Enhancing Conversion Rates For Your Website Through WordPress Plugins

Websites have become a legitimate operational tool for most of the businesses. One would hardly find an enterprise which doesn’t have its website running. With the internet becoming a credible source of not just accessing information but also procuring services in different forms, it has become increasingly important for companies to ensure that their websites bring in adequate business. One of the ways to assess the success of any commercial website is by measuring its conversion rate. The higher the conversion rate more is the business your website brings for your enterprise. There are myriad of ways to assess a website’s conversion rate. If it is a website offering products or services, then conversion rate is measured in terms of how many visits converted into purchases or how many visitors employed the services provided. If it is a website offering information about a business or content in some other form, then conversion rate can be gauged by the time spent by visitors on the website. Another common way of assessing a website’s conversion rate is to see the number of people who have signed up for a website or businesses’ mailing list (This is the reason why some website make you sign their mailing list before allowing you to access the content). Conversion targets might vary from business to business but what remains common is an enterprise’s willingness to enhance their conversion rates as much as they could.

The birth of WordPress

WordPress saw its inception in the year 2003. It had a rather modest beginning wherein it provided a simple tool for people to start their own blog where they could disseminate information about any product or service that they were offering or their own views. Over the years, WordPress expanded its utility and today people from across the spectrum use WordPress to sell their services and products. If you have a WordPress website, there are many ways to increase conversion rate of your website by making simple changes to the website such as adding a live chat feature to your homepage, changing the positioning of your main headline, adding more research content such as case studies,  eBooks etc., using testimonials to validate the products or services that you offer, regularly updating the images used on website especially on home page, making homepage reader friendly with aesthetic positioning of content and avoiding over jargonised content, making signing up easy preferably a single page affair etc. These value additions have proven to make a considerable impact on the traffic on the website and consequently improved conversion rates.

However, if none of the above-mentioned tricks gave you the desirable conversion rate, it might be the time to start using a plug-in for your WordPress website. Plug-in are small value additions to a WordPress website which might enhance its functionality. Plug-in can range from simple to complex. One major upside of using WordPress plug-in is that the features installed can be activated, deactivated or uninstalled as per one’s leisure without sabotaging the site in any way. Plug-in is thus great to improve the conversion rate for any website. Official WordPress repository lists about 47,000 WordPress plug-in. Since one is spoilt for choice when it comes to WordPress plug-in with so many different plug-ins to choose from, we have curated a list of seven best WordPress plug-in and have decoded their purpose. We discuss below seven most popular and useful plug-in which you can use to improve conversion rates for your website:

• Akismet– Since cyber-attack is the reality of today’s world and the internet is largely turning into a place which is prone to elements with sinister intentions. Spams can also have an adverse impact on your website’s conversion rate. In this scenario, a plug-in like Akismet works The primary function of this plugin is to enhance the security blanket of your website. It is basically an anti-spam plugin which helps eliminate spam comments from your website. The plug-in also creates a status history for comments which helps you to identify which comment has been flagged as a spam earlier. Akismet is a great option for those who are concerned about the security of their website and want to make their business or content fool proof. For personal sites and blogs, this plug-in is free, whereas for commercial purposes one needs to buy its monthly subscription.
• Optinmonster– Optinmonster is a great choice for those who wish to increase their mailing list subscribers and consequently improve their conversion rate. This plug-in works by making your subscriber form easy and eye-catching. It tests out different textures and text fonts to create a perfect subscriber form for your website which attracts visitors. This plugin comes with loads of features which makes it easy for a business to customise it as per their needs. One can opt for features like a full-screen gateway for the website, form editor, pop-ups at regular intervals, aesthetically designed templates, easy opt-in One can go for a basic subscription with limited features for $9 per month for one website. For advanced features for unlimited websites, the cost would be $29 for one month.
• Yoast SEO– Search engines like Google are a primary source of attracting visitors to your website. There is a steady increase in the number of internet users accessing search engines which enhance the value of Search Engine Optimisation even more. However, in order for your page to secure high rankings on search engines, your website needs to have a unique and original content. Plugins like Yoast SEO are great to help you guide as to how you can make your content both user-friendly and also SEO friendly. This app helps you choose an optimum keyword and guide you towards its usage so as to gain high rankings. It also helps you regarding the positioning of text and images to make content readable and aesthetic. It also helps to manage as to how your post appears on the search engine by giving you a snippet preview. You can make your snippet eye catching in order to enhance traffic on your post.
• Leadpages– Having an attractive landing page has proven to have a positive impact on conversion rate. Therefore, plug-ins like Leadpages help you design an eye-catching landing page with just about enough information to lead them towards your main website. This plug-in is also proven to increase your mailing list, It comes with various exciting features like mobile user-friendly template, timely pop-ups, easy customisation etc. Subscription for Leadpages ranges between $25-$199.
• Bloom- This is a lead generation and opt-in plugin. It works fairly simply. With Bloom, you can create various kinds of opt-in forms with different colours, fonts, templates etc. There are over 100 available layouts to choose from and each layout is fully customisable in terms of border, colour, font etc. It also displays A/B split results at a glance for you to have a quick review of how your website is doing. The plug-in is a part of an enterprise called Elegant Themes. To access this plug-in, you have to buy membership of Elegant Themes which might range between $98- $249 a year.
• Hello, Bar– Hello Bar is a plug-in which allows you to insert a floating bar on your website. This floating bar can serve many purposes. It can display a welcome message, could include an email signup form, can provide links to social media profiles or could simply give a call to action. This is a subdued but an effective way to increase your conversion rate whether it is in terms of ascent in your mailing list subscribers or social media thumbs up. One can choose among a bar, a pop-up, full page layout or even a slider with the easily customisable font, colour, templates etc. A subscription starts from $12 per month.
• W3 Total Cache– Caching is an effective way to enhance conversion rate for a site. Caching basically means that the data accessed by a user is temporarily stored within the computing ecosystem, so that next time a user visits a website, data loads faster. Less loading time will give your website higher ranking on search engines and will increase traffic on your website. Caching is a commonly used technique to improve user-friendliness of the website. Plugins like W3 Total Cache can help you cache the data and improve the overall usability of the website. This plug-in is touted as one of the best plug-ins for caching in a WordPress It also helps you save bandwidth by a good 80%.

The list of WordPress plug-ins is endless. These are only some of the many WordPress plug-ins you can use to make your website user-friendly and easy to navigate. Each of the plug-ins discussed above caters to a particular aspect of the website, focussing on which can drastically enhance the conversion rate for your business. Thus, use a WordPress plug-in to give your website a new lease of life and make your business reach its maximum potential.