If there were a single, cookie-cutter solution for successful website design, every single brand would be the leading one in terms of ranking and customer engagement. Alas, we have so much to learn about what customers want, and of course, that constantly changes. New trends arise and thus, new design solutions emerge to help provide users what they need. As a business owner, you need to make sure that your website is not just a reflection of your brand, but that it sums up what your customers want.
As one of the simplest platforms perfect for website-building, WordPress remains a top choice for brands from all industries. However, depending on your industry and your target audience, different plugins will serve you best. One commonality all websites need to share is user-friendliness. By implementing the right plugins and thus enabling the right functionalities, you’ll make your site more user-friendly, boost customer experience, and ultimately, your bottom line.
Here, we’ve assembled a list of a few of the most useful WordPress plugins you should consider for your own website and business. By adding them to your own WordPress arsenal, you’ll enhance the experience on your site, improve engagement, and build up your reputation over time.

Check for broken links

Although your SEO strategy heavily depends on so many different factors, the links on your site and the links that lead back to your site are a significant factor in how well you can rank and how seriously search engines perceive your business. WordPress has made this otherwise arduous journey simpler and less painful.
Keeping your link portfolio in check is much easier with the right plugins to locate broken links, remove them, and replace them with working link versions. The Broken Link Checker is a solid and most common choice for sites of all sizes, and a reputable one at that, so that you can always keep track of your links.

Introduce live chat

In recent years, customers have become pickier when it comes to preferred communication channels. Instead of sifting through your FAQ page, they’ll often want to talk to someone immediately to find what they need or to see if they’ve selected the right product. Enter: live chat WordPress plugins that help you connect with your customers directly on your site.

Live chat also helps you offer personalized messages depending on the visitor on your site, so that you can up-sell and cross-sell when an opportunity arises. Integrating these tools is fairly simple, and your support agents will be able to boost their customer relationships in time.

Expand communication with VoIP

You are likely already familiar with VoIP technology – it has replaced legacy phone systems as a much more comprehensive, seamless digital platform that enables businesses to interact with customers online. For starters, you should research different VoIP system providers to find a reputable VoIP-based solution that fits your business needs and has all the right features.

VoIP goes beyond phone calls, as it should include internet faxing, email integration, chat, call recording, and many other features. Integrating your WordPress website with your VoIP platform through the right plugin can help you stay connected with your customers and keep all your customer communication on one organized platform. Plus, you can use the built-in analytics to improve future customer interactions.

Let WordPress work on your SEO

Your content marketing workload is already challenging enough, isn’t it? For most businesses, crafting and launching content strategies takes time, constant learning, and bounds of creativity. However, content serves a few major purposes to make your website more visible and to enhance your overall SEO efforts. This is where the right WordPress plugins can make a huge difference.

SEMRush and Yoast are considered top choices in this respect, no matter your industry. These plugins help you evaluate your pages individually and your entire website, you have a slew of customizable fields simplifying the optimization process to add the right descriptions and tags wherever necessary. Keyword research and implementation becomes much simpler and more streamlined with such plugins, allowing you more opportunities to adapt to arising SEO trends and changes in search engine algorithms.

Boost conversion rates

Even the best-designed websites sometimes earn traffic from visitors who will abandon their carts or want to leave your site sooner than you’d want them to. This is where turning losses into opportunities can be extremely useful when you have the right plugin at hand. Recovering these “almost lost” customers means that you have a chance to transform an unfortunate interaction into a potentially lucrative opportunity.

Some plugins such as OptinMonster are designed to be user-friendly, easy to implement on your WordPress website, and above all, highly customizable so that you can provide a personalized experience every time. These plugins can also boost your email marketing by attracting more subscribers, and increase your sales in time, as you improve your templates.

Speed-enhancing caching plugins

In addition to support availability and personalization, your site’s speed greatly contributes to its user-friendliness. Simply put, your customers are accustomed to fast loading with no delay, and WordPress can seamlessly provide increased loading speeds, if you use the right caching plugins. Caching is a great solution to improve your SEO, enhance user experience, and to reduce the workload of your servers.

Among many options, W3 Total Cache is a favorite WordPress caching plugin that many businesses use regularly. The only drawback of this plugin is that it might not be as intuitive for beginner WordPress users, as it comes with a learning curve, but it’s worth the effort, considering the benefits it brings for your website.

Of course, you cannot expect your plugins on your WordPress website to resolve all of your problems. You still need to invest in updating your website’s content, making sure you publish reviews and actively engage your customers through comments, while you add visually-engaging content such as videos and images as well. Plus, your site’s functionalities don’t depend solely on the plugins. However, choosing the right plugins can go a long way in providing a superior customer experience, enhancing brand loyalty and awareness, and ultimately making your site better at every turn.