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Long gone are the days when WordPress was considered a humble blogging platform. Nowadays, the world’s most widely-used CMS is powering over 40% of all websites, covering everything from corporate sites to online portfolios. Increasingly, ecommerce store owners, too, are turning to WordPress to peddle their products and services, with its flexibility, ease-of-use and suite of customizable themes making it a go-to option.
One of the sharpest arrows in the WordPress quiver, of course, is the access it offers to countless plugins and add-ons that can add almost any functions you’d like, be they fundamental or simply nice to have. For online sellers specifically, there’s no shortage of WordPress plugins for ecommerce store to empower and grow ecommerce stores. Here, we’ve broken down 10 essential plugins that every online store running on WordPress needs.
1. WooCommerce
Whatever product or service you’re selling, you’ll first need a dedicated ecommerce plugin to launch and manage your online store. Ideally, that plugin should make storefront creation easy by including essential ecommerce features. Flexible payment methods? Varied shipping options? Simple stock management systems? It should all be there.
WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce solution for WordPress, and it’s not hard to see why. This free open-source tool enables store owners to sell all types of products and services and can readily integrate with thousands of unique store designs via WordPress themes. With everything from easy product and category management to powerful analytics, SEO best practices, benefits, WooCommerce development is a comprehensive and flexible ecommerce solution.
2. Elementor
To fully optimize your pages, you’ll need a page builder that enables you to create engaging, visually-inspiring content with pixel-perfect design. But if you’re a newcomer to web design and development, you’ll want a solution that’s intuitive, uncomplicated and beginner-friendly.
Given its simplicity and ease of use (plus its compatibility with multiple WordPress themes), Elementor is an ideal page-building solution for beginners, as the drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor allows easy content creation without having to worry about back-end WordPress code. With Elementor you can create any type of content for your website, whether you’re using it to create custom landing pages or aiming to design your entire storefront.
3. HubSpot
You won’t be able to grow your ecommerce business without marketing, so you’ll need a powerful digital marketing tool if you’re going to generate leads and grow your customer base. The HubSpot WordPress plugin for ecommerce store is not only easy-to-use, codeless and completely free, but it also includes a suite of essential marketing features aimed at accelerating growth.
With HubSpot, you can effortlessly create engaging email marketing campaigns with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder, then interact with site visitors via forms and live chat. Using an intuitive analytics dashboard, you can track the performance of your marketing campaigns in real-time. The plugin integrates your site seamlessly with HubSpot CRM to make contact management easier, too.
4. The Cloudways WordPress Migrator
Migration is an inevitable part of the first-time online merchant’s journey. It typically makes sense to start out with a low-cost store (allowing you to stretch your budget), but sooner or later you’ll need to shift to a faster and more robust platform if you’re to keep the growth going. And when that time comes, choosing the platform will be easy relative to the true challenge of moving everything across.
With the Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin, though, you can smooth things along very nicely. Provided you’re happy to host your store on Cloudways (and since it’s among the highest rated ecommerce hosting platforms, that shouldn’t be an issue), you can carry everything over in minutes with no stress or inconvenience. And with the inherent scalability and flexibility of the new platform, you should be set to grow all the way to enterprise level.
5. Yoast SEO
An effective SEO strategy is an essential part of any successful ecommerce site and business, and a vital tool when it comes to funneling high-quality leads to your website. In the race to climb the SERPs, business owners will do anything they can to reach the top. From endlessly tweaking the back end of their websites, to employing marketing agencies specializing in the latest AI SEO tactics. To convince Google and other search engines to rank your site highly within their SERPs, you must deploy a strategy that factors in content quality, keyword use, domain rating, and page loading speed (to name just four key elements key elements).
An all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, Yoast has been helping millions of websites rank higher in search engine results since 2008. Packed with a range of features to make your website more search engine-friendly, Yoast is invaluable when it comes to technical as well as on-page SEO, including canonical URLs and meta tags, advanced XML sitemaps, title and meta description templates and an in-depth Schema.org integration.
6. Upsell
One of the most powerful ways to increase conversion and drive revenue on your ecommerce store is to create an effective sales funnel. A sales funnel describes the journey your customer makes when making a purchase in your store, and you’ll close more sales if your funnel is seamless, uncluttered and hassle-free. That said, there’s also an opportunity to upsell at this stage to boost AOV and overall revenue.
Upsell is a wide-ranging and comprehensive tool aimed at optimizing your sales funnel, driving more conversions and increasing customer spend. It comes with a vast suite of must-have features for ecommerce store owners, but its most important functions are its custom checkout pages, its upselling tools, its dynamic coupon creator, and its ability to offer additional payment models like subscriptions.
7. WP Rocket
For an ecommerce store, site speed is a crucial factor that can make or break the user experience. Slow-loading pages can frustrate customers and lead to higher bounce rates, directly affecting your sales. WP Rocket is a powerful caching plugin designed to improve your website’s loading speed and overall performance, making it an essential tool for any online store.
WP Rocket offers features like page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression right out of the box. It also includes options for optimizing your database and reducing the weight of your files through minification and concatenation of CSS and JavaScript files. For ecommerce sites, WP Rocket is particularly beneficial because it’s compatible with popular plugins like WooCommerce, ensuring that your store’s dynamic content remains optimized without compromising functionality.
8. MonsterInsights
Understanding your customers’ behavior is key to optimizing your ecommerce store and driving growth. MonsterInsights is a Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that provides you with detailed insights into how visitors interact with your site, making it easier to make data-driven decisions.
With MonsterInsights, you can track important ecommerce metrics such as total revenue, conversion rate, average order value, and more—all within your WordPress dashboard. The plugin also offers enhanced eCommerce tracking for WooCommerce, allowing you to monitor product popularity, cart abandonment rates, and customer lifetime value. MonsterInsights simplifies the complex world of Google Analytics, making it accessible to store owners of all experience levels.
9. Sucuri Security
Security is a top priority for any ecommerce store, given the sensitive customer data and payment information involved. Sucuri Security is a comprehensive security plugin for WordPress that provides multiple layers of protection to keep your site safe from hackers, malware, and other online threats.
Sucuri Security offers features such as website monitoring, malware scanning, and brute force attack prevention. It also includes a firewall that blocks malicious traffic before it reaches your site. In the event of a security breach, Sucuri’s post-hack security actions can help you quickly restore your website and remove any malware. For ecommerce stores, this level of security is vital to protect both your business and your customers’ trust.
10. Site Reviews
Customer reviews are crucial when it comes to driving conversion on your online store, as nearly all prospective customers will consider reviews before deciding whether to place their orders. If your products (or your site) have little to no reviews, your conversion rates are likely to sit very much on the lower end of the scale. That’s why it’s vitally important to encourage feedback from your customers.
The Site Reviews plugin offers a simple yet effective way to collect ratings and reviews on your website. Easily integrating with WooCommerce, Site Reviews enables you to display reviews pretty much anywhere on your site, and in a range of formats including shortcodes, widgets and blocks. What’s more, you can pin your most valuable reviews so they’re the first ones your visitors see.
Bonus tips for finding WordPress Plugins For Ecommerce Store
Check ratings and reviews: Always check the ratings and reviews of a plugin before installing it. Plugins with a large number of active installations and positive reviews are generally more reliable and better maintained. Look for detailed reviews that discuss the pros and cons of the plugin in real-world scenarios.
Ensure compatibility: Make sure any plugin you choose is compatible with your current version of WordPress and other plugins you have installed. Compatibility issues can cause conflicts that might break your site or reduce its functionality.
Test in a staging environment: Before deploying a new plugin on your live site, test it in a staging environment. This allows you to see how the plugin affects your site without risking any downtime or functionality issues.
Keep it lean: Avoid installing too many plugins, as this can slow down your website and increase the chances of conflicts. Stick to the essentials and deactivate or remove any plugins that are no longer necessary.
Prioritize security: Security should be a top priority when selecting plugins, especially for ecommerce stores. Only download plugins from reputable sources like the WordPress Plugin Directory or well-known third-party developers. Be cautious of plugins from unknown sources, as they might contain malicious code.
Monitor plugin performance: Use tools like Query Monitor or New Relic to monitor the performance impact of your plugins. If a plugin is slowing down your site, consider alternatives that offer the same functionality with better performance.
Whether you’re a beginner launching your first ecommerce store on WordPress or an experienced online merchant looking to take your WordPress store to the next level, make sure these 10 essential tools are part of your strategy.
