Do you run an online store? Are you looking for essential plugins to help make your site work faster and look great?
There are tons of free plugins available for WordPress, but not every plugin will do everything you need. In fact, many of these plugins are loaded with features that aren’t necessary.
In this post, we’ll share the top 10 essential WordPress plugins every ecommerce site needs.
What Are The WordPress Plugins Every Ecommerce Site Needs?
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the world’s leading open-source ecommerce plugin. It allows merchants to set up online stores quickly and easily.
It’s compatible with nearly any CMS, such as WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Magento, PrestaShop, ZenCart, Opencart, and more.
With WooCommerce, you can accept payments via PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Payments, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and more.
Plus, you can integrate shipping rates, coupons, discounts, and gift cards into your store.
WooCommerce is highly customizable, allowing you to change settings and features to fit your individual needs.
For example, you can change the default theme, remove unnecessary widgets, and adjust the layout of your storefront.
There are thousands of third-party extensions available for WooCommerce, too. This means you can add additional features to your store, such as advanced inventory management, custom checkout pages, and more.
2. WPML Plugin
WPML stands for “Worldwide Multilingual Platform.” It’s a multilingual platform designed specifically for WordPress websites.
This plugin lets you translate your entire website into multiple languages. It works seamlessly with WooCommerce, allowing you to offer products in multiple languages.
Additionally, WPML offers translation tools for images, videos, and text.
Translation is incredibly important for international businesses. If you don’t speak English, then you won’t be able to effectively reach customers across borders.
WPML makes it easier than ever to translate your website into multiple languages. Plus, it integrates perfectly with WooCommerce.
3. Gravity Forms Plugin
Gravity Forms is an extremely powerful form builder plugin. It allows you to create contact forms, subscription forms, surveys, polls, and much more.
It’ll save you tons of time building forms for your website. Plus, Gravity Forms comes with prebuilt templates that you can edit to match your brand.
You can also upload custom CSS stylesheets to give your forms unique looks.
Gravity Forms supports dozens of integrations, meaning you can connect it to hundreds of services. For example, you can use it to collect email addresses, sign up subscribers, send out newsletters, and more.
Gravity Forms is completely free. However, you do need to upgrade to access premium features.
4. Jetpack Plugin
Jetpack is a suite of web performance enhancements built into WordPress. These include things like caching, image compression, page speed improvements, and more.
Jetpack is included with WordPress Premium plans. However, if you don’t have a paid plan, you can still install it manually.
Once installed, Jetpack automatically updates itself whenever there are changes to WordPress core.
You can also download Jetpack separately. This gives you full control over what version of Jetpack you want to use.
5. Rank Math Plugin
Rank Math plugin is a WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to easily optimize your site for search engines. The plugin optimizes pages based on user behavior and Google’s webmaster guidelines.
It does this by analyzing the keywords used in each post and optimizing the title tags, meta descriptions, and other HTML code.
The plugin also analyzes the number of words per page and the length of posts. Based on these factors, it determines whether a page needs optimization.
If a page doesn’t need optimization, Rank Math will display an “SEO Friendly” badge next to its name.
If a page needs optimization, Rank Math will add additional tags to the head section of the page. These tags help search engines understand the content on the page.
6. Google Analytics Plugin
Google Analytics is a powerful tool for tracking visitor behavior on your site. With it, you can see how visitors interact with your pages, whether they return frequently, and much more. It’s also useful for improving your site’s performance.
For instance, you can find out which pages aren’t converting well and fix those issues.
You can also use Google Analytics to track conversions, such as purchases made on your site.
Plus, you can view real-time data using the Google Analytics Dashboard.
7. Elementor Page Builder
Elementor is a drag-and drop page builder plugin that lets you design beautiful websites with ease.
Elementor is similar to Visual Composer, but it focuses on visual elements rather than coding.
As a result, you can create unique designs that are optimized for mobile devices.
Plus, Elementor is completely responsive, meaning it adapts to fit whatever screen size you choose.
8. Akismet Anti-Spam
Akismet is a free anti-spam plugin for WordPress. It uses machine learning technology to detect spam comments, trackback links, pingbacks, and trackbacks.
When Akismet detects spam, it sends emails to the author of the comment or link. The author then has the option to delete the comment or remove the link.
Akismet also checks for spammy URLs and IP addresses. If it finds them, it warns you about the problem.
Akismet is compatible with many themes and plugins. It’s also compatible with the REST API.
9. Social Media Sharing Buttons Plugin
Social sharing buttons let users share your content across social media platforms.
They enable you to promote your content on social networks such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube.
There are several types of social sharing buttons available. For example, you can choose between image sharing buttons, video sharing buttons, and text sharing buttons.
10. MemberPress Plugin
MemberPress is a membership management plugin for WordPress. It enables members to sign up for paid accounts, manage their subscriptions, and access member-only areas.
Membership management tools like MemberPress make managing membership sites easier.
With MemberPress, you can set different levels of access for different groups of people. You can even allow certain people to edit specific parts of your website.
Why Do E-commerce Sites Needs Plugins?
E-Commerce websites need plugins because they’re complex and require many different features. They’re not just static sites that display content. Instead, e-commerce sites often include shopping carts, payment processing systems, order tracking tools, shipping calculators, product catalogs, and many other features.
Plugins are small programs that add extra functionality to WordPress. They give you access to features that aren’t included in the default theme. Some examples include adding social media sharing buttons, integrating shopping carts, and creating custom checkout pages.
Some plugins are free, some cost money, and others are paid for by third parties. Most plugins work well together, but there are times when they conflict.
When this happens, you may be able to find a plugin that does exactly what you want, but it won’t work with any other plugins. This means that you’d have to install two separate plugins to achieve the same result.
Plugins are essential tools for running a successful e-commerce store.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you’re looking to build a successful online store, you need to have a solid foundation. And that means using the right tools. Fortunately, there are many plugins available that will give you everything from SEO optimization to product management.
If you need assistance in understanding and installing these plugins to your WordPress site, contact us today!
