15 WordPress Plugins That Can Grow Your Small Business

Living in an era of complete digitization and constant technological innovation, it is vital for all businesses to have a website, irrespective of size or nature. Without having a digital front, your marketing efforts will go futile, for the first thing customers do when they get acquainted with a new company name is Google it. In simple words, having a website establishes a sense of credibility. If you haven’t yet, it is about time you make a WordPress website for your business.

You can keep optimizing your website by adding WordPress plugins to the mix. But with over 55,000 WordPress plugins available today, it can be pretty daunting to choose the right ones. There are plugins for various purposes, and you have to determine what is best for your site. With WordPress plugins, you can improve SEO, increase site speed, add contact forms, create an online store, so much more.

But we are here to rid you of your WordPress plugin confusion. In this article, we have listed 15 of the Best WordPress Plugins for growing your small business. Read on to know more!

Yoast SEO

SEO is extremely essential in getting your page a high ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). In fact, according to statistics provided by a BrightEdge study, 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine. Therefore, your site needs to be search optimized to start gaining traction. Yoast SEO is a plugin that helps improve your site’s content with keywords to increase your website’s ranking on search engines.

Post-installation, the plugin will appear on all pages or posts you create. It gives you a score and an elaborate explanation as to what the problems in your content are and how to fix them. Also, the plugin will check keywords or keyphrases and analyze your text for all variants of them. The use of Yoast SEO is always encouraged since you will now instinctively write your content with optimization in mind. This plugin, along with a solid keyword and content strategy, will get your website the high ranking it deserves.

HubSpot WordPress Plugin

The HubSpot WordPress plugin is an all-in-one lead generation tool that can be used to attract, engage, and delight your contacts and customers. You can create forms, pop-ups, emails, etc., right from your WordPress dashboard. You can also see how potential customers interact with your website and keep tabs on their page views, form submission, live chats, email engagement, etc., via a well-laid-out timeline.

Post monitoring all this data, you can also launch automated marketing campaigns and sales follow-ups. You also have the option to interact with your visitors via live chat or conversational bots. You can also integrate the plugin with 800 other apps and plugins. With this plugin, you can auto-sync form submissions with HubSpot CRM and obtain comprehensive analytics to track market performance.

Thrive Ovation

Thrive Ovation is a nifty plugin from Thrive Themes that helps you automate and manage customer testimonial collection. This plugin helps you gather rich and persuasive testimonials for your website. There are three unique ways of doing so with Thrive Ovation, namely,

• Transforms any WordPress comment on your website into a ready-to-go future testimonial with a single mouse click. This includes the name and avatar of the user who commented.
• It integrates with Facebook and Twitter, imports them into the plugin’s testimonial Rolodex, and transforms the positive mentions into pleasing testimonials.
• Allows you to automate the testimonial gathering process.

Sucuri Security

WordPress has around 70 million websites running on it. It is a common misconception that only high-traffic websites get hacked, but that is far from true. Smaller websites are targeted as well, and taking the popularity of WordPress as a CMS into the picture, is even more reason to be safe. Therefore, it is of the essence that you use a security plugin to ramp up the security of your website.

This is where Sucuri Security comes into the picture. It offers website monitoring, malware removal, and other website security-related issues for small and large businesses alike. You can also avail professional help at any time of the day, free of cost. You can either go for the free version or the paid version of the plugin. The free version is built with basic functions to strengthen your site’s security. Whereas, the premium version offers a website firewall to protect your website against cyber threats.

WP Forms

WP forms is hands down the best WordPress plugins for building contact forms. WP Forms is a drag and drop form builder which allows you to create a form of your choice with ease. Create contact forms, subscription forms, payment forms, and other types of forms for your website, without having to hire a developer. When used with a Post submissions add-on, this top-notch testimonial plugin can help you create easy-to-use forms whose testimonials can be submitted to you directly via your website.

Post submission, the user’s testimony will show up on your WordPress dashboard area for review. You can then decide whether to publish it or not. WP forms is rising in popularity amongst bloggers, business owners, designers, etc., and rightly so. With more than 50,000 downloads, the plugin can also reduce your work by offering pre-built templates to create forms quickly.

Sugar Calendar

Sugar Calendar is by far the best event calendar and booking plugin on WordPress. With Sugar Calendar, you can easily set event schedules (one-off or recurring events), set appointment time duration, sell tickets, etc. Here are a few features of Sugar Calendar to help you plan your schedule seamlessly.

• Each event gets an individual dedicated page, and you can plan unlimited events.
• Ability to integrate form plugins to create event registration forms.
• View events on Google Calendar.
• You can set custom date format and event time zones.

These are only some of the features you get with the free version. With the paid version, you can:

• Generate recurring events
• Link events to external URLs.
• Generate front-event submission forms.
• Integrate with Stripe or WooCommerce to accept event payments.

SeedProd

SeedProd is one of the most popular landing page builders for WordPress. The highlights of the plugin are the coming soon and maintenance mode functionality. It is the easiest way to build an attractive landing page for your website without hiring a developer. You simply have to drag and drop using the page editor, and use your imagination. It is perfect for making landing pages for WordPress blogs, e-commerce websites, etc.

How this works is you can point and click on the page to see the customization happen in real-time. Moreover, this page has a built-in email autoresponder and is search engine optimized. So if you want to create a landing page for collecting email addresses, promote a webinar, or simply increase sales, SeedProd is your playground.

Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery can be used to create stunning galleries anywhere on your site. In simple words, it is a drag and drop WordPress gallery builder. It can create albums, open images in pop-ups, etc. The plugin has been downloaded over 2,000,000 times since its release in 2014 and is widely popular amongst photographers, business owners, bloggers, designers, and developers. Since the internet is such a visual place, it will always fare you well if you have attractive photo and video galleries on your website to retain customer attention for a little longer.

Envira Gallery is tested on the WP plugin, ensuring that it is one of the fastest plugins on the fastest hosting on the market. Along with all this speed comes great functionality. Simply drag and drop images and videos to add and rearrange them. You can import these images from Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, etc. In case you want to build forms swiftly, you can also use the pre-built templates. Even the plugin code is developer-friendly with a plethora of hooks and filters.

Drift

Live chat is one of the easiest and effective ways of customer engagement. According to a recent study by WordStream, it was found out that the average conversion rate across all industries is only 2.35%. Livechat can change this scenario by pumping up customer engagement and increasing sales and conversions. Drift is one of the easiest ways to add a live chat service to your website. In fact, they boast that they were able to increase inbound leads by 200% by adding a live chat to their own website.

With a live chat function, you can actually talk and provide support to your customers while they are browsing your website, increasing the likelihood of a conversion. Not only live chat, but with Drift, you can also send in-app messages, obtain feedback, and implement it on the next batch of products.

Redirection

Redirection is one of the most well-known redirect managers for WordPress. It can help you manage 301 errors efficiently, keep track of 404 errors, and tie up loose ends. This will, in turn, reduce errors and fix site ranking. With Redirection, straight URL matching and conditional redirects are both possible. The plugin makes redirection easy based on user login status, cookies, the referring site, etc.

The plugin also has a fully-featured import-export system that can enable you to:

• Transfer redirects between sites using JSON.
• Import and export to Apache .htaccess.
• Export to Nginx rewrite rules
• Automate export and import using WP CLI.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp falls under the category of one of the most popular email marketing services. But why so? Well, they offer a forever-free plan that allows you to send up to 10,000 emails a month. But the catch here is that you can send it to not more than 2000 subscribers. If you want to send mails to more than 2000, then you will have to opt for the paid service.

Along with growing your Mailchimp email lists, you will now be able to write improved newsletters, which boost your overall digital marketing growth. Pair this with an MC4WP plugin, and you can easily create appealing opt-in forms or integrate it with an existing one. As long as your Mailchimp list doesn’t exceed 2000 subscribers, You can use this feature for free

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the go-to e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is a customizable and open-source platform built to help you easily set up your e-commerce platform and start selling your products. It simplifies the process of owning an online store, with decent flexibility and crucial features such as inventory and tax management, shipping integration, and secure payments. It powers almost 99% of all WordPress stores and has up to 27 million downloads to date.

WooCommerce is a free plugin that is compatible with all the functions of your WordPress site. It allows you to add or remove items, a shopping cart, and checkout options. The plugin also supports the WooCommerce marketplace to add features and extend store functionality. The platform is modular, and the user will have access to thousands of plugins and e-commerce extensions built just for WooCommerce.

Jetpack

Jetpack is the perfect plugin for users who aren’t very technical. It is a plugin made by the company behind WordPress itself, and offers multiple modules that users can manage their own self-hosted WordPress Website. One of the highlights of the Jetpack plugin is its social sharing feature. Currently, Jetpack can include Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pocket, Skype, Telegram, Whatsapp, Reddit, email, and Print. It offers a straightforward way to use, manage, and customize a self-hosted site.

MaxCDN

MaxCDN is a contact delivery network that reduces the server load and speeds up your website. It makes images and other static content load faster while maintaining site security. It supports easy WordPress integration and offers in-built scalability, capacity, and real-time control. With an intuitive setup and user experience, you can get access to features such as,

• Domain sharding
• Website analytics
• Flexible SSL reports
• Full encryption
• Support for video files

Akismet Spam protection

Akismet Spam protection is an auto-backed anti-spam plugin for WordPress. It is a very capable comment spam filtering service for WordPress. Since the number of spam comments can be as high as 85%, a comment spam filtering service like Akismet. It checks all your contact form submissions for suspicious comments, hence keeping your blog fresh and your forms spam-free.

An easy-to-install and activate plugin, Akismet Spam protection follows a run-in-the-background approach, completely automating comment moderation.

Bottom Line

If you already own a WordPress website or plan on creating one in the future, understand that it is vital to add functionality to your website via WordPress plugins. It makes your work easier and allows you to engage your users in a more customer-friendly manner. Go through the above list and take your pick of the best plugins for your website now!