A great article on Smashing Magazine today concerning WordPress Widgets
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/14/5-useful-and-creative-ways-to-use-wordpress-widgets/
More and more people are using WordPress both for blogging and handling their entire website. This article provides some great resources on using widgets.
This morning I read a fantastic article from Mandy Brown titled In Defence of Readers. In brief, she discussing the need to shape web pages in a manner that is in tune with the needs of the visitor.
The article provokes some thought. While the focus of her article is creating an environment that promotes quality reading for visitors we can extend this idea out to promoting quality conversions of targeted traffic.