Once upon a time, we lived in a world where having a website for your business was a nice-to-have vs. a must-have. Even without owning an online domain, you could still run a successful business through word-of-mouth marketing and referrals alone. However, we no longer live in that kind of world. Times are very different. Today, running a business without having a website places your business at an undeniable disadvantage, especially in a world where dependency upon the internet is at its highest.
When it comes to building a website, WordPress is one of the most popular choices for website development. As of October 2021, there were 55,000 WordPress plugins available, each with unique and specific functions to add to your website. Whether you want to capture leads, increase your search rankings, highlight promotions, or all of the above, these are some of the best WordPress plugins to use to enhance and scale your website.
1. WPForms
WPForms is a powerful WordPress form builder plugin that lets you create custom forms for your website. It comes with a drag and drops form builder, so you can easily create complex forms without any coding knowledge required. WPForms also comes with a built-in PayPal and Stripe payment gateway, so you can easily collect payments from your customers.
2. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is a WordPress plugin that lets you easily create sales funnels for your business or website. You can use ClickFunnels to upsell your customers, make more sales, and build your brand’s credibility and authority online. ClickFunnels comes with a built-in email marketing system, so you can easily follow up with your customers and make more sales.
3. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is an essential WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines. It comes with a keyword analyzer so you can easily check which keywords are searched most often by your customers, and it also comes with a Google Analytics integration that helps you track the traffic to your website. There is both a free and paid version of this plugin.
4. SumoMe
- Email capture forms
- Social sharing buttons
- Heat maps
- A/B testing
SumoMe is free to use for up to 1000 subscribers, so it’s perfect for small businesses.
5. WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is one of the best WordPress plugins for caching. Whenever your website is viewed by someone, it takes a lot of processing power to generate that page. WP Super Cache automatically generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress pages which speeds up the loading time, so you can have more visitors on your website because they won’t get sick of waiting for your website to load.
6. Hello Bar
Hello Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that helps you convert visitors into leads, subscribers, and buyers. You can use it to highlight important offers, display CTA buttons, and much more. There are both free and premium versions available depending on your needs.
7. Blog Vault
8. LiveChat
LiveChat is a simple, yet powerful plugin, that uses AI to enable website owners to connect with customers and capture leads with live chat functionality. It helps companies respond faster and provide a positive customer service experience online.
9. WPML
WPML is a plugin designed for multilingual sites. The plugin makes it simple to build multilingual sites, offering the ability to translate pages, posts, and much more. Plus, it works with many of the most popular themes and plugins.
10. Social Warfare
Social Warfare is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily add social share buttons to your website to help you amplify your brand presence. It comes with a wide range of features, including:
- Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ buttons
- Customizable button designs
- Click-to-tweet quotes
- Analytics so you can track how your social shares are performing
Social Warfare is available in both free and premium versions.
11. Akismet
Akismet is a must-have WordPress plugin that helps you protect your website from spam comments. It comes with a built-in spam filter that automatically blocks spam comments from posting to your website, so you don’t have to worry about deleting strange or inappropriate comments from your website daily.
Akismet is free to use for personal websites and it also comes with a premium version that offers extra features.
12. Ninja Forms and Popups Add-on
Ninja Forms is a great plugin that allows you to create beautiful forms on your website without any coding required. Create simple forms, multipage forms, conditional forms, and more!
The Ninja Popups add-on allows you to take any form and display it as a pop-up! You can opt to only show popups on certain pages or display the popup after a delay of zero seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds (and so on). The Ninja Popups add-on also includes nice features like the ability to test your popups before using them live on your website, with over 20 animations available when showing your popup.
13. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is one of the best WordPress plugins for generating leads (i.e., capturing emails) for your business or blog. It comes with some great features including:
- Lead generation forms
- Content upgrades let you offer extra content to opt-in subscribers in exchange for their email address
- A/B testing so you can see how changes to your page layout affect conversions
They also have a useful blog that contains lots of great tips, tricks, and tutorials for growing your email list with WordPress. And if you sign up, they have a free trial that includes access to all of their premium plugins.
14. Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is a WordPress plugin that lets you build custom landing pages without writing any code. With this plugin, it’s easy to make changes to your page’s layouts. You can create blog posts with full-width backgrounds, use integrated contact forms, and much more. It also comes with some other great features including:
- The ability to save your designs as templates and reuse them on other pages
- A library of built-in modules which you can use to create custom layouts
- Integrated Google Maps support
- The ability to easily export your pages for use on other websites
15. WooCommerce
One of the most common open-source e-commerce platforms used around the world, WooCommerce helps you create compelling storefronts that match your brand and fit your industry. You can create and customize pages with ease, displaying both physical and digital products. In addition to the main plugin, there are many addons available to enhance its functionality even further.
Experts in WordPress and Web Development
If you’re looking for a web design and development firm to help you build your website, you’ll want to make sure they know the best plugins to use when building your website. At Smile MEDIA, we are experienced at working with WordPress plugins and identifying the ones that will enable your business to thrive in today’s online world. We’d love to help ensure your website is working for you 24/7. Get in touch to get started today!
