In today’s highly competitive world of online shopping, merchants are often pushed to do everything in their power to attract the customer to buy from their store. Since many shops offer similar products, what is it that will inspire the customer to choose you over so many others? Sooner or later, as a businessman, you come to realize that attractive pricing is only one element that influences the customer’s decision to buy from you. Another factor that is just as important is user experience. There are many different things you can do to level up your online store user experience and maximize your conversion rates, like create WooCommerce product bundles, display popular products in WooCommerce, but you also need to do something to provide your customers the best possible perception of your products. Although you can’t offer the convenience of touching or trying on the goods, you can offer a pretty convincing alternative and that’s where WooCommerce product variation plugins kick in.

These types of plugins come with plenty of useful features that enable you to display products with many different variations like size, color, price so that the customer can have a precise image of how each variation looks.Тhe biggest advantage of product variation plugins is that they simplify the process of adding variable products to your online store – if you have a t-shirt that comes in ten colors and five sizes, instead of adding a separate product for each color/size combination, you can add one product and a menu with different attributes. Your visitors will be able to select and buy the goods based on sizes, prices, and other attributes that match their specifications. Plus, they will appreciate the wide selection of products you have to offer. Bear in mind that all the images you use in your WooCommerce store have to be of high quality if you want to achieve the desired effect.

A good choice of product variation plugin for WooCommerce will help you enrich the user experience and boost your sales at the same time. The list we compiled includes versatile product variation plugins for WooCommerce that will surely help you offer the best shopping experience to your customers:

QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce by Qode Interactive

QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce is a simple yet option-rich plugin developed to help you enhance the user experience for all your shoppers. The plugin provides you with a clear-cut way to display detailed product variations alongside your products in lists and on single product pages.

In addition to this, QODE Variation Swatches is fully optimized for mobile devices too.

This flexible tool presents you with a number of easily adjustable product attributes, optional variation tooltips & descriptions, product availability info, and lots more.

You have the option to feature color, image, label, radio button and tab switch attribute swatches, and show them in dropdowns or using labels. Each product variation gets displayed on the fly once it is clicked on.

On top of that, you have an entire assortment of customization options. Color and Image attributes come in five carefully designed, predefined layouts each, while Label attributes come in two variants. You can also easily configure the width, height, and idle/active border colors for each of the attributes.

Each of the attributes can be shown in a classic layout, laid out next to and below each other, or you can feature them in practical sliders.

Moreover, the plugin lets you feature additional information tabs alongside swatch titles and short descriptions. Here you can provide your customers with even more detailed product info.

Another remarkable feature that the plugin boasts is the optional AJAX- powered instant product variation data loading which can easily be enabled.

One more standout feature is the option to display out-of-stock item variants as either crossed out or blurred, or you can opt to omit them altogether.

Last but not least, with the QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce, you can activate automatic back-in-stock notifications for your shoppers, keeping them informed when their desired products are available again.

The QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce plugin is available in both free and premium versions, with the premium version which offers lots more in terms of options & customizability currently priced at $69.

WooCommerce Additional Variation Images

If you want to provide your visitors with a more complete insight of your products and their variations, check out the official extension called WooCommerce Additional Variation Images. Its main job is to allow merchants to display additional product images for their variations, so instead of just showing, for example, different color swatches, it actually displays the products in different colors. You can add multiple variation images, from different angles, zoomed-in, and so on. This is a proven way of boosting customer interest and can be a great way to increase sales. Additionally, when you provide as much information and imagery to the customers, you’re also reducing the chance of returns and complaints.

The plugin is very simple to use – once installed, an option to add different variation images will appear in the Variable Product section of the dashboard. Simply upload the images to appropriate product variations, and that’s it.

This plugin is quite cheap, too – it currently costs $4.92 for a single site license.

WooSwatches – WooCommerce Color or Image Variation Swatches by WooMatrix

The WooSwatches plugin is particularly useful in cases when you have an unusually large number of product variations to offer. What distinguishes it is that it comes with an inbuilt product filter on an image and color basis. This practically means that in case there are more swatches than those displayed on the page the plugin will offer a “more’ link. Also, if the number of swatches is higher than the set value, WooSwatches features a slider to display more shop swatches.

This responsive plugin supports dropdown select fields, color, image, and text variation swatches. It allows you to display the selected color or image swatches on the shop, category, or archive pages. It also supports a wide variety of sizes for both square and round swatches.

This plugin is not free and comes at a unique price of $19.

WooCommerce Better Variations

WooCommerce Better Variations plugin is a simple-to-use tool that includes many useful and unique options. Apart from allowing you to add different color variations, display price information, and similar handy options, this is one of the rare plugins that enables you to handle out-of-stock variations too. It lets you grey out and make out-of-stock products unselectable and also alter the style of the variations in a way to make the out-of-stock products show at the bottom of the list. This way all variations are visible to the user, but he is clearly informed about the variation availability at the moment.

By choosing the Grid display mode you can display all the product variations in a grid or in a single table and your customers can easily enter the desired quantities for selected products without having to select each variation individually.

The plugin comes in a two-tiered pricing plan – basic and pro with prices ranging from $49 to $89.

WooCommerce Variation Master

WooCommerce Variation Master is a powerful tool that is easy to configure. One of the most distinguished features is probably the cart page popup window. It shows up after the customer clicks the ‘Update’ button that is displayed each time a new item is added to the cart. It is also possible to select different product variations inside the cart. Practically, it means that in case the customer wishes to change the order at the last minute, he does not have to remove the product from the cart and add a new one – he can simply select a different product variation on the cart page.

Many more useful features are included – you can add a border on swatches and show attribute text above them, display swatches on Shop, Archive, and Category pages, add a custom image gallery for each variation, create gallery images slider, etc. The plugin is responsive so whatever features you choose to use, they will be accessible regardless of the device.

As for the price, you can opt between a regular license for $35 and an extended license for $1999.

Color and Image Swatches for Variable Product Attributes by Phoeniixx

If you want to add image swatches, rounded and squared swatch style to your online store, the Color and Image Swatches for Variable Product Attributes plugin may be a good solution. This free, user-friendly, and comprehensive tool allows you to create unlimited color swatches.

For more advanced options like creating swatches using bicolors, images, radio buttons, and icons or if you want the option to zoom the swatch image on hover, you’ll have to invest in the premium version.

The premium version unlocks a grid library with 300 icons, offers more options for styling the swatch styles, and has many more useful features. You also have the option to create color and image swatches on a per-product basis.

Depending on the number of sites you are going to use the plugin on, you can choose between three pricing plans ranging from $39 for a single site to $129 for up to 25 websites.

In Conclusion

Running a WooCommerce shop requires an agile approach and constant attunement to your customers’ needs. Variation plugins are made to help you describe and display your products in a more detailed and attractive manner. All the plugins in this list can help you level up user experience and boost your conversion rates. If you are running an online store where there is an exceptionally large amount of product variations, then WooSwatches is probably the most recommendable choice. WooCommerce Better Variations plugin is great if sharing the stock status information about products is important to you. WooCommerce Variation Master is often the choice for larger businesses, and the first plugin on our list is ideal boosting engagement by providing quality images of the variations. Investing in a superb user experience always pays off in more than one way and we are sure each of the plugins in this list can prove that to you.

Downtime is an integral part of having a website. Your business website, online store, or even a WordPress blog, will not be up and running one hundred percent of the time – periods of downtime are bound to happen for one reason or another.

Still, you shouldn’t let that dissuade you from doing whatever you can to prevent your WordPress website downtime. There’s a difference between a website that’s down a couple of hours a year and one that’s only up a couple of hours a year.

Before we share our tips, let’s go through some common causes of website downtime and explain why downtime matters.

What Causes Website Downtime?

The fact that your website is down doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with it. Server maintenance is a perfectly normal occurrence that can cause website downtime. Website maintenance is another cause of website downtime, and you can perform it even when nothing is wrong with the website.

Still, even these benign reasons for downtime can become an issue if they happen too often. A server that goes down for maintenance for more than a couple of hours a year isn’t good. A website that requires lots of maintenance might benefit from a serious looking into and troubleshooting.

Then, there are bad things that can happen to your website and cause it to be unreachable. It can undergo a DDoS attack. It can experience a crippling plugin incompatibility issue. You can put a piece of code on your website that just – breaks it.

Sometimes, the things you do to prevent some causes of website downtime might become causes of downtime, too. You can use a CDN to prevent DDoS attacks or lighten the server load. Then again, using a CDN can sometimes lead to a 504 gateway timeout error. Plugins are incredibly useful for optimizing your website, but they’re among the more common causes of the 503 service temporarily unavailable error. It takes skill, patience, and sometimes trial-and-error to run a website well. Downtimes can happen, and you can cause them.

Why Does Website Downtime Matter?

The simple and most obvious reason why website downtime matters is because a website that’s down can’t perform the function you gave it when you built it. A business website that’s down does nothing for your business. An online store can’t sell when it’s not online. People can’t read your blog if they can’t reach it.

But even if you’re confident that your website visitors will come back later after they found that your website is down – which you most likely shouldn’t be – you still want your website to be up and running as much as possible.

A website that doesn’t work well also doesn’t speak well of the person or entity that’s running it. If you can’t be bothered to ensure the proper running of your website, you will look unprofessional, uncommitted, and you’ll start losing your visitors’ goodwill to stick with you through any issues your website might be experiencing.

Now that you know that some website downtime is fine, but lots of website downtime is awfully bad, let’s see what you can do to minimize it. Some of the steps might be obvious but even they bear repeating because there’s nothing as easy – or as embarrassing – as overlooking something very obvious. Here’s what to do:

Use a Good Hosting Provider and an Appropriate Service Packagee

Every hosting provider worth their salt will offer some kind of a server uptime guarantee. Usually, it’s 99.9% – the golden standard which means that, in a year, they guarantee the downtime won’t surpass the eight-and-a-half-hours threshold.

One of the ways to spot a sketchy hosting provider is by looking at what they promise – if they don’t offer any guarantees, or if they guarantee absolutes. The chances of not having a single minute of downtime during a year are slim, so no provider should be able to offer a 100% server uptime guarantee.

A hosting provider shouldn’t be able to offer incredibly good packages at ridiculously low prices. That’s another red flag and one that you should take very seriously because your service package can affect downtime.

If your website doesn’t have the resources it needs to run properly with the load it usually operates under, it will go down. You should pick a hosting provider that will let you switch to better, more expensive packages as easily as possible. When more visitors start coming in, it would be best to have the option to upgrade – the alternative is migrating to another hosting provider, and that can be a hassle.

Monitor Your Website’s Uptime

Here’s one of those obvious pieces of advice we mentioned before: you need to know that your website is down to stop it from going down in the future. You have to know the problem exists to try and solve it, right? With a website, this means monitoring its uptime.

There are several monitoring options you can choose from. Some options, such as the popular UptimeRobot, are freemium. Other options, such as Pingdom, are fee-only. While pricing is an important thing to consider, as these services with small fees tend to pile up after a time and present a sizeable expense, it’s much more important that you get the type of service you need.

For example, a free service might check your website a couple of times a day and send you an email if something is wrong, or a report stating your website’s status for the day. If that’s fine with you, great. But if that doesn’t suffice, and you need things like push notifications or SMS alerts and a more frequent check, then you should make sure you get those services even if it means spending a couple of bucks more on your website every month.

Be Careful with Plugins and Themes

Plugins and themes are a huge part of what makes using WordPress great. They can transform your website from a bland, featureless collection of pages on the web to a powerful tool for growing a business, making money, or finding new ways of self-expression.

That being said, plugins and themes are a common culprit for website downtime. Why? Because they have code, and some code doesn’t play well with other code. Incompatibility issues happen all the time. You should catch them before they do some real damage.

There are a couple of things you can do to avoid issues with plugins and themes. The easiest one would be to go through the plugin’s or theme’s documentation, reviews, or support tickets – if you can access them – and see if there are known issues.

You can also create a staging site – a copy of your website that’s not available to the public – and test any plugin or theme or even a setting before you implement it on your live website. Finally, choosing premium plugins and themes will sometimes give you access to support personnel, so you can have help when troubleshooting issues.

Keep Your Website Fully Optimized…

Your website might be up and running, but people still might have trouble accessing it. Slow loading times can cause people to think the website isn’t up. Bad internal links might cause some people to think that parts of the website don’t work. Badly optimized websites might contribute to some client-side errors that can cause people to not be able to access the website.

In general, if you’re running a WordPress website or any other kind of website, speed should be a major concern. You want your website to load as quickly and easily as possible because visitors might not be too keen on waiting for a slow website to load.

There are other reasons to optimize the website, too. But the bottom line is that this part of the work contributes to your website’s proper functioning and it will, either directly or indirectly, contribute to reducing downtime – actual as well as perceived.

…And Safe

Finally, you should do your best to keep your website safe, not only for your benefit but also for the benefit of all the people who use it. If you store sensitive data or process payments on your website, any neglect in the safety department might lead to real, palpable, damage to the people who’ve put their trust in you to keep their information safe.

It shouldn’t be pointed out that having a malware-free website is a good thing, and that using security plugins is a very good allocation of your resources. If you find your website is often under DDoS attacks, using services that offer DDoS protection – as some CDNs do – can help your website stay online despite the attacks.

You should also follow some safety and security best practices. You can, for example, limit login attempts as a measure against brute force attacks. You can also backup your website regularly – if something does happen, you’ll have a much easier time restoring your website to normal if there’s a backup you can use. Putting up a firewall can prevent suspicious traffic. There’s plenty you could do, and you should do whatever you can to keep your website safe.

Perform Regular Maintenance

Regular monitoring is a must, but these things can easily slip through the cracks especially in peak times when there’s a lot of other work to be done. That’s why it’s handy to come up with some sort of maintenance routine to be performed regularly, perhaps with a calendar alert to remind you. A lot of tasks can be scheduled and even automated, but you definitely want to be on top of things and creating a maintenance routine schedule can be very helpful.

The schedule can be weekly, monthly, or even daily. That’s really up to you and your website’s needs. Complex websites that get a lot of traffic and are prone to sudden spikes, such as eCommerce websites, probably need to perform maintenance checks more frequently. Smaller websites, like personal blogs, as well as portfolios, can even do it quarterly.

The maintenance routine should contain the following steps:

Distribute the Traffic Load

One of the most common reasons for website downtime is traffic overload. Traffic spikes are common for all sorts of websites, perhaps most notably for news and eCommerce ones, as they are prone to seasonal or circumstantial spikes when the traffic becomes much heavier than usual.

When this happens, the server can’t handle all the requests coming in at the same time, which may result in your website going temporarily down.

The fix for this problem is not something you can do with your website as such, and actually depends on your hosting plan. If you want to make sure your website can handle increased traffic load and to successfully scale up and down as needed, you need a hosting provider that has a global network of servers. With servers located strategically all across the globe, the content of the website is distributed to the users from the server that is nearest to them. Plus, if one data center experiences an issue or becomes overloaded, the content can still be served from another location. Combined with CDN, this guarantees excellent uptime and ensures your website can be accessed at all times, despite the traffic and server circumstances.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

While WordPress website downtime is something you can count on, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything you can to ensure your website is online as much as it can be. People usually create websites to put them online, and if yours isn’t an exception to the rule – you’ll have to take steps to prevent and reduce downtime.

Keep in mind, however, that running a website well is a balancing act, and there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Going overboard with safety plugins – installing too many of them – might become a cause of downtime in its own right. So, make sure that you’ve covered all the corners and spread around the downtime-combating measures evenly.

There are billions upon billions of possible domain names. The number of existing domain names is in the hundreds of millions. What are the chances to have your preferred domain name taken when you go to the registrar? Math would say slim.

Experience, however, proves otherwise. Coming up with a combination of letters and numbers is one thing. Making sure the combination produces a good domain name is a completely different process. There are simply not that many good ones to choose from.

This is exactly why it’s possible that, when checking domain names, you’ll find that someone has already registered your top picks. These things happen. We’ll show you, however, what your options are if it happens to you.

You’ll read about:

How to Check If a Domain Name Is Available

When you want to create a website and you’re trying to figure out that perfect name for it, you’d be smart to come up with a couple of ideas in case one of them is already taken. You can figure out the name is taken during the brainstorming or research process if you simply type the domain name into your browser’s address bar and press enter.

Three things can happen. You can visit a website, which means that your domain name is taken. You can be directed to an error page, which likely means your domain name is free for you to grab. Finally, you can be served a sales page asking you to contact whoever owns the domain name and has put it up for sale.

If you worry that visiting an unknown website poses a security risk, you can check website availability at websites such as Whois.com, a tool you might want to remember because we’ll come back to it in a moment or two. Also, some hosting providers that work as registrars might offer you to look up the domain name of your choosing online without going to the website.

In the case of bad news, which can be any news except that your preferred domain name is free to use, you can continue further in two ways. You can either do whatever you can to keep the name, or you can find hacks or alternatives that might work. Let’s explore both options a little bit.

What to Do If You Want to Keep the Name?

When you want to use a domain name that is already taken, your first course of action would be to figure out who owns it. Head back over to Whois.com and type in the address. If the contact information of the owner is available – if it’s not made private – you’ll be able to see it and contact the owner directly. If not, maybe the website itself will have some contact information about the seller.

How to Handle the Purchase of a Second-Hand Domain Name

If they’re willing to sell – great, you only have to navigate buying a domain name from a person or company you’ve only ever met online. Usually, this means using services that will help you make the exchange.

A service like Escrow can help. You and the seller agree on the terms and then you put your money in escrow at Escrow. The seller then transfers the domain name to you – something every registrar has a procedure for, you check and approve the domain name, and they get the money.

What to Do if You Can’t Purchase the Website?

Things get more complicated if they’re not willing to sell. In that case, you might try to get your lawyers involved and sue the owner for cybersquatting. Depending on how it’s handled legally in your country, you might be able to win the suit, but only if you prove that they’ve infringed on your trademark, or are generally sitting on the domain name with bad intent.

If you don’t want to get your lawyers involved, or if you simply can’t find out who the owner is, you can try purchasing the domain name with an alternative TLD. So instead of .com – we’ll suppose you went straight for it, as you always should – you can try buying the .org or .net version of the website. Keep in mind, however, that this can lead to some confusion and maybe even brand dilution.

Also keep in mind that people trust .com domains more than any other. A lot of country code TLDs are perceived as spammy (this is particularly the case with .cn and .ru). But then, there are country codes like .me that can be perfect for certain brands. TLDs like .tv are great for businesses from the entertainment, video or gaming industry. Extensions like .net, .tech and .store are also popular, trusted and can make a great fit for a variety of businesses.

In some cases, you might even manage to split your domain name into two and use the second half as the top-level domain. So, for example, you can get examp.le instead of example.com. Again, this might cause some confusion and it might work better if the domain name is made up of two words.

No Luck? Pick an Alternative

For one reason or another, you can also decide to avoid the hustle of figuring out how to get the perfect name and choose an alternative. This can be an exceedingly difficult decision if the domain name you wanted is your brand name, too, but these things happen often, and brands find ways to work around them.

You don’t want to use a name that has absolutely nothing to do with your business, blog, or whatever you tried to register. There still has to be some kind of connection to the original idea.

Expand the Original Domain Name

There are certain words you can add to the original domain name that wouldn’t distract from its meaning – they might even serve to amplify it. The exact thing you can add will vary based on the domain name, the type of business, the industry, and a whole lot of other factors.

But let’s say your domain name of choice was “something.” You can expand the domain name by adding an appropriate verb, such as “dosomething” or “buysomething” or “readsomething” and “makesomething.”

Use Related Words

There are also several kinds of related words that might work as a domain name instead of your brand or business name. Again, these will work better for some brands and businesses than others, but they still might be worth a shot.

You can, for example, use a keyword instead of the brand name. So instead of “something” you can use “beststoreinlondon,” for example, or “orlandoplumber.” In this case, the name of your business doesn’t have to match the name of the domain.

If there’s a way to make a word out of the original domain name that’s similar and brandable, you might also try to do that. So, for a magazine that’s called “something,” the website can have the domain name “somethingians.” You can let your imagination run wild, but you should always make sure that it ties somehow to the brand, business, product, or industry.

Add Location to Name

This is not a solution that can fit all brands or businesses, but it can work great for many. If you’re looking for a domain name to start a website related to a business with physical locations, like a shop, a bar, a restaurant or a cafe, a local output of a big company or franchise, you can only benefit from adding the name of the city, country or neighborhood to the name. It is good for SEO and it is good for user experience since it provides more complete information than just the name.

For instance, if you have a pet store named Paws, and it’s located in Prague, and paws dot com is, as expected, taken, you can go for pawsprague dot com, or even pawsinprague.

It’s even easier if you’re operating in an entire country or region – pawseurope or pawsgreece dot com are quite solid domain names.

Look Into Domain Hacking Options

Although it sounds like something not quite lawful or right (and it shouldn’t be confused with domain hijacking), domain hacking is actually a legitimate practice. It consists of creating a domain name that’s a combination of a word, phrase or name, and the extension, ie. of the adjacent levels of the domain name, to create a name that suggests a word. An example will explain it better – for instance, the WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has a blog with the domain name www.ma.tt. The .tt extension is the official ccTLD of Trinidad and Tobago. Clever, right?

The Montenegro ccTLD .me is a particularly productive one, and a lot of brands already use it: even Facebook has an URL version fb.me, then there’s WordPress with wp.me that redirects to wordpress.com, and a particularly smart one is ti.me, used by the famous news magazine.

Another good one is the top level country code TLD for Lybia: .ly. It’s particularly popular with lifestyle, fashion and cosmetics brands, but in a lot of other industries, too – just think of bit.ly. If you’re based in the US, but even if you’re not, you could also look into .us, to create a domain nam consisting of an adjective ending in -ous, like delicious, righteous, gorgeous, etc.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Domain names are important, and you needn’t look further than the reseller industry for proof. When you’re choosing yours, make sure you have a couple of alternatives. If you go to the registrar determined to get one name and it turns out to be taken, you can end up signing yourself up for an unpleasant and maybe even expensive ride. It might be much better to show some flexibility – something that even big brands had to do when faced with a domain sitter who wouldn’t budge.

One of the first questions to address when starting a new WordPress website is what kind of server you need and how to pick a hosting provider based on server features. One of the many great things about WordPress is that it can work in almost any sort of environment. It’s not resource-heavy by itself, it’s easy to install even manually, and if you don’t expect much traffic right from the beginning, it doesn’t require a lot of hosting bandwidth. However, if you really want things to run smoothly and not have to upgrade your plan every once in a while, there are some WordPress server requirements to keep in mind.

All websites need a server to run on. A server is where all the files are stored, which includes media files, databases, content, and everything else. Some users have their own servers and host their own websites, while others (which is actually a majority of WordPress users) buy a hosting plan with a provider that has a number of shared or managed servers.

The sort of plan you will pick depends to a great extent on server performance. Servers that run on outdated software, have limited hardware specifications or don’t support HTTPS will still allow you to run a website, but it definitely won’t run smoothly. So, to help you avoid these situations, we’ve compiled a list of the basic WordPress server requirements that should help you pick the right specifications for your next WordPress website:

Recommended Disk Space for WordPress

Just like a computer, a server has a hard disk that has a certain amount of space on it. The WordPress installation itself is very lightweight (1GB, which is way less than what an average smartphone has) but disk space is required for additional resources, most notably for themes, plugins, media files, and especially videos. This storage affects the processing speed, which is one of the most important requirements in a web server. So in addition to looking for high processing performance, you should also look for a server that has considerable disk space, especially if your website is going to be media-heavy.

You should also consider the type of hardware used: HDD or hard disk drive is an older solution used for lower speed requirements and for data that’s not frequently used, while SSD or solid-state drive is a modern high-speed solution that’s less susceptible to physical damage.

Some providers use a combination of the two – SSD for databases and HDD for other, less sensitive resources. You will find some cheap providers that use HDD only, and it will work okay for WordPress, but for fast processing and reliable data delivery it’s probably a better idea to opt for ones that use SSD, or at least the combination of the two.

As for the size, you will find hosting anywhere from 10GB to 250GB. The lower end will work just fine for small to medium websites, online shops and personal blogs. Larger hard disks are more suitable for big websites with a lot of heavy media and a lot of traffic, massive portals or forums, as well as enterprise websites.

Recommended RAM for WordPress

RAM (Random Access Memory) plays an important role in server performance for WordPress websites. As WordPress sites handle dynamic content and user interactions, sufficient RAM ensures smooth operation and faster response times.

The WordPress software itself requires at least 512MB. However, typically, servers for WordPress require a minimum of 1GB RAM for basic functionality, and for optimal performance, 2GB or more is recommended.

RAM speed and type also impact performance, with DDR4 being a common choice for its efficiency. Higher RAM capacity allows for handling multiple concurrent requests and caching, enhancing user experience and site reliability. Ultimately, adequate RAM ensures that WordPress sites can handle traffic spikes and complex tasks efficiently.

Processing Power (CPU)

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is something like the brain of a server, crucial for handling WordPress websites efficiently. It processes instructions, executes code, and manages tasks. A powerful CPU enhances performance, especially during high-traffic periods or when running resource-intensive plugins.

Fortunately, WordPress doesn’t demand excessive CPU power by default. Still, factors like website complexity, the amount of users accessing the site at the same time, and plugin usage impact CPU requirements. Common server CPUs include Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC series, offering varying core counts and clock speeds.

When it comes to actual values, WordPress will function on just 1.0 GHz. However, these days, instead of the GHz values, hosts focus more on the number of processing cores. Two cores perform the tasks twice as quickly as just one, and servers with five or six cores will be that much more efficient. For small WordPress sites, a server with at least a dual-core CPU suffices, but larger sites benefit from quad-core or higher CPUs to ensure smooth operation and responsiveness.

PHP Version

When you are about to install WordPress, the application itself will tell you which version of PHP is required. Right now, it’s version 8.0, or higher. Each version receives updates for up to two years. It’s always recommended to use hosting that includes the latest PHP version – but, fortunately, most of them do. If you already have WordPress installed, you should regularly check for the latest versions and update.

PHP is an open-source programming language used for dynamic interactive websites. WordPress itself is written using PHP. Using the latest version assures proper performance, faster running of processes and reduction of memory usage. In addition, it protects the website from bugs and malware.

Server Location and CDN

These days, with cloud hosting and virtual private servers, one would think that server location doesn’t matter. However, the server is still physically located somewhere, and the closer it is to your visitors, the better the website will perform for them. If your website is focused on users from a specific country or region, then you’ll obviously choose a server located in that country or region. But most WordPress websites count on international visitors, from all over the world, which is why you should opt for a hosting service with access to a global server network. Then, if the majority of your visitors is, say, from US, you will find a US-based server. Of course, your website will work fine even for visitors outside of that area, but it will perhaps be slower.

If you want to ensure the best possible performance of your WordPress website regardless of where it’s accessed from, we strongly suggest you find a host that offers access to CDN.

CDN or Content Delivery Network is a network of servers located all across the globe, storing static versions of your website. When a visitor accesses the website, it is served from the nearest possible server, assuring optimal performance and speed.

Database Management

Database management systems (DBMS) play a crucial role in WordPress websites by storing and organizing site data, including posts, pages, user information, and settings. WordPress relies heavily on its underlying database for content retrieval and management. Efficient database management can significantly impact website performance, influencing factors like page load times and overall responsiveness.

When choosing a server to host your WordPress website, the performance and compatibility of the server’s database management system are essential considerations. WordPress uses MySQL and MariaDB to store and retrieve data. You don’t need both – just one of these systems. When considering a hosting service’s server requirements, make sure that either MySQL or MariaDB are stored on the server, ideally on SSD.

Also ideally, the service should offer automatic database optimization and a multi-user environment.

Recommended Web Server Software for WordPress

When selecting a web server for your WordPress website, looking into available web server software applications is an important consideration. For WordPress, Apache and Nginx are two popular choices. In fact, WordPress itself recommends using one of the two. The website will function without them, as you can technically use any server to run WordPress, but Apache and Nginx have certain significant advantages.

Apache is known for its flexibility, rich documentation, and compatibility with various modules. It is a good choice both for seasoned WordPress users and for beginners. On the other hand, Nginx is newer and faster and excels in handling concurrent connections efficiently, making it ideal for high-traffic sites.

The choice between them depends on factors like site traffic, server resources, and configuration preferences. Apache’s .htaccess file provides easy per-directory configuration, while Nginx’s configuration syntax is somewhat more straightforward and excellent under heavy loads.

To learn more, check out our article on how to choose between Nginx and Apache.

HTTPS Support

HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is an internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data exchanged between users and websites. It is an extension of HTTP and uses encryption to secure the data transmission.

HTTPS uses SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security) protocols to encrypt data. This ensures that even in the case of unauthorized data interceptions, the data cannot be deciphered easily.

When choosing a server for WordPress, it’s important to look for HTTPS and SSL among the server features. These days most renowned hosting providers include HTTPS and SSL in their plans, especially the more advanced ones, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

If you already use a server that doesn’t include these security features, check out our article on how to add HTTPS and SSL to your WordPress website and also our list of the best SSL plugins for WordPress.

Wrapping It Up

Summing it up, there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a server for your WordPress website. As we said, WordPress is not resource-heavy and most basic servers will probably do the job. However, if you want to ensure speed, reliability and performance, we recommend you follow the guidelines we laid out in this article and check for the requirements we mentioned – from disk space, RAM and CPU to PHP and web server software, as well as CDN, HTTPS and SSL availability.

Most hosting companies list the features clearly in their plans, so picking one that meets these requirements shouldn’t be hard, and shouldn’t put too much strain on your website budget. Good luck with your new website, and let us know how it goes!

There’s nothing like a good, clean table to present your audience with a bunch of data in a way that allows for comparison and appreciation of precision. There’s no need for the flashy visuals of charts, or the flowing relational representation of graphs – a table is there to give your audiences the data and let them do the rest of the work for themselves if they want to.

So whether you need a way to display a list, or arrange a bunch of product information from your online store in a way that makes it easy to compare, you could use a way to create a good table. And even though you can create a table using the Gutenberg block editor, it might lack the options you’d be able to get using plugins.

For that reason, we’ve compiled a list of the best WordPress table plugins for your data. The list includes:

Qi Addons for Elementor

We’re kicking off our list of the best WordPress table plugins with a collection of widgets for all sorts of purposes that packs not one but several solutions for creating data tables – Qi Addons for Elementor.

The plugin includes 100+ Elementor widgets for everything from showcase and infographic elements to business, SEO and eCommerce solutions. Among them, you’ll find a couple of widgets designed specifically for creating data tables. The Data Table widget, for instance, provides a simple yet efficient way to display data, add icons, and illustrations, adjust headings and items, add background, pagination, and much more. Then there’s the Comparative Table widget, ideal for when you need to compare items, prices, show what’s included in a plan or service, and so on. Like the Data Table widget, this one is also highly customizable in terms of appearance.

And if what you want to display and compare are prices, there’s the Pricing Table widget, with six predefined layouts (standard and cascading), icons, images, ribbons and badges. You can opt for vertical pricing tables or minimalistic ones, and adjust everything from typography to colors, and more.

The best thing about Qi Addons for Elementor is that it’s a plugin that, for the price of one, offers an astonishing array of features and functionalities, so if you decide you need something else and not just tables, you will find it right there in your Elementor dashboard.

Qi Addons for Elementor currently costs $49 for a single site license.

TablePress

With over eight hundred thousand active installations and a nearly flawless five-star rating, TablePress is the most popular table plugin you can find on WordPress.org. It has the top spot for good reason, too – TablePress is a plugin that offers an incredible lot, and it doesn’t ask you anything in return. An awesome plugin you can use for free.

TablePress lets you create tables you can populate with all sorts of data – images are as welcome and supported as are numbers or text. The very process of making the tables is straightforward and easy, as you can do it all from your dashboard. You add the tables to pages or posts using a shortcode, you can change their style using CSS, and you can import and export tables to and from the plugin.

You get all of that with the basic plugin. If you choose to install the extensions available from the plugin’s website, your tables can become responsive, you can enable row filtering and sorting options, and even set up an automatic import for tables. Some of those extensions are premium, but they don’t come at a set price – you’re encouraged to donate instead of purchasing them.

Ninja Tables

Ninja Tables is the free version of the Ninja Tables Pro plugin. The plugin has plenty to offer in terms of speed and ease of use, as it will help you create a table in no time. It also has plenty of features that could make it your go-to WordPress plugin for tables, but to get the most of it you will need the pro version.

With the Ninja Tables version you can download off WordPress.org, you can create or import a table, select one of three styling libraries, and choose among the style options, and export the table. You can also set global styling options and choose limited color options.

The Pro version makes Ninja Tables more vibrant and fuller of features. So not only do you get more colors for your tables, but you get advanced options such as Google Sheets integration, a WooCommerce product table functionality, and even frontend table editing and export. And that’s just a taste of what a $49, single-site annual license gets you.

wpDataTables

Another plugin that comes in a free – Lite – version and a full one you have to pay for, wpDataTables is more than capable of taking care of your data-presentation needs even with the free version – as long as you don’t need too much from your table plugins. In that case, the paid version would serve you much better.

Using wpDataTables starts with providing the data for the table. With the free version, you can either create the table from scratch or create a table that’s linked to an existing data source – an Excel, CSV, or JSON file, for example. You’ll be able to do things such as merge cells, enable sorting and pagination, and customize the table to some extent.

With the Premium version, you’ll get support for creating tables from Google Spreadsheets, multiple database support, responsive tables, front-end editing, and lots of other features and functionalities a website that uses a lot of tables would require. The Premium version is available for annual subscription or lifetime purchase, with the most affordable option setting you back $59 a year.

Posts Table Pro

Here’s one plugin that takes table creation and puts a twist to it – Posts Table Pro will use the data from your website to create tables. So instead of allowing you to, for example, import tons of data you’d later display using a plugin, this plugin will help you display the content you already have – in table form.

How does this work? Well, if you’d like to display a table that contains your website’s posts or pages, or even products, documents, or audio or video content – you simply use this plugin to create a table. The process is simple and streamlined, and your table will be updated as your content is.

Of course, you’ll be able to customize the table and have functionalities such as search, sorting, and filtering. All of this comes at a price, however, as the plugin doesn’t have a free version, and the starter package will cost you $69 a year.

League Table

One of the benefits of getting a paid-only table plugin for your WordPress website is that you don’t have to think too much about which options are included in the free version and which aren’t. With League Table, for example, you’ll get a whole lot for the price you pay for it, and you won’t have a single doubt about what it can and can’t do.

The $29 price gets you a plugin that’s fast but not furious, so you’ll have no trouble wielding it. Each table has 105 different options you can set. Each cell has 17 options you can set. There are also 13 general options, totaling a whole lot of tinkering possibilities for those who want an incredible level of control over their tables.

If you’re not too interested in having that many options, it might suffice to say that the plugin will let you do all the useful things like import and export data, create responsive tables, and install the plugin in a WordPress multisite environment.

WP Table Builder

Want a drag and drop WordPress table builder? Why not try WP Table Builder. This plugin comes in a free and a premium version but is more than capable of impressing you with the free version alone.

For starters, it is a drag and drop builder – you’ll have seven different elements at your disposal to populate cells, including buttons, lists, star ratings, and custom HTML. You’ll be able to customize those elements much as you would elements on your website, with setting borders and padding and the like. All the normal functionalities you’d expect from a table plugin, such as export and import, are also supported.

The paid version, which starts at around $39.99 per year, brings five new elements you can add to your tables, including ribbons and icons. It also provides support for choosing different border colors, column and row separation, and functionalities such as column or row duplication. On top of it all, the paid version also gives you access to prebuilt tables.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

From sports scores and stats to lists of products, it’s hard to imagine a better way to display information than with a table. Even though you can create tables with the Gutenberg block editor, the only way to supercharge your tables is to use a plugin to create them. The ones we listed here are some of the best you’ll find.

If you’re in search of an effective way to capture more leads and get more converting customers, or you simply want to get more subscribers on your WordPress website, installing one of the available WordPress popup plugins can certainly help you achieve those goals more effectively.

While website popups may be regarded as annoying from an outsider perspective, they actually do work. In fact, according to some popup statistics, the average popup conversion rate is 3.09% in 2020 for all popups, with the very best popups having a rate of whopping 9.28%. Plus, there are different strategies you can use to maximize the practicality and success of your popups and minimize their intrusiveness.

To get the best results out of your popups, you need to use a tool that will not only allow you to build beautiful, practical and user-friendly popup forms, but you also need to find a way to make your popups appear at the right place and at the right time. This includes the ability to set the behavior of your popups according to the actions of individual users, and throw in some trigger-based popups into the mix.

Luckily, if you use a plugin that comes with the right set of targeting and personalization features, implementing these strategies will be quite easy. And this time around, we will present some of the best WordPress popup plugins that will help you step up your conversion game to the max.

Check out our list:

Ninja Popups

Here’s one of the most popular plugins in this category you can find on the Envato Market. With more than 37,000 sales and a 4+ star rating, Ninja Popups easily falls in the category of best plugins to help you boost your conversion rate. It uses a professionally designed popup system to convert your visitors into customers by urging them to take the desired action – like a limited-time offer (a coupon or a discount), a newsletter subscription, etc. Using a drag & drop visual editor, you will easily create your own popup in no time. Some of the plugin’s features include page-level targeting (which means you can set different popups on different pages), A/B testing of popups, bars, and sliders, the ability to open a popup after a specified time of inactivity or after certain scrolled page percentage, and so on.

With Ninja Popups, you also get a built-in anti-blocker system (which means your popups will always be displayed), some free opt-in panels, over 70 different animation effects, and more. Last but not least, you get integration with all the necessary email marketing tools, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, and SendPress.

The pricing for a regular license starts at $24.

WordPress Popup Plugin by Ays Pro

WordPress Popup Plugin is an efficient tool for creating engaging, responsive, and fully customizable popups. The plugin offers advanced features that will fit absolutely everyone, irrespective of the profession.

This WordPress popup plugin has 10+ advanced popup types, like Shortcode, Video, Yes or No, Subscription, Subscribe and get a file, Embed (Iframe), Contact Form, Coupon, WooCommerce Product, Countdown, Google Map, Download, etc.

Besides all these advanced and powerful popup types, the plugin offers a great variety of features, triggers, and styling options. You can choose specific pages to display popups on. Moreover, in the plugin, you will find various triggers, using which, you can show the popups based on the actions the visitors take on your website. The plugin serves as a great tool to target your website visitors and offer them relevant content.

The WordPress Popup Plugin offers a great variety of limitation options, allowing you to effectively target your desired audience when displaying popups. You can limit users by user roles, for certain OS, tablets, and browsers, by country, by view count, and many more.

The plugin has Free and Premium versions. The pricing for the Premium version of the plugin starts at $59.

Shoplentor’s Popup builder

Another interesting tool for elevating your WooCommerce website’s engagement, is the ShopLentor Popup Module. It comes with the popular ShopLentor plugin, boasting over 100,000 active installations. It offers a versatile and sophisticated solution for creating engaging popups on your website.

The module precisely controls conditions, triggers, settings, and advanced options. This enables you to place popups to strategically grab your audience’s attention.

Engage your audience with timely, relevant pop-up content triggered by actions like page load, scroll, click, or exit intent. Enhance the user experience by using popup controls to disable page scrolling and dismiss the popup using the Esc key or a mouse click. You can also set the popup to dismiss automatically after a delay.

Customizable appearance options like vertical/horizontal positioning, dimensions, z-index, margin, and padding allow users to seamlessly integrate the module with their website and achieve a uniform style.

Advanced settings for precise customization include toggling the ‘Do Not Show Again’ feature to prevent repeated popup displays for returning visitors and implementing URL-based visibility restrictions to display popups only on specific pages or under certain conditions.

The Popup Builder features ready-made templates that simplify the design process. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface enables seamless customization, while the user-friendly dashboard makes managing popup creations a breeze.

The Pro version extends these capabilities, offering enhanced control for an optimized user experience. It allows for integrating multiple popups, each with unique settings and designs customized to meet your specific requirements.

The ShopLentor plugin has Free and Premium versions. The pricing for the Premium version of the plugin starts at $59.

Popups by Optinmonster

Easily the most popular lead generation software on the web with over 700,000 websites using its features, OptinMonster is a great popup plugin that can help you with generating leads and converting visitors into customers. Aside from helping you build beautiful and functional opt-in forms, OptinMonster also comes with smart targeting and personalization features that allow you to show the right popup message to a specific user at the right time. In other words, you can show a custom popup for a specific page or part of your website, based on users’ geolocation, when users click on a particular link, based on their previous behavior, and more.

You can also easily create various types of popups, be it a newsletter popup, fullscreen welcome mat popup, slide-in scroll popup, floating bar, or any other popup type. Moreover, you will be able to customize their appearance according to your preferences and even add some dynamic popup elements (like countdown timers, spin-a-wheel, etc.) that can be set to change according to the behavior of your users. OptinMonster also comes with an integrated exit intent popup system that allows you to convert visitors into customers just as they’re about to leave your site.

Finally, while OptinMonster is mobile-friendly by default, it also allows you to create mobile-specific popups only shown to visitors who use mobile phones and tablets.

The Basic pricing for OptinMonster starts at $9 a month (billed annually).

ConvertPlus

ConvertPlus is an easy-to-use popup plugin that allows you to generate more conversions and subscriptions with the help of various popups, header and footer bars, slide-in forms, in-line forms, and more. It comes with many conversion-ready templates that you can use just as they are, or you can customize them in any way you like. Plus, with over 80 different entry and exit animations, you can also tailor the way a module will enter and exit the screen.

Another great thing about ConvertPlus is its real-time analysis feature that gives you an overview of the number of clicks, unique views & conversions. Thanks to these insights, you can easily pinpoint what works for your business and what doesn’t, and use this information to your advantage by making data-driven decisions. There is also the Trigger feature that allows you to create well-timed, trigger-based popups that will bring you the maximum possibility of conversion. Some of the popups include those that get triggered by user inactivity, exit intent, scrolling, and more.

Of course, ConvertPlus also works with all popular marketing platforms and allows integrations with HubSpot, MailChimp, SendinBlue, Constant Contact, and others.

The regular license for ConvertPlus at CodeCanyon is $23.

Elementor Pro

As one of the most popular page builders around that is used by millions of websites, Elementor has managed to build quite the reputation in the WordPress market – and for a good reason. Not only is Elementor easy to set up by beginners and pros alike, but it also comes packed with a wide range of useful features, one of them being the Elementor popup builder. This useful feature allows you to build and design stunning WordPress popups in any way imaginable. Some of the modals include Fly-In, Full Screen, Hello Bar, Classic Slide-In, Bottom Bar, etc.

You can easily integrate these popup forms with various email marketing tools and grow your subscribers, create different announcements, and even choose to reveal premium content only to users who opted in or agreed to your terms. In addition, you can take advantage of the advanced targeting and trigger features, include promotion and sale banners inside your popups, create popups that display related WooCommerce products to grab more sales, and much more. With Elementor, you also get to pick from 100+ premade stylish popup templates that will help you easily generate beautiful popup forms, or you can create your own from scratch.

The pricing of Elementor Pro with popups for one site starts at $59 a year.

Layered Popups

If you want to do something a bit different when it comes to building popups and distinguish yourself from the rest, we suggest that you look into the plugin called Layered Popups. This plugin can help you create innovative-looking popups capable of standing out and grabbing the attention of your visitors. You can generate multi-layered animated popups, choose from a constantly-growing library of over 150 templates, and pick different displaying modes and set how and when the popups will appear (on idle, on page load, on exit intent, on scrolling, etc.). Moreover, you will be able to view any changes as you create your popups live thanks to the powerful visual popup constructor. With Layered Popups, you also get integrations with your popular marketing systems, like AWeber, GetResponse, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, and so on.

The regular license for the Layered Popups plugin is $21.

Final Thoughts

Out of many available popup plugins that can be found across the web, the five plugins we listed above are among the best of the best. By adding one of them to your WordPress site and creating and inserting carefully generated popups into your pages, you will be able to maximize your conversion rate and turn casual visitors into customers easier than ever.

That being said, we do have to note that the plugins we included in our list all come with different customization options and offer various levels of targeting practices and analytics, so we do advise you to carefully inspect their features to find the popup solution that best suits your needs.

If you own an eCommerce business, or if you’re currently planning to create an online store, chances are you’ve heard of WooCommerce – that is if you’re not using the platform already. With almost 4 million websites using its features, WooCommerce is among the most used and easily most powerful eCommerce WordPress plugins available.

While this popular and convenient eCommerce platform has a wide range of options that allow anyone to build a fully functional online store on their website, it still leaves plenty of room for extension. So, if you already have a WooCommerce-friendly online store WordPress theme installed on your website, but want to further customize your online store to fit your own needs to the fullest, you can do all this and more using one of the many available free WooCommerce plugins.

For this reason, we’ve gathered a list of the best plugins in this category that can be found on the web. Aside from being free – just like WooCommerce itself – all of these plugins can also be integrated into the WooCommerce platform with ease.

Take a look at our top picks:

QODE Wishlist for WooComerce

We’re kicking off our list with a plugin that helps users add a highly useful feature that doesn’t come out of the box with WooCommerce – the wishlist feature. QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce is an amazing plugin that lets shop admins add an “Add to Wishlist” button to their shop, so the visitors can create practical lists of desired items and, hopefully, purchase them when they get a chance. Rich customization options include layout styles for the wishlist element (icon, tooltip, text), button behavior for items in the wishlist, position of the button, its appearance, and more. Admins can also enable automatic removal of items from the wishlist after they’ve been added to cart. In short, this is an excellent tool for enablish customer wishlists and boosting engagement and conversions. The plugin is lightweight, user-friendly and well-documented. For more features, like multiple wishlists, choice of layouts, wishlist counts on products and promotional emails, check out the premium version of QODE Wishlist.

QODE Quick View for WooCommerce

One of the surest ways to boost conversions and grow sales in your online shop is to provide a seamless user experience for users visiting and browsing your catalog. Providing a quick view option so the visitors can explore a product is an excellent UX booster, and QODE Quick View for WooCommerce is just the tool for the job. It provides a simple and hassle-free way to display complete product info on a single click, so that the visitors can learn more about it without having to navigate to the product page. The quick view form is triggered with a single click on the product in the list or loop. Customization options cover button stylization, custom labels and adjustable close icons. In addition, quick view can be disabled for mobile devices, although it’s worth mentioning that the plugin is completely responsive as is.

All this comes with the free version. The premium QODE Quick View for WooCommerce plugin offers even more – it can display the form as a popup, as a drop form or sidebar, completely open-ended customization, AJAX-powered adding to cart, etc.

WooCommerce Multilingual

The main purpose of WooCommerce Multilingual is to enable multilingual support on WooCommerce-powered WordPress sites using and combining the WPML plugin with WooCommerce. Its main features include the ability to translate all WooCommerce products, the easy translation for categories, products, and attributes, running a single WooCommerce store with multiple currencies based on location or a customer’s language, and different payment gateways according to the customer’s location.

Product Slider for WooCommerce

If you want to present your products in a dynamic and user-friendly manner, Products Slider for WooCommerce is ideal for the job. This easy-to-use plugin will allow you to create beautiful and practical product sliders and display them anywhere on your store using a shortcode. You can easily customize your sliders and even add your own CSS to further style it according to your preferences. Additionally, you will be able to control the speed of your slides, choose whether you want to show or hide slider navigations and dots, set the slider to rewind and loop, and so on.

WooCommerce Customizer

While WooCommerce comes with plenty of filters that allow for customization of your eCommerce store, you do have to write PHP code in order to use them. This is where WooCommerce Customizer comes in handy. Namely, this plugin comes with a user-friendly settings page that makes it quite easy to add your customizations using WooCommerce filters without any code or modifying any of your theme templates. With these filters, you can customize your Add to Cart button text, heading text for the “Product Description” and “Additional Information” tab, checkout page coupon/login text, and more.

ShopLentor

ShopLentor WooCommerce plugin is an all-in-one solution designed to streamline your e-commerce journey by replacing the need for multiple plugins. ShopLentor empowers you to create stunning online shopfronts effortlessly without any coding knowledge.

Featuring over 105 Elementor widgets and 54 Gutenberg blocks, customization becomes a breeze, allowing you to tailor your website perfectly. To enhance your store’s functionality, access more than 24 advanced modules, including multistep checkout, backorder, pre-order functionality, email customizer, product comparison, and quick view capacity.

ShopLentor offers intuitive integration into both Elementor and Gutenberg, providing a seamless experience for users of both platforms. Explore a vast collection of pre-made page templates with user-friendly customization options to kickstart your store’s design.

Qi Addons for Elementor

We’re closing our list with something that doesn’t exactly qualify as an individual plugin or addon, but nevertheless deserves your attention. Qi Addons for Elementor is a rich collection of 100+ widgets for all sorts of purposes. Among them, you will find a range of widgets created specifically for WooCommerce, and many of them are free, too. Specifically, Product List and Product Slider widgets can help drive conversions by creating advanced product layouts and interesting, dynamic ways of presenting your goods. There’s also the Add to Cart Button widget that takes the native WooCommerce functionality to a whole new level. The collection is created with the idea of helping any user create a website or an online shop that looks and works perfectly, so in addition to these Woo-related addons you can also use a myriad of other, super-useful widgets, all in the free version (plus more in the paid one).

Qi Blocks for Gutenberg

In case you like Qi Addons for Elementor but don’t feel like switching from block editing to Elementor, don’t worry. Qi Blocks for Gutenberg bring essentially the same functionalities, except they come in the form of Gutenberg blocks. One difference is that here only the Product List comes as a free block – the others are included in the premium version. Still, considering you get other exceptional functionalities that are not eCommerce-specific (modern showcase and typography options, SEO, business blocks, etc), this plugin is definitely worth checking out.

EU VAT Compliance Assistant for WooCommerce

Here is a rather useful plugin if you’re operating your business across EU countries. As its name suggests, EU VAT Compliance Assistant for WooCommerce comes with the features that assist you and your shop with the EU VAT law compliance (VAT or Value-Added Tax is a consumption fee that applies to all products and services in the EU). The plugin features include the ability to identify your customers’ locations, to distinguish VAT from other countries, to enter and maintain each country’s VAT rates, and more.

Order Delivery Date for WooCommerce

Order Delivery Date for WooCommerce is a plugin ideal for the improvement of your customer service. It works by allowing your customers to specify the preferred delivery date on the checkout page. The selected delivery date will be displayed in your admin area, on the WooCommerce Edit Order page. If you want, you can disable the days on which you do not do product delivery, limit the number of deliveries or orders you wish to be placed per day, and so on.

Minimum Purchase for WooCommerce

With the Minimum Purchase for WooCommerce plugin, you will be able to easily set minimum purchase rules for your products. Customers should reach these purchase requirements in order to proceed to the checkout page. These requirements can apply to the minimum purchase amount or the minimum number of products. You can even add your own custom minimum purchase messages and show error messages until the customers “resolve” these errors by abiding by your minimum purchase rules.

PW WooCommerce Gift Cards

PW WooCommerce Gift Cards is a plugin that will allow you to easily create and sell gift cards in WordPress. Your customers will get to set the amount, recipient, and a custom message when purchasing their gift card. One of the best things about this plugin is the fact that gift cards are not tied to any specific account, which means your guests will be able to receive their gift cards without having to create an account.

The pro version of the plugin comes packed with some additional features, such as the ability to specify a default amount, allow customers to set custom amounts and schedule delivery dates, and so on.

WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce

WOOF is a product search plugin that will let your customers filter your products by categories, product tags, attributes, price, and product custom taxonomies. It can be easily added to your WooCommerce website via a widget or a shortcode. Some of the features include infinite scrolling, quick search technology, products searching by AJAX, and plenty more.

Variation Swatches for WooCommerce

As is already apparent from the plugin name, Variation Swatches for WooCommerce comes with the ability to add beautiful variation swatches to your products. You can create size, brand, image, color, and label variation swatches.

If you opt for the pro version of the plugin, you get some extra features like multi-color variation swatches, the ability to blur, hide, or show cross sign for out of stock variation swatches, etc.

Checkout Manager for WooCommerce

Checkout Manager for WooCommerce is a neat plugin built with the intention to help online store owners modify their checkout pages in an intuitive way. If you install this plugin, you will be able to fully customize the checkout process. Some of the features include an option that allows you to remove the toggle checkbox for displaying the shipping fields (this means shipping fields will always be displayed to your customers and they will be required to fill them in), the ability to add or remove the requirement for users to create an account during the purchase, and to add a custom message before or after the checkout form.

WooCommerce Currency Switcher

Here is a multi-currency switcher type of plugin that provides the ability to your visitors to switch currencies according to set currency rates in real time and even allows them to pay in their local currency, or the one they selected. You can set the currency rates to update hourly, multiple times a day, monthly, or you can simply enter a custom currency rate.

WooCommerce Currency Switcher can be added to your website both with a widget and a shortcode.

Stripe Payments for WooCommerce

With more and more people using Stripe to make their online purchases, no web shop can afford not to include it among its payment options. If you haven’t done that already, or if you want to but don’t know how, check out Stripe Payments for WooCommerce. This plugin, developed by FunnelKit, provides a free, fast and reliable way to add a Stripe gateway to your WooCommerce shop through credit and debit cards like Visa, MasterCard, Diners, AmEx, and many others. Plus, it also integrates with Google Pay and Apple Pay.

PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce

If you’re looking for a really simple, really user-friendly and fast way to add PDF invoices to your order emails, then PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce is the thing for you. It comes with a basic invoice template but there’s also the option of creating your own. You also get to download and print the invoices for your physical archive, straight from yourWooCommerce order dashboard. This popular plugin has 300k+ active installations and a five-star rating, a testimony to its reliability and good performance.

Conclusion

Each one of the free WooCommerce plugins we presented above contains rather useful and practical features that will surely help give your WooCommerce store a fresher look, a broader range of capabilities, and personalize it in a way that best suits your business. You can find all sorts of plugins in our list – from those that offer the creation of product sliders and gift cards to plugins that come with quickview and variation swatches. So, we urge you to check them all out carefully so as not to miss any opportunities to improve the functionality and efficiency of your eCommerce business in the best possible way.

Landing pages are powerful tools usually made with one goal in mind – to make a conversion. These types of pages have the purpose of getting the viewers to focus on one specific objective and encourage them to take action by offering them a concrete solution – before they have a chance to click away. The final goal is usually to make a profit by turning casual visitors into actual, paying customers or clients, or reach whatever other business bottom line. So, no matter if you offer a digital or physical product, a webinar, a free demo of any sort, or something else entirely, you should consider using a landing page to achieve your marketing-oriented goals.

Now, as in many other cases of content marketing, the basis of every converting landing page is a persuasive and well-written copy. Namely, if the copy you produce doesn’t manage to incite users to take the desired action, this can be detrimental to your conversion rate.

Of course, the design of your landing page matters a great deal, too. Using appropriate images and colors, adding your logo, emphasizing your headline and CTA – all this serves to enhance the visual identity of your brand and highlight the copy itself. The design and the page copy are inherently connected, so making sure that they work well together is vital for the success of your conversions.

This time around, however, we’ve decided to focus on the ways in which you can take care of the landing page copy in particular. So without further ado, here are some useful writing tips that will help you generate a compelling and actionable copy for your landing page and skyrocket your conversions:

Do Not Use AI

It’s a bit awkward having to stress this, but a surprising amount of copywriters and content editors rely a bit too much on AI chatbots and other tools for writing website copy. Ever since the big breakthrough of ChatGPT in 2022, starting the so-called “AI boom” we’ve been witnessing a surge in writing assistants like Jasper, Gemini, Copy.ai, Writesonic and others, most of which appear or promise to be useful in writing landing page and other web copy.

AI tools can be good for some purposes: for instance, there are several ways in which bloggers can use and benefit from AI, from research to proofreading and beyond. AI can be used for generating text to video, and they can make solid chatbot plugins for WordPress. There’s a lot you can do with AI tools but writing landing page copy is not one of them. Or, at least, it really shouldn’t be.

The landing page is an extremely important asset for conversion, brand identity, SEO and UX. It’s your crucial piece of material for reaching your target audiences and getting them to perform the desired action. It’s also vital for expanding the reach, for establishing trust and sending a clear and unique message. You definitely don’t want to entrust this sensitive and important task to a tool that starts every piece with “In today’s digital landscape…”

The main thing about using AI tools like ChatGPT successfully is to feed them the right prompts. However, even with the right prompts, they are highly likely to output extremely generic content, phrases that have been repeated so many times they are no longer perceived as messages, and unbacked claims. Since they’re pretty widely used, people are already getting a hang of what their copy sounds like, so it’s fairly easy to recognize that something has been written by AI. And if your landing page sounds and looks like it’s been AI-generated, what sort of impression is that supposed to make on the visitors? Not a very good one, for sure.

So, however tempted you get, do not use AI for your landing page copy. Just put in some effort and write your own and we promise it will be a thousand times better than anything a run-of-the-mill piece of AI could ever write.

Create an Attention-Grabbing Headline

As in many other types of online copy, headline is the key element of your landing page that can make or break your conversions. Since your headline is often the only thing the visitors will truly focus on when viewing a landing page, it can also be your only selling point. After all, the headline should represent your main message, in a way, which is all the more reason to take extra care when creating it.

While there are numerous ways in which you can generate a captivating headline (as well as many headline analyzer tools that can help you out), there are some general rules you should stick to for the best possible results. These include:

Of course, you can (and should, for that matter) also add a subheadline right underneath that will further support your headline’s main message. Here you can offer any additional info related to your offer. You can explain in more detail what the service or product does, as well list any other reason (or reasons) why they should use it in the first place.

Emphasize the Benefits in Your Copy

While it’s totally okay to mention the final “solution” your products or services may bring to users, we advise you to put extra focus on the actual benefits instead. What we mean by this is that people usually know what “solution” is. Therefore, if you ask us, you should focus on creating a landing page copy that is all about offering a strong value proposition to potential customers.

The best way to do this is to list and describe the benefits of your product or service clearly and explain exactly how they are valuable to your customers. Say that you’re offering food products meant to help people lose weight in a healthy way. The “solution” in this case would be “food products that help people lose weight”, but you can also emphasize all (or most) of the benefits of using your product. For example, you can mention that it will reduce the risk of getting certain diseases, help them get better sleep, get more energy, boost their immune system, and so on.

There are also multiple ways in which you can list the benefits of your offer. For example, you can include them by using quotes from your satisfied customers (more on that later), insert one of the most important benefits into your headline (like we mentioned in the beginning), and so on. You can even use a bulleted list if you want to be as concise as possible while providing all the important info at the same time – which brings us to our next point.

Be Concise

The truth is, people have no time to read every piece of content they find on the web in full detail – and the same applies to your landing pages. Most people want to get to the information fast, which is why many of them engage in so-called speed reading, or even scanning of the text to find its most important bits. For this reason, it’s always important to create scannable content, no matter if you’re writing for a blog post or a landing page copy.

The general rule of thumb would be to use clear, concise sentences when crafting the copy of your landing page. Try describing your product or service, as well as its benefits using fewer words that are easy to understand in general. If you want, you can also achieve this using the above-mentioned bulleted lists, for example.

Alternatively, you can mention only the most essential features of your product or service and then mention them more than once throughout your landing page (in your headline, in the CTA, etc.). By doing this, you ensure that the “scanners” don’t miss out on the important bits of your offer without throwing them off with too much info either.

Include Testimonials

When it comes to converting landing page copy, sometimes there’s no better way to present your offer than to let the customers do the talking. We suggest using customer testimonials in your landing page copy as they can help contribute to the credibility and value of your offer. This way, you have a chance to mention the most important aspects of your products and services while being genuine at the same time.

Testimonials, which are rather easy to add, especially if you use a testimonials plugin, can be presented in a form of a video or textual quote. They can come from your social media networks (like Twitter or Instagram), comments on your blog posts, and any other online interactions. You can place them as the centerpiece of your landing page (they can even be a part of your headline), below your headline and subheadline, or even at the bottom – your choices are practically limitless.

Add a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

A Call to Action (or CTA) is a key element of every copy that has a goal to convert. A solid CTA helps ease the customer journey and contains a clear message that indicates what step you want them to take next. In fact, we’d go as far as to say that all your copy should be made with this message in mind, as making conversions is the main reason why you created a landing page in the first place. Do you want your visitors to buy a product from you, download an e-book, use your service, or simply want them to learn more about what you have to offer? Take your ultimate goal into consideration, and then create an actionable CTA in accordance with that.

Speaking of a converting call to action, you mustn’t forget to focus on the copy of the CTA button itself either. Namely, CTA buttons are among the first things that visitors notice when glancing upon a page, so make sure they contain a verb that suggests immediate action and clearly lets visitors know what you want them to do (like buy, download, etc.). You should also try creating a sense of urgency and encourage users to really click on that button by adding a word like “now” next to your action verb. Finally, don’t forget to design your CTA button in a way that will make it instantly visible on your page, as this can largely contribute to your conversions as well.

Use the Power of Statistics to Your Advantage

When it comes to creating a convincing landing page, numbers can make all the difference. We suggest that you provide statistics related to your offer, but do so in a way that will best resonate with your audience. Say that you have an environmentally-friendly product or service, for example. Instead of offering a percentage of reduced carbon emissions that can be achieved by using it, you can be even more specific by displaying the number of trees people can save if they use your products instead. By giving a more vivid mental description and combining it with a clear number, you can make your offer more relatable and can really inspire them to make a purchase.

Write for Humans

Maybe you’d think that this goes without saying, but some marketers actually forget this simple rule – write your landing page copy for humans, and not for machines. What we mean by that is that you should try and keep the tone in your copy as natural-sounding as possible. You can achieve this by avoiding any overly complicated language and aiming to write as you speak in your everyday life. Also, try using shorter sentences and don’t hesitate to throw in casual phrasing here and there. Using a conversational tone rather than a robotic one will definitely resonate better with your visitors and thus has the real potential to raise your conversions.

Conclusion

The goal behind every successful landing page is to lead the visitors and encourage them to take action in order to boost conversions and increase sales. And to do all that, producing a captivating landing page copy is crucial. So, go ahead – make sure to generate some killer headlines, properly emphasize the benefits of your offer, be as concise as possible, and don’t forget to include a clearly noticeable and actionable CTA. If you follow these principles, you will have much greater chances of turning those visitors into customers and making profit.

Having a clear picture of how users engage with your website’s content can greatly help you in developing a better content marketing strategy for your business. This is a commonsense type of approach – the more awareness you have of what your users prefer (or don’t prefer) about your content, the more you’ll know what to improve on. In addition to using the most comprehensive solution in this area, Google Analytics, installing one of the many available heatmap tools and plugins can prove to be extremely valuable in this situation. To save you the trouble of having to dig through the many available options, we’ve gathered a list of the best heatmap tools and plugins for WordPress you can find online.

What is a Heatmap and Why Use It for Your Website?

A heatmap is a graphical depiction of data visualized by color which, when set up with the help of a plugin, visually represents areas of your website that users click and scroll through. Heatmaps allow you to pinpoint the areas that have the most activity, including visual analytics of where the users are clicking, scrolling, and how they are using your website in general. The areas with more activity will be shown as “hotter” than those with less user engagement. This can help you determine the need for improvement when it comes to your website’s usability, structure, or the type of content you post. In short, heatmap analytics show a direct and concrete picture of how users use and interact with your content.

In order to make your website more functional and user-friendly and improve your content marketing strategy as a whole, we invite you to check our selection of some of the best WordPress heatmap tools and plugins out there:

Crazy Egg

With over 300,000 active users, Crazy Egg is an excellent and immensely popular tool for tracking the visitor behavior. It allows you to use visual reports and individual session recordings to learn more about your visitors, including where they’re coming from and the way they navigate your website. The brighter the areas of your website, the more clicks (and more popularity) they have, and vice versa – the darker the areas, the less popular they are. You can adjust the brightness of the heatmap view, filter by date range, and so on.

There is also a Scroll Map that shows how far down people scroll on your page. This is particularly useful as it can indicate the exact area where users lose interest and stop scrolling. Another handy feature that comes with this plugin is the Confetti Report tool that pinpoints every click on your page and allows you to find out various information about the users by filtering the clicks by country, browser type, search engine type, day of the week, and so on.

One thing we don’t particularly like about Crazy Egg is that they’re not very transparent on pricing. You’d expect the pricing page to be located in the navigation menu, but it’s all the way down in the footer. Anyway, the plans start at $49/mo, although some solutions are available for $29/mo. Everything comes with a 30-day free trial.

Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is an all-in-one conversion optimization suite specializing in heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. It allows for the automatic monitoring and recording of every single visitor and lets you easily filter and segment your recordings to accurately analyze the reason why visitors aren’t converting. In addition, aside from the standard click heatmaps, there’s also the Conversion Funnels tool that provides an insight into where people abandon a process on your website (such as checking out or creating an account). Lucky Orange has been awarded a number of G2 recognitions, most notably for usability and ease of implementation. It has a free plan for up to 100 monthly sessions. Paid plans start at $32.

Mouseflow

The Mouseflow plugin works by recording the mouse movements of your visitors. These include clicks, scrolls, the areas visitors focus on the most, etc. Additionally, there’s a possibility of getting a user session recording which replays the user activity, while the Forms feature allows you to monitor how people interact with your forms. This is a great plugin that will help you change the way you manage your content (for the better) and consequently boost conversion rates. The likes of Microsoft, Philips, Samsung and Bosch use this plugin, which only further proves its quality and efficiency.

The pricing for Mouseflow starts at €31 a month for 5000 recorded sessions (a single site limitation). If you want to use the plugin for free, you can download it from the WordPress.org repository and use it for one website with a limitation of 500 recorded sessions a month.

Heatmap.com

Heatmap is a simple heatmap analytics tool that operates by using a JavaScript code that is very small and asynchronous, which means it won’t impact your website’s performance. This is primarily a revenue-tracking tool, with a revenue-based heatmap, scroll map and screen recordings. It includes a dynamic extension for Chrome, and comes with custom revenue filters and site speed reporting in the dashboard. Heatmap used to have a free plan, albeit limited to five pages and a single website, but it’s no longer available. You can, however, start a free trial, and the paid plans start at $89/mo.

Contentsquare x Clicktale

Contentsquare x Clicktale is a partnership between the digital experience analytics platform Contentsquare and the customer engagement software Clicktale, created through acquisition in 2019. Trusted by companies like Walmart, GoPro, Dell and T Mobile, the solution runs deep web and app analytics connecting metrics to actual customer behavior. Its features include journey analytics, troubleshooting and, yes, heatmapping, to offer actionable insights that drive growth. The platform uses zone-based heatmaps, among other advanced features that show how users interact with each and every element of the website or app. The live-zoning extension allows for analyses directly on site, with shortcuts to session replay and customer journey analysis. The problem with this solution is that it’s unclear how much it costs. The website doesn’t say anything about prices or plans and interested parties have to request a demo.

Inspectlet

Inspectlet is a heatmap, session recording and JavaScript A/B testing tool for customer engagement analytics. Session recording gives insights into how visitors behave, what they click on and how they scroll, and the eye-tracking heatmap feature shows what parts of a site or app users are viewing by analyzing the mouse movement, plus there are scroll and click heatmaps. Inspectlet is designed to work perfectly with single page web technologies (Ember, Angular JS, React), AJAX, HTTPS/SSL and cookies and login/authentication solutions. The free version is for one site and allows for 2,500 recorded sessions per month, 2,500 A/B test visitors and 25,000 pageviews. Paid plans start at $39/mo.

Zoho PageSense

Zoho PageSense is a powerful platform of CRO tools for maximizing website conversions featuring web analytics, goals, form analysis, funnel analysis and, of course, session recording and heatmaps. This feature-rich platform can also be used to create engaging polls, popups, push notifications, as well as for website personalization. PageSense integrates seamlessly with other useful Zoho tools, it’s lightweight and GDPR-compliant out of the box. The cheapest plan currently costs $12/month and you can use it for up to 10,000 monthly visitors and three projects. With this plan, you get six months of data retention, 20 goals and 20 custom dimensions.

Smartlook

If you’re looking for a product analytics and visual user insights tool that’s both robust and comprehensive yet easy to implement and adopt, you should check out Smartlook. It combines session recordings with event-based analytics to show how your site or app is faring against the visitors’ expectations, whether the visitors are doing what you want them to do and where and why they drop off. It features heatmaps, funnel analysis, behavior flows and crash reports, among other solutions. Smartlook has a free plan that’s good for up to 3,000 monthly sessions and one-month data retention. Paid plans start at €55/month and include more advanced product analytics, daily anomaly reporting, as well as a number of addons.

Final Thoughts

Even though these heatmap tools and plugins come with different pricing options and vary in terms of popularity and the range of features, they all offer great heatmap solutions for your website. Some tools provide an even deeper insight into the behavior of your users by offering options such as the ability to view the user’s sessions or the conversion funnels tool that lets you see where people abandon certain processes on your website. No matter which one of these tools you pick for strengthening your content strategy, we are sure you won’t make the wrong choice.

WooCommerce has a special place among WordPress eCommerce plugins for a couple of reasons. It lets you sell any kind of goods, including affiliate products. It helps you manage your inventory, handle payments, and calculate shipping. But to get to what makes WooCommerce so great, you only need to visit the Extensions Store on WooCommerce’s website. There, you’ll be greeted with close to seven hundred different extensions.

WooCommerce is endlessly extensible. The extensions you can find on the WooCommerce website aren’t the only ones you could use. Go over to WordPress.org and search for “WooCommerce” among the plugins and see how many you can count with a 4-star and above rating. You’ll soon realize there’s no point to it, and that this variety can easily turn away some users who don’t want that many choices and just want to get on with things.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the best WooCommerce extensions for your WordPress shop you can find on either WooCommerce’s or WordPress’ website. It’s not a definitive list and it won’t contain every good WooCommerce extension that exists, but it should at the very least save you from some trouble when looking for good WooCommerce extensions – or plugins – for your store.

The extensions and plugins we’ll include are:

QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce

We’re kicking off the list with a remarkably well-rounded and conversion-driving plugin from the Qode Interactive workshop – QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce. In its free version, the plugin helps shop owners elevate the UX and drive engagement by placing a convenient Add to Wishlist button to product lists. The button is fully customizable in terms of position, behavior and appearance. Admins can enable automatic removal from wishlist for an item that’s added to the cart, as well as automatic redirection of users to the cart page once the product is added to cart.

The premium version supports the creation of multiple wishlists per user, with visibility options that include public (and searchable), private and accessible via link, providing shoppers with great flexibility. In addition, admins can choose to allow only registered users to create wishlists, which is convenient for lead generation, or opt to make the feature accessible to all as guests.

The wishlist layout can be adjusted and the same goes for the page where multiple lists are displayed. There’s the option to add an “Ask for Estimate” module and the robust admin options include marketing features like tracking user behavior and sending promotional emails (on sale, back in stock, promo, etc). On top of all that, admins can provide quick wishlist access on their pages using two widgets – dropdown and sidebar.

Stripe for WooCommerce

Choosing a good payment extension is probably one of the first things you’ll want to do if you want to make your WordPress shop accessible to more people. Stripe for WooCommerce is a good choice, and not only because it has stellar ratings – that’s just the icing on the cake.

With this plugin, you can add a whole lot of different payment options to your store. Stripe for WooCommerce supports credit cards, sure, but also Apple Pay, Google Pay, as well as local payment methods, and it can display them on product and cart pages besides the checkout page.

WooCommerce Google Analytics

When insight into your customers’ behavior is what you need, what is that one company you should turn to? With the free WooCommerce Google Analytics extension, you can track basic data such as sessions, users, and events. You can also get basic eCommerce data like product views.

If you want to turn it up a notch, you can opt for a Google Analytics Pro extension from another developer. At an annual price of $79, this plugin adds checkout behavior analysis, advanced settings, and tracking dimensions.

Google Listings and Ads

Staying in the realm of Google and its services, having an easy way to connect with Google Merchant Center can save you lots of trouble if you plan to run Google Ads. Thanks to the Google Listings and Ads extension, however, you can cross that off your list of things to worry about.

This free extension allows your WooCommerce store to automatically sync your product information to Google Merchant Center. From there, you can use that data for free listings in the Shopping tab in Google search, as well as ad campaigns you create with Google Ads.

Mailchimp for WooCommerce

Email is one of the most consistently effective tools marketers and advertisers have in their arsenal. Email marketing can do wonders for your WordPress store, too – if you have the right extension for it. So why not Mailchimp? Mailchimp for WooCommerce is a free plugin, as is the basic Mailchimp service – and the paid plans make it ideal for small and medium businesses, too.

With the plugin, you’ll be able to connect your WooCommerce store to Mailchimp’s system and easily share information between the two. From there, you can use any of Mailchimp’s services for email and marketing automation you have access to based on your Mailchimp plan.

Name Your Price

Do you want to let your customers set their own prices for the products you’re selling? The name-your-price model could be risky but rewarding. Thanks to the Name Your Price extension, you’ll be able to try it out in a couple of novel ways.

Name Your Price works with many different product types you can sell through WooCommerce. You can use this extension along with subscriptions, gift cards, bundles, but you could also use it to collect donations. Name Your Price is a premium extension, and it costs $49 per year.

QuickBooks Sync for WooCommerce

Is there a better investment for a store than accounting software? Good booking is essential for any store’s success, and WooCommerce accounting can be easy – if you have the right tool. QuickBooks is one of the best ones, and QuickBooks Sync for WooCommerce is the extension you need to be able to use this tool with your WordPress store.

With the extension, you can sync your store with QuickBooks for two-way sharing of data on orders, customers, inventory, products, and anything else you can throw at QuickBooks. The services you’ll get from the platform, however, depend on the type of package that you have. While the extension might be free, QuickBooks offers a free trial, and the basic plan starts at $25.

Smart Coupons

Need a way to attract more customers? Coupons, gift cards, and giveaways are a time-honored sales method to give the bottom line a boost. When talking about coupons and WooCommerce, one of the first extensions that have to cross the mind is Smart Coupons.

This extension has everything you need to be able to create coupons and other types of special offers for existing and prospective customers. Whether you want to create a fixed amount or percentage coupon, offer free shipping, offer a discount via a shareable link, or set up store credits of vouchers – you’ll be able to do it. The extension is premium, and it costs $99 per year.

Customer Reviews for WooCommerce

Sometimes, a little bit of social proof is all your store needs to fly to stellar heights. Customer reviews are great social proof, and thanks to the Customer Reviews for WooCommerce extension, you can incentivize your customers to leave reviews, too.

The extension’s major draw is its streamlined process. When someone makes a purchase and some time passes, they receive an email asking for a review. The extension provides a form for the review, and once the form is filled and submitted, the review gets published on your website. You can even send a thank-you coupon. The extension is freemium, with the paid version offering lots of customization and branding options, and starting at $7.99 per month plus VAT.

Discount Rules for WooCommerce

Who doesn’t love a good discount? If you want to make the most out of this natural proclivity towards good deals, you’ll tie it with something like – volume. Offering bulk discounts and other types of dynamic pricing is very common, and thanks to the Discount Rules for WooCommerce extension, it’s easy, too.

This extension will let you apply any type of discount you can imagine. You can set rules based on date, products, count of items, order total, cart size, quantity range, and many other variables. The premium version of the plugin – $49 per year – even offers discount rules that turn this extension into a genuine product-bundling plugin.

Variation Swatches for WooCommerce

Some extensions are so good that, even though they’re freemium, their free version is useful enough to easily be one of the best free WooCommerce plugins you can use. Variation Swatches is one of those extensions.

What this plugin does is necessary if you’re offering variations of the same type of product. The plugin allows you to create variation swatches based on color, size, brand, image, and label. The swatches will be displayed automatically instead of the usual dropdown menu. The Pro version, which starts at $49 per year, adds a whole lot of functionalities such as blurring and multi-color swatches.

Advanced Shipping Tracking for WooCommerce

Shipment tracking is one of the modern conveniences that take the edge off usually frustrating things and having to wait for a package without knowing where it can be frustrating. If your shipping provider offers to track, use one of the best shipping extensions out there, the Advanced Shipping Tracking extension, to keep the customers in the loop.

This extension lets you add tracking numbers to orders, fulfill the orders when the number is added, and provide your customers with a link where they can check the status of their shipment. With the pro version, which starts at $129 per year, you get access to additional features that include a fulfillment dashboard, built-in integration with third-party plugins, and more.

Product Recommendations

Upselling is a fine skill that takes plenty of practice and knowledge to master. At least in-person upselling is. If you have a WordPress WooCommerce store, all you need is an extension like Product Recommendations.

This extension allows you to show your customers products that are frequently bought together with the product they are browsing. You can add recommendations manually, as well as let an algorithm take care of it for you. The extension even lets you create your recommendation engine. A premium extension, Product Recommendations costs $79 a year to use.

FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce

It’s a generally good idea to make a customer’s journey from landing on your website to getting what they’re there for as quick and frictionless as possible. Search bars play an important role in removing that friction, and FiboSearch is one of the best search bars for WooCommerce you’ll find.

The free version of the plugin supports search by product title, description, terms, and SKU. It shows product image, price, and description in the results, and allows you to limit the number of suggestions that are displayed. The paid version, which starts at $49 per year, adds synonyms and fuzzy search to the list of features, as well as search for posts, pages, tags, categories, and attributes.

Checkout Field Editor

Just like any other part of your store, the checkout page needs occasional optimization. Since this is another one of the fields where core WooCommerce doesn’t excel, you’ll be better served by an extension. Checkout Field Editor is just the one.

With this freemium plugin, you’ll be able to add seven new types of fields, as well as customize the existing ones that are already on the checkout page. There are options for arranging, renaming and validating checkout fields. With the premium version of the extension, which starts at $49 per year, you’ll get additional custom fields, conditional display of fields, custom validations, and many more options.

Request a Quote for WooCommerce

In some business models, it makes sense to give shoppers the option to send you a request for a quote. If you’re selling in bulk, or if you run a B2B store, this might make perfect sense for you. In that case, you’ll need an extension like Request a Quote for WooCommerce to help you out.

Request a Quote for WooCommerce is a premium extension that adds a “request a quote” button to specific products. You can display it instead of the “buy” button or create rules for when it appears. You can customize the form they then use to ask for the quote. The annual price for the plugin is $69.

Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce

If it ever bothered you that WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to add custom product tabs to your website, don’t worry – you’re not alone. With over a hundred thousand active downloads, Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce is proof that this is a much-needed feature.

Luckily for you, the extension lets you add it effortlessly. Once you create the tabs, you can move them around and delete them – it’s as simple as that. The plugin has a premium version, too, which starts at around $30 and includes additional features, such as the inclusion of tabs content into search results.

WooCommerce Zapier

When you have to integrate a number of disparate tools and services, you usually turn to an in-between, a platform, or a service that lets you set it all up easily. Zapier is one of the most popular integration platforms that also offer automation tools. With WooCommerce Zapier, a premium plugin with an annual price of $59, you can use the platform for WooCommerce, too.

Zapier works with a combination of triggers and actions, allowing you to automate certain processes. For example, you can use a sale in WooCommerce as a trigger, and “add to Google Sheets” as an action. It’s a simple yet powerful way to bring different services together without having to do too much work.

WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant

Who can keep account of all the rules and regulations of doing business with the EU? Thanks to the WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant, you don’t have to when it comes to charging for value-added tax. The extension will do most of the work for you.

You can use WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant for a variety of tasks. The extension will gather necessary information, including customer location. It will validate VAT numbers and perform currency conversions for you. Most importantly, it will automatically apply the VAT rates for you. It will do all of this free of charge, although you’re welcome to sign up for premium support from the developer.

WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips

How tedious would it be if you had to create an invoice or packing slips manually after every sale? Not that you have to, though – all you need to do is download and install the WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips extension, and you’ll be done with most of the work.

This free extension lets you create and customize invoices and package slips you can automatically attach to WooCommerce emails of your choosing. You’ll be able to download them, too, generate them in bulk, and include sequential invoice numbers.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

With a wide user base and a strong development community around it, it sometimes seems like WooCommerce very much resembles WordPress itself. Both are extensible endlessly with third-party tools, and both seem to suffer for it – even though they still dominate their markets. Still, if you know where to look, you can easily sort through the rubble and find some great WooCommerce extensions. The ones we’ve listed here are among the best ones.