I randomly happened to stumble across an old blog post on SEO Design Solutions, titled "The Psychology of a Click-Through - Understanding Intention, Fulfillment and Desire!"  Although the post is primarily focused around SEO, keywords and advertising, I got to thinking that a lot of Jeffery Smith's post also relates very well to widget engagement and interaction.

For instance, for SEO-optimized content he emphasizes the importance of it acquiring and maintaining our attention, "employing well written headlines, sticky content...that reduces propositions to their most simplistic visit a pleasant and frequent version."  All of this applies to making a successful widget that people will want to use and interact with. 

His next point could easily refer to deploying widgets as well: "...during the creative and content development phase...tailor your [widget] using research or common sense to yield the greatest impact using...emotional triggers to tell a story, provide a visual aid to reinforce a concept, share information, entertain or solve a problem experienced by your audience."  A great example of this is Discovery News' highly interactive, tabbed news widget (located on the right sidebar of this page, for example) that grabs your attention, provides value (great content) to visitors, includes multimedia content (news, video and blogs), and encourages users' to share. 

So, the all important click-through rate on widgets (which we keep a close eye on at NewsGator), to once again co-opt Jeffrey's words, is "merely an extension of our attention that is either (a) piqued by something as a result of curiosity or (b) directed an intent on fulfilling an impulse."  The best widgets, therefore, have sticky, timely, lively content that provides value to visitors and encourages click-throughs and interaction such as viewing, sharing, and rating.