Best WordPress
Plugins for the Average Joe
If you’re building websites for small business, there are a host of plugins that optimise them so that they run efficiently, are more user-friendly and help you or the site owner manage them with ease.
There are tons out there, but here are our top five WordPress Plugins any developer should use.
Beaver Builder
Ever wondered how to build decent layouts without needing to code? Beaver Builder is a drag-n-drop plugin that allows you to select and then drag elements onto a page, while you build it.
It’s really flexible and easy to use, and gives you a lot more control over the layout of the website. It supports other WordPress widgets and shortcodes, so it’s compatible with other WordPress plugins.
Designed to work with almost any WordPress theme, Beaver Builder is also mobile responsive and helps keep your website performing by using layouts that load quickly without snags.
Give it a look here.
CSS Hero
This nifty editing plug-in allows you customise any WordPress theme without touching code.
While some page builders are for building pages from scratch, CSS Hero lets you customise existing themes according to what you need. It takes your customisations and converts them into CSS code, which is then applied to a new CSS style sheet. What’s great about this that the original style sheet remains untouched, so nothing goes wonky later.
You can use it on any WordPress theme, and its affordable and easy for anyone to use.
Give it a look here.
Monster Insights
A website’s priority purpose in life is to be the face of the business. But it’s a bit of a loss if you have no idea which people are visiting your site and how they’re interacting with it. Monster Insights is a plug-in that allows you to link the site to Google Analytics so that you can learn more about your visitors and how they behave on your website.
This rich data can really help you tweak your site so that it serves the people who visit it most often. If you do this well, you could increase your conversions really nicely.
Give it a look here.
Sucuri
This security application acts like a firewall and protects your website like the valuable asset it is. It cleans hacked sites and also protects your website from incoming threats, like malware and DDoS.
Free to all WordPress users, it is designed to complement your existing security structure. All your traffic goes through their cloudproxy firewall to get “scrubbed” before coming to your host server. One of the biggest benefits of this, besides keeping your site secure, is that it also increases your site’s performance.
Give it a look here.
Yoast SEO
This is an old favourite that helps you optimise your website so that it’s easy for search engines to find it. As you build your pages, it gives you indications as to how SEO compatible your websites is. As you go along, it’ll show you via green, red and orange buttons where you’re on track and where you’re not.
Having a website that’s optimised for SEO will help you rank better in Google, and hopefully earn you a few extra customers.
Give it a look here.