interacts with the friendly configuration layer on top of it.

Yes, this is what widget personalization is for. A single widget can have multiple personalization variants, each tied to a condition such as visitor segment or contact group. When a visitor loads the page, the system evaluates the conditions and displays whichever variant matches, so the same widget slot can show different content to different audiences without duplicating the page itself.

Yes, developers can restrict which widgets are allowed in specific editable areas or widget zones. This prevents editors from placing components that don't fit the intended layout or brand guidelines, such as accidentally adding a product carousel widget to a simple text-based landing page. It also keeps a growing widget library manageable, since not every widget needs to be available everywhere it technically could be used.

Widgets are built to be reused. Once a developer creates and registers a widget, it becomes available for editors to add to any page that supports Page Builder, as many times as needed, each with its own independent configuration. This is one of the main efficiency gains of a widget-based approach: the development work happens once, and editors get ongoing value from it every time they build or update a page.