Online business owners often struggle with optimizing their website in a manner that translates effectively to the bottom line. It’s important to make an occasional assessment of your online presence and ask if your site is doing everything it can to attract new customers, bring in returning customers, capture new leads, and boost sales. If there’s any hesitation in answering that question, chances are you can be doing more.
Fortunately, the flexible, scalable WordPress platform is a good ideal for all types of websites, including ecommerce sites with a base of ten to ten million customers. Part of what makes WordPress so ideal is a myriad of available plugins, many designed to help enhance sales and marketing efforts. Let’s take a look at 10 of the best plugins for pumping up your sales.
King Sumo Headlines – an A/B Tester
King Sumo Headlines is an effective resource to help you determine which headlines are connecting best with your customers. A good headline is a key element to drawing attention to what you offer and driving sales.
This plugin includes an algorithm that automatically tests which headlines generate the most traffic. It’s a simple process; just write a series of headlines for a post, visitors will see different headlines at random, and over time the top performing headline will be selected to maximize traffic on your site.
This SEO friendly plugin is optimized for Google and adds a short parameter to your URLs for tracking. You’ll get detailed reports showing you the success of each headline.
Optimize Press – Create Landing Pages; Sales, and Membership Portals
Creating visually appealing and effective pages is a key element in sales success. Optimize Press takes the hard work out of converting landing pages, creating sales pages, membership portals, and complete launch funnels. You can easily edit pages with the 100% live editor, allowing you to view changes to your content and layout live on the page without refreshing, reloading, or previewing.
Optimize Press generates fully responsive pages that are optimized for viewing on any device. Over 30 pre-formatted templates are available for those who have trouble getting started on site layout, and you can add additional custom elements from the Element Browser for even greater functionality. Updates and email support are available free for the length of the 1-year license.
WP Google Analytics – Analytics and Visitor Tracking
Google Analytics has been downloaded nearly eleven million times, making it the number one analytics tool for WordPress. It’s important to know who your audience is and what they want. Google Analytics shows you visitor’s geographical location, browser choice, screen resolution, language, and more. You can see where they go on your website, and how long they spend there. You’ll see what time of day your site receives the most traffic. You’ll know how visitors found your site; whether they came via a search engine, social site, link from another site, or directly. You’ll also learn how visitors interact with your content, such as which links they click on.
Poll, Quiz, Form and Survey – Survey and Feedback Tool
Adding polls, quizzes, and surveys to your site is a fun way for visitors to interact and it allows you to boost user engagement. Polls, surveys, and quizzes increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site, as well as increasing page shares and views. You can run contest and sweepstakes, and even generate revenue by integrating an ad into a poll, survey, or quiz. Polling allows you to discover people’s opinions about things that can impact your business, and this tool lets you easily generate aggregate poll reports.
Polls, surveys, and quizzes are a great way to drive traffic from social media. This plugin is highly intuitive and easy to use, allowing you to set up these lively value-added touches in just minutes.
WP Touch Mobile – Mobile Optimization
The average adult spends 5.6 hours a day engaging digitally, and 51% of that time is spent on mobile devices. While conversion rates on traditional desktops are still higher than mobile devices, this is a large and important market segment that cannot be ignored.
As a Google-preferred mobile solution, WP Touch Mobile allows your site to be tagged as mobile friendly, which will boost your search engine rankings. The WP Touch Mobile plugin makes your site mobile friendly in just a few quick clicks. It utilizes the same URLs and theme – all your content remains the same, it is simply optimized for the mobile experience. You have the option of specifying different menus, homepages and blog landing pages for mobile.
Visitors have the ability to switch between a mobile and desktop view. Whether mobile visitors view vertically or horizontally, they’ll see appropriately rescaled images, the smart splitting of articles, and removal of non-supported media.
WP Super Cache – Faster Load Times
Site visitors have little patience for slow page load times, and a plugin like WP Super Cache can speed up performance significantly. This plugin generates static HTML files as an alternative to processing heavy PHP scripts which can bog down load times. Static HTML files are delivered to users who are not logged in, have not left comments, or have not viewed password protected posts, meaning the heavy lifting of PHP need only be reserved for a small number of users, allowing your server to operate much more efficiently. Optimized load times make for not just happier customers, but also better SEO.
Simple Side Tab – Call to Action
A global call to action tab that can be linked from any page or post is an invaluable tool when you have a special offer or promotion, or something you want every visitor to your site to see. This side tab will stay in place as the visitor scrolls down the page, ensuring it’s always in their line of site and ready for action. You have the flexibility of placing the tab left or right, can customize text and font, and can choose a complimentary background color from a palette of available choices.
Livechat – Live Chat Software
This feature-rich plugin allows you to offer live support to potential customers at a time that is convenient for them. You have the flexibility to initiate a chat or wait for customers to come to you.
LiveChat is fully customizable, meaning you can add a logo, and control all text fields. You can add as many agents as you choose – there are no limits. You can add quick responses for commonly asked questions.
LiveChat is hosted on your server and uses only minimal resources. When a chat request is sent, you’ll receive a desktop notification (supported in all browsers except IE). When you do not wish to have live chat available, it’s simple to hide the feature.
Shareaholic – Social Sharing
A strong presence on social media can be a key factor in the success of any website, and this all-in-one content amplification platform is a simple solution for any website to engage with visitors, increase traffic, market content, better understand site visitors and convert prospects, all from a simple-to-use dashboard. Full support is provided for social media giants like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Gmail, Evernote, Tumblr and Digg, and even not-so-giants like WeHeartIt, Instapaper, and Pocket. You can customize the floating social media bar to match your site’s design, and this plugin is optimized for mobile.
Ecommerce WD – Ecommerce Shopping Cart
Arguably the most important feature of any ecommerce site is the ecommerce. A fully functional shopping solution that works as well for you as it does for your customers is a must, and this is where the Ecommerce WD plugin comes in.
Advanced features and functionality mean no complex setups or hours spent on configurations. It is fully customizable and features an intuitive user interface and easy setup. Features include unlimited products and categories, PayPal Standard/Express integration, customizable layout, support for multiple shipping methods, same product category comparison, calculation of tax, and support for adding discounts, guest checkout, a detailed orders page, and more. Multiple languages and currencies are supported.
