New Widget Features Including a New Layout, JSON Data Feeds, and Impression Tracking - Plus Form QR Codes and More

The team here at Boast has been hard at work over the past few months, working to bring you some new and exciting features. From widget improvements to a new way to share forms and much more in between, Boast is better than ever. Here are some of the exciting features that are available now.

Create an Impact with the New “Full Width Column” Widget Layout

Sometimes you might want to embed just one response on a website page, landing page, or blog post and have it take up the full width of the page. Although this was previously possible with a bit of finagling, it’s now super easy to do by selecting the “Full Width Column” layout.

If you set the “Max # of responses to show” to 1, then you will have a single, full-width response.

You could also display multiple responses using this layout, which would result in a single column of full-width responses.

Videos in widgets using this layout will play inline, instead of in a modal popup (as is the case with the other layouts). This will create a smoother experience for your website visitors viewing the video. All other information, such as the full text response, additional fields, etc, will also be shown directly on the page, not in a popup.

Fully Customize Your Widgets with a JSON Feed

While we offer a slew of styles and options for creating widgets, sometimes you might be looking for something extremely specific that can’t be created out-of-the-box with Boast. For situations like these, we now provide a JSON feed of all widgets. Just create your widget, click the “Get Embed Code” button, and select “JSON Data Feed”.

You or your developer can use this URL to build custom views or integrations based on the widget you’ve created. Your widget filters and settings are applied automatically to the output data. The sky’s the limit when it comes to what you can create with this new feed.

Know How Much of an Impression Your Widgets Are Making

Boast widgets now track how many impressions, or views, they get. This information can be helpful to know which of your widgets is viewed most often, so you can plan your content strategy accordingly.

The new impression count is shown on the main Widgets page under Impressions. The number reflects the total number of views and is updated hourly.

Display Custom Videos in Your Widgets

Similar to the Widget Thumbnail, the Widget Video allows you to choose the main video that displays in widgets for each response. By default, this will be the Primary Video from the response, but you could choose to display an Additional Video or upload an entirely new video instead.

To select the Widget Video, edit a response and use the Widget Video dropdown.

Share Forms with a QR Code

If you sell a product that has packaging or distribute physical marketing materials like flyers or brochures, a QR code could be a great way to share your Boast form. Your customers can simply scan the code with their phone; they will then be taken to the online form, where they can quickly and easily give their feedback.

To generate a QR code for your form, navigate to the form Share page and click “Generate QR Code”. You can then save the code as a .png file to use as needed.

Improved Experience for New Users with Onboarding Checklists

A beloved feature from Boast Classic is making a comeback. When a new user signs up for Boast, they will now be presented with an onboarding checklist, consisting of a series of videos and text instructions to walk through setting up their account and creating their first campaign. This onboarding checklist creates a smoother experience for new users and helps to ease the learning curve that comes with using a new web application.

And Even More

Over the last few months, we’ve released tons of other small features to improve Boast and its user experience. Some of these items include:

Review links in form auto-responders improved
Default form video length allowed updated to be the max allowed by the current subscription plan
Form image centering improved
Video field labels updated for enhanced clarity
Form field descriptions now honor line breaks
Normal share link added to widget social share links
Improvement of review link appearance in sequences
Added differentiation between “bounced” and “opt-out” for the Unsubscribed status in sequences
Rating color changed in sequence emails for improved click-through rates
Video and image processing improvements
Updates to dashboard content
Other misc bug fixes, UI updates, and minor improvements

View our full changelog here.

What’s Up Next?

Video Closed Captioning

Automatic closed captioning for video responses.

Video Automations

Automatically add pre-rolls, outro videos, background music, and more to your collected videos.

Video Editing

Trim, reorder and delete clips from your submitted videos.

SMS Sequences

Send messages to customers by text, from a local phone number, to collect more video and feedback from mobile.

Is there a feature you’d like us to work on? Get in touch with us here to let us know.