Do you need your website to take online bookings for you? Would you like to include a “spin the wheel” function on your eCommerce site to encourage sales, or maybe take recurring monthly payments from subscriptions?
At Kazam Creative, we build all of our websites using the hugely popular WordPress platform, which has a great Content Management System (CMS) build in, meaning YOU the client can update your own website.
The beauty of WordPress is that it is fully customisable in every way to do whatever you can imagine – if there’s an idea, there’s a plugin that will make it happen!
1. WooCommerce
One of the most popular plugins that we use is WooCommerce, which you can see more info about here.
WooCommerce is a free, open-source eCommerce plugin built on WordPress. It provides the tools for anyone, anywhere, to sell any products or services through their WordPress website with truly unlimited flexibility and control over how to build upon and grow your business. You can set up your online store in minutes, get secure payments, configure shipping options and lots more.
2. OptinMonster
This great little plugin helps convert your potential customers into paying customers. With its many features, including welcome mats, countdown timers and coupon spin the wheel, you can ensure your site is working its hardest to capture those customers.
Optinmonster calls itself “customer acquisition and lead generation software” and it essentially has all the tools you need to grab peoples attention with some savvy call to action features. It will allow you to offer countdown timers for special offers and coupon discounts; detects when someone is about to leave your website and allows you to offer a last minute deal to get them to stay on your site; and it also provides the option of a floating bar on your site so you can prompt customers to sign up to your newsletters for future offers.
The pricing is subscription based and starts at roughly AUD$12.50 (the site is in USD) per month paid annually. They will also provide free access to their training library of courses, training videos and eBooks which they claim is valued at about $2000.
3. UpdraftPlus
Updating and taking regular backups of your website is important to protect you in case something should ever go wrong – and trust us, it sometimes does! UpdraftPlus is a WordPress plugin that allows you to schedule automatic backups of your website to store on online storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, send to your email or other locations of your choosing. UpdraftPlus is super easy to use and it’s also free in its basic form, but you can buy a premium license based on your needs.
4. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is one of the most popular solutions for creating enquiry forms and comprehensive forms in WordPress. It gives you total control over what you want to make without needing to know any code, and helps to automate everything with ease.
Say for example you’re in the building industry and would like customers to be able to fill in a comprehensive quote and upload photos/documents along with their quote? Easy done! Or perhaps you want to conduct a quiz/poll or surveys on your website to collect and analyse data on who your target audience is? You can do it! It even has some great eCommerce features built-in as well!
We use the Elite version of this plugin, which is a bit pricey at $259/year but don’t worry, we don’t pass that cost onto you, so you get all the benefits but without the expense!
5. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO makes sure your site meets the highest technical SEO standards by creating SEO-friendly content on your website. It also gives you the tools to optimise your content for SEO and overall readability.
We use this plugin on just about every website we do, which has the capabilities to get more visitors to your website from Google, Bing and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
6. RafflePress
In some industries, the ability to offer giveaways and contests on your site is a fantastic way to increase your email subscribers, social followers and website traffic. Once a customer is on your site, the raffle offers entry by way of them entering their email address. They are also incentivised to share on social media in order to gain more entries. Its a fast and easy way to turn your website visitors into brand ambassadors. Rafflepress Lite is free and also has a premium plugin that will unlock a lot more features.
7. The Events Calendar
This one speaks for itself. Yes, it is an event calendar plugin for your website. Do you wish to advertise upcoming events on your site and drive customer engagement? Then grab this free plugin and get started right away. You can also upgrade to premium for added features, but the free plugin is fully customisable, so unless you are needing to incorporate ticket purchases from the calendar, you can’t go wrong with the free one.