7 Wordpress plugins you need to know about to improve your visitor experience
We all know Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, Leadpages, Jetpack, and Akismet. I don’t need to tell you about these super popular Wordpress plugins, as they are the easiest to find. But the Wordpress directory counts over 54,000 plugins (at the time of writing), meaning you’re probably unaware of some valuable tools you could be using to improve your site. In this post, I’ll shed some light on a number of these lesser known plugins. Read on and find out how you can use them to take your WP website to new heights.
1. Smush Image Compression and Optimization
If you want to grab your visitor’s attention, then you need compelling imagery. However, high-quality images tend to be quite large, which results in a slow website. And a slow website, means a higher bounce rate and lower conversions. To reduce the size of your images without sacrificing quality, you can use a plugin like Smush Image Compression, or WP Smush for short. Smush Image Compression is free for images up to 1MB in size. A paid version is available for larger images. The paid plan also comes with a more extensive breadth of features you can use on an unlimited number of sites.
Key features
- Reduce image size without losing image quality (lossless optimization).
- Optimize up to 50 images in bulk with a single click.
- Resize images to specific dimensions as they compress.
- Identify images that are slowing your site down.
- Process all kinds of files (PNG, JPG and GIFs).
2. WPForms
A website is seldom complete without a way to capture your visitor’s email address. There are loads of form builders for Wordpress you can use for this purpose, but few of them are as easy to use as WPForms. The plugin’s drag and drop builder takes the prize home when it comes to usability. It’s offered in multiple plans. Their Basic Plan is $39.50 per year and comes with unlimited forms for 1 site. This plan comes with handy templates you can use to deploy contact forms, request a quote forms, and suggestion forms. Templates for newsletter forms are available for Plus users and up (starting at $99.50); order forms and donations forms are available for Pro users and up (starting at $199.50 per year).
Key features
- Build forms using a drag and drop builder.
- Create multi-page forms and display a progress bar.
- Build forms with conditional logic.
- Include spam protection.
- Use custom CSS.
- Embed forms on posts and pages from the text editor or using short codes.
- Integrate forms with PayPal and Stripe (Pro and above)
- Leverage Zapier third party integrations (Pro and above)
- Launch surveys and polls (Pro and above)
- Tackle form abandonment (Pro and above)
3. Unless
If you thought the plugins above were nifty, then you’ll be thrilled to hear about Unless. Unless is a personalization platform for websites. If you’re new to personalization, you should know that half of companies worldwide have identified this marketing tactic as a key priority. This should come as no surprise, as personalization can increase revenues by 5 to 15%. With Unless, you can create visitor segments and display different versions of your site content to these visitors based on their interest, location, past activity and more. The plugin enables you to install the Unless script and start using this functionality on your site. Unless plans start at $449 per month.
Key features
- Build audience segments based on location, behavior, data stored in your CRM and more.
- Get suggested audience segments based on machine learning algorithms.
- Create personalization recipes to customize content per audience segment.
- Customize your site content and design using an in-line editor. No coding experience necessary.
- Dynamically insert text into your site based on visitor information, such as first name or location.
- Personalize your entire conversion funnel.
- Selectively display Smart add-ons like pop-ups and call to action bars.
- Monitor the results of your personalization efforts with an analytics dashboard (an integration with Google Analytics is available).
4. Mouseflow
It’s always hard to know exactly why visitors don’t convert on your site. A plugin like Mouseflow can take much of the guesswork away. The tool lets you record and replay visitors’ interactions with your site. It’s kind of like installing a camera on your site, except the recordings are anonymous. Think of tracking clicks, scrolling behavior, form interactions, and more. Heatmaps help you identify important activity trends and take action. And when you want to learn more, you can always use Mouseflow to launch an interactive survey. They have a free plan, but to get the most of this tool, you may want to consider their Starter plan, which comes at $29 per month. This plan comes with support for 10,000 page views on 1 website, and 3 months of storage.
Key features
- Record and replay visitor sessions.
- Uncover patterns in browsing behavior with heatmaps.
- Track activity from page to page to assess movements through your funnel.
- Monitor form interactions.
- Integrate Mouseflow with Google Analytics and other major analytics and UX tools.
- “Do not track” support for GDPR.
5. Social Warfare
By now, everyone knows about the importance of social media. A good social strategy is a must for any business. With dozens of social plugins available for Wordpress, it’s hard to choose. Social Warfare is lesser known compared to plugins like AddThis, but it’s a very powerful plugin that allows you to include social sharing buttons for the most popular social networks, click to tweet functionality (which comes in handy to promote your content), and more. The plugin is also available in a PRO edition that comes with features like automatic UTM tracking for every link shared.
Key features
- Customize social sharing buttons to match your site’s look and feel.
- Customize the tweets that are populated when visitors click the tweet button, and include images on the share link.
- Display Twitter cards on your site.
- Create Tweetable quotes for blogs.
- Display social share counts.
- Place share buttons anywhere using short codes.
6. Chatfuel
Chances are, you’ve landed on many sites that have a small chat widget on the bottom right corner. If you’re wondering how you can implement a widget like that on your own site, you can use a tool like Chatfuel. What’s cool about Chatfuel is that it’s linked with Facebook messenger, a platform that counts 1 billion users and sees click-through rates that are 10X higher compared to email. This is a great solution for companies that have a Facebook page (most do anyway) and are looking for a simpler version of tools like Intercom or Drift. It’s easy to set up without programming skills. More advanced bots can be built by those in the know.
Key features
- Communicate with visitors through Facebook messenger directly on your site.
- Automate responses.
- Handover conversations to other people in your team.
7. WP Customer Reviews
If you offer any kind of product on your Wordpress site, then you should also consider the importance of reviews. Research tells us that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations, and 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive product review. Adding a review plugin to your site is a quick win to start collecting customer feedback and display testimonials on your site. WP Customer Reviews is a good stand-alone plugin to achieve this.
Key features
- Customize the fields your customers fill out in their review.
- Moderate reviews and control which ones get displayed.
- Insert reviews and review forms on any page or post using shortcodes.
- Modify the stylesheet to match your theme.
- Add admin responses and display them under reviews.
- Prevent automated spam bots from submitting reviews.
- Support for both business and product review types.
Bonus: WPTouch
I’d be remiss to leave out mobile optimization in a post about improving your visitor’s experience. After all, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones last year. Enter our bonus plugin, WPTouch. This tool instantly enables a mobile-friendly version of your Wordpress site. A must-have if you haven’t made sure your website is truly responsive. They claim to make your site 5 times faster on mobile, and have built in themes in their offering.
Key features
- Deploy a completely mobile-optimized theme on your same URL.
- Integrate seamlessly with the top 30 plugins on Wordpress.org
- Increase your website speed on mobile.
Wrapping up
Relevance, speed and usability are core tenets of a great visitor experience. The plugins on this post address these principles in their own unique way, and are an excellent addition to any Wordpress site. I hope the list inspires you and helps you boost conversions! And of course, these plugins are just a small selection from the Wordpress universe. Know other great tools? Drop me a line below.
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