WordPress has more than 50,000 plugins to choose from. And for new users, this can be overwhelming. Having the right plugins installed on your website allows your business to fully grow. In this article, we’ve rounded up the best WordPress plugins for business websites.
What are WordPress plugins?
Way back in 2003, WordPress was simply used as a blogging platform. Now, it is a powerful tool used to launch and maintain over 455 million websites. Currently, everything you have in mind for your page is possible with WordPress, mainly because of plugins.
Similar to the way apps for smartphones work, WordPress plugins allow you to utilize and add new features and functionality to your website. These are small software applications that integrate with your WordPress website, giving you the capability to create any kind of website with different functions.
There are WordPress plugins for SEO improvement, contact forms, social media buttons, galleries, and more. It can be small and has one feature or it can be large enough to stand as its platform, like WordPress eCommerce plugins or WordPress membership plugins.
Best WordPress Plugins for Business Websites
When you create your business website with WordPress, it comes with basic features that generally work. However, you are limiting your website’s potential when you don’t make use of plugins that help expand and utilize its functionality.
If you want a boosted performance and function, here are the best WordPress plugins for business websites.
WP Forms
Recommended by more than 4,000,000 business owners, designers, and developers, you can never go wrong with WP Form. If you have a business website, this contact form plugin is a must-install. There are a few reasons why everybody loves this business plugin.
First, it allows clients or potential ones to contact you. Second, it comes with an easy-to-use drag and drop builder, which can be used to create different kinds of contact forms, like email subscription forms, payment forms, and surveys. Third, it can be integrated with marketing and payment platforms.
A few more of its helpful features are conversational forms, form landing pages, user journey tracking, form abandonment, geolocation tracking, custom login forms, and more. It also offers a free version, WPForm lite if you need something more basic and simple.
Live Chat
LiveChat is an ideal plugin to install for a perfect live chat widget. It is used by business owners for transactions, to close business deals, and improve customer satisfaction. It provides instant communication for on-site visitors who might have questions and queries.
If you have multiple websites, Live Chat allows you to connect all of them into a single LiveChat account and the plugin is also compatible with multiple page builders like Elementor Page Builder, SiteOrigin, Beaver Builder, and more.
Its other key features are canned responses, chat widget customization, file upload support, support and agent ratings, visitor tracking, ticket form, chat logs, and more.
ThirstyAffiliates
If you are running a blog, one of the most effective ways to earn money is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is an advertising model where a company compensates a third party for generating traffic or leads to their products.
Installing ThirstyAffiliates on your website helps you manage your links more. Aside from that, it also cloaks your links so it is easier to track and will appear more legitimate to your users. It can also be used for when if you are promoting your services, like writing, coaching, selling physical or digital products, advertisements, and more.
The plugin’s key features are auto linker, stats, AZON, Geolocation, Google Click Tracking, CSV Importer, and more. It is highly recommended by developers and users alike on the WordPress.org directory.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular and useful WordPress plugins for your business websites. It helps for improved SEO so you can rank better and higher on search engines. The plugin encourages and directs you to use the right keyword on your text so when Google crawls through your website, it finds the keyword and understands your page better.
Yoast SEO is commonly used for content creation. When you are writing for a specific keyword, the plugin helps you tailor your articles to the keyword. Aside from that, it also directs you to changes you might need, such as breaking up long paragraphs or shortening your title.
By making full use of Yoast SEO, you can increase search engine ranking, credible website traffic, and sales.
Akismet Anti-Spam
If you have a portion of your website where people can leave comments, installing Akismet Anti-Spam is a good idea. It’s great if people can interact with your page, sharing them, leaving comments, and asking questions, however, spam comments are unavoidable.
This is why having the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin installed is an ideal move. It checks your comments and form submissions and uses messages to reference them on a global database of known spam accounts or messages. It then filters out and removes comments it believes to be spam. No worries though for it allows you to see the comments removed from the page.
It’s a wonderful plugin to utilize since it gives your website a cleaner and more professional appearance without all the spam messages.
Constant Contact
Email marketing is a powerful method for businesses. It allows business owners to build relationships and gain the trust of leads and potential customers, as well as maintain relationships with previous clients.
As its name implies, installing this Constant Contact allows you to have constant contact with users even after they leave your website. It allows you to create an email list, which every business owner should have, and send newsletters to your subscribers.
It is compatible with other plugins like OptinMaster and WPForms.
MonsterInsights
This plugin is considered the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress business websites and we see why it is so well-appreciated in the community. It allows WordPress users to integrate their websites with Google Analytics to see how many visitors visited your website.
Using these stats, you’ll be able to form a strategy to increase organic traffic and revenue. MonsterInsights also comes with eCommerce tracking, custom events tracking, focus keyword tracking, affiliate link tracking, media and universal tracking, outbound tracking, and more wonderful features that’ll boost your business website.
It doesn’t require any coding knowledge so it is easy to set up and use. It is ideal for bloggers, online shop owners, business websites, and agencies. It is being used by more than 3 million websites.
Smash Balloon
Business websites work best when paired with social media. This is why Smash Balloon is a must-have for business owners who are looking to increase conversions and interact more with their customers. The plugins that Smash Balloon offers don’t require coding skills and are easy to set up and integrate. It is designed with speed and performance.
Some of the plugins Smash Balloon has are Custom Facebook Feed Pro, Instagram Feed Pro, Custom Twitter Feeds Pro, and Feeds for Youtube. These plugins are responsive, mobile-optimized, and customizable. It allows users to leave comments and reactions and offers support for hashtags, automatic tweet moderation, and custom video end actions.
WooCommerce
If you want a plugin that makes people buy, WooCommerce is a great one to have. It powers more than 30% of online stores.
When you are a business website, your main goal is when people visit your page, they’ll eventually click on that shiny button to purchase your service or product. This plugin allows you to naturally sell anything on your blog, be it digital or physical goods with different variations, instant downloads, and more.
WooCommerce allows you to set the shipping rate or put a real-time calculator for your customers to use. Aside from that, it also enables you to set up different payment methods, such as major credit card companies, PayPal, BACs (bank transfers), and cash on delivery. This is a good feature since it gives your customer a choice to pick their preferred payment method.
This plugin is very flexible as it gives you full control over your store. You can add or/and remove extensions, change the design, or configure your setting as much as you like.