Looking to improve your website on a budget and without all the custom development? Then website plugins are the answer.
Website plugins are great for improving the overall functionality of your site. Possessing the ability to change visual elements, add extra content, and allow for smooth integrations between your site and certain tools.
But the best part about plugins is their simplicity. All you need to do from your side as a user is download and install whichever plugin you’re interested in on your website’s CMS (Content Management System).
Below you’ll learn about the benefits of using website plugins and the best plugins that you should be using in 2022.
The best website plugins for 2022
1. TrustPulse
TrustPulse is among the best social-proof plugins for websites and the amazing thing is that it works on all popular CRMs (Content Management Systems) including WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Drupal and more.
Its main functionality is to create trust, conversions and sales by displaying eye-catching social proof notifications on your site.
It also allows you to track purchases, downloads and registrations and show them as recent activity.
The TrustPulse plugin essentially works to create a feeling of urgency or FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) using swift notifications like the one below.
2. All in one SEO
All in one SEO is a plugin for WordPress that helps you manage your website’s SEO. With it, you can quickly and easily analyse your site’s organic performance using the smart wizard and optimise your settings based on your website’s profile.
But it doesn’t stop there, you can also analyse your site’s local SEO and WooCommerce SEO if need be.
3. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin for tracking website speed, traffic, user experience, and conversions.
This plugin helps make your website faster in just a few minutes. Once installed, it immediately goes to work on applying web performance best practices in order to boost your loading time, improve your page speed score, and optimise your core web vitals.
4. Optimole
Large image files are often the cause of slow website performance. Optimole helps with this by processing the images on your website in real-time (with lazy loading) to reduce their size without sacrificing image quality.
Images are also automatically adjusted to the right size for your visitor’s browser and device.
If a visitor to your website has a low-quality internet connection, Optimole will reduce the image quality to match the connection so that the user’s experience won’t be negatively affected.
The Optimole plugin is only available for WordPress at this stage.
5. LimeSpot
LimeSpot is a plugin specifically created for e-commerce websites and is available for download on the Shopify app directory. It uses powerful AI to analyse user behaviour both individually and as a group in order to compile a user profile.
Once AI analysis is complete, LimeSpot uses the data to make product recommendations specific to each user. Thereby increasing relevancy, and by extension, conversions.
6. Hotjar
The Hotjar plugin is by far the most useful in our opinion. It lets you see how users interact with your site, helping you to spot UX issues, design problems and more.
Hotjar’s heat maps reveal how users engage with your website and help to highlight which CTAs (Calls To Action) and links are not noticeable enough. It also shows you where you are losing people in long-form content by allowing session recordings for real-time analysis.
The Hotjar plugin is available for WordPress only at this stage.
7. Qualaroo
Qualaroo lets you take user feedback to the next level and does this by automatically collecting user data through advanced targeting. It’s not a plugin per se but can be easily installed on any website using JavaScript code.
With Qualaroo, you can survey specific users while they are on your site viewing your product or service.
If that’s not enough, you also have the option to include elements like decision trees to dig even deeper into the questions you’re asking and collect user feedback to improve your products and services.
Conclusion
There are many other amazing plugins out there not mentioned on this list, each one created to solve a different website problem. But we feel that the above should suffice to get you started with the absolute essentials.
If that is not enough, figure out your goal, and then find a plugin that helps you achieve it.
