It’s no secret that WordPress is a market leader when it comes to website building. In fact, 33% of the world wide web is powered by WordPress and they have a 60% market share for content management systems!
One of the best things about WordPress is its flexibility. If you already have a WordPress website, you’re probably already familiar with its vast amount of plugins and customisation options.
However, with almost 55,000 plugins in their directory, it can be a little daunting to find the perfect plugin for your website. Here’s a list of some of the best plugins with the potential to increase the functionality and performance of your website.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the best WordPress plugins if you want to sell anything online. It’s owned and maintained by the makers of WordPress and powers an impressive 30% of all online stores. It’s very easy to set up and can be integrated into your existing website. As well as the initial storefront plugin, WooCommerce also have a vast number of additional extensions to optimise your website.
With WooCommerce you can offer your customers extendable shipping options, free shipping, local pickups, flat rates, and many more. It also has multiple payment options for your customers including cash on delivery, credit card and PayPal – a very convenient feature for a plugin to have and very much appreciated by customers as well. From physical products to event tickets, software, or service plans, you will be able to sell anything using this plugin.
Yoast SEO
In this internet first world, search engine optimisation and its advantages are more relevant than ever. Yoast SEO helps to guide users into creating the best content that will in turn help you rank higher in search engines.
You can choose a focus keyword and check that it has been used appropriately with the page analysis tool. It covers everything from your written content, to image alt tags and meta description. It even ranks your posts readability and suggests ways your can best align your text and photos. Additionally, with the snippet preview tool, Yoast SEO assists in improving how your page/post will look in search engines.
Jetpack
Jetpack is an essential plugin for a successful WordPress website. It is designed to increase your traffic, boost your page speed as well as optimising your images and website appearance. Jetpack also takes care of your site security in order to protect your website against hackers across the internet.
Duplicator
Duplicator gives you the ability to move your entire WordPress website from one location to another – basically ‘duplicating’ it, as the name suggests! It allows you to backup and transfer your files, themes and posts to wherever you want them to be. It’s a perfect plugin for setting up a website from scratch, re-branding or when you’re working with a web design agency, because the chances are that you’ll want to move servers after a while.
Word of warning; this plugin does require some technical knowledge. If you plan to migrate WordPress or backup WordPress it may be best to speak to an expert if you’re not a computer wizz. Also, don’t forget to back-up your files and databases beforehand.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is a live drag-and-drop page builder plugin for WordPress. It is considered to be one of the best on the market. It even comes with an inbuilt ‘tour’ to help quickly familiarise yourself with their interface. Web pages and layouts made using Beaver Builder are designed to be fully responsive across devices with fast loading times. It also supports core and third party WordPress widgets and shortcodes – meaning you can use all your favourite plugins with it.
Honorable mention – Gutenberg
WordPress have developed a page builder which is included as part of WordPress 5.0 and later. Gutenberg removes the need for a third party plugin, but the Classic Editor plugin allows users to switch to another page editor if you’d prefer it. It uses ‘Blocks’ to plan out your page, which allows users to insert, rearrange, and style multimedia content with very little technical knowledge. Instead of using custom code, you can add a block and focus on your content.
What are your favourite plugins?