WordPress has taken over the website development marketplace. If you ask most business owners who have created or redesign their website in the past 5 years, what platform they are using, most would say “Wordpress.” WordPress has made it extremely easy for businesses to make content updates and simple design changes to their website. In fact, if your WordPress website doesn’t come with a specific function out of the box, then most likely there is a WordPress plugin to help you achieve you website customization goals. Below are three WordPress plugins we think every business owner should consider using for their website.
WordPress Plugins You Need To Know About
BackupBuddy
Backing up your WordPress website is an important part to your ongoing website maintenance. Most website hosting companies provide some sort of backup option on their server, but it is best practice to keep a copy of your website locally on your computer or external hard drive. Even better, if you have access to a cloud service like Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon Cloud Drive, I would recommend uploading a backup there as well.
BackupBuddy makes it possible for someone without a lot of website development skills to backup, restore or migrate a website to a new hosting platform. This WordPress plugin provides, database and full backups (including website files) that you can download to your computer or backup to a cloud based server. You also have the ability to create backups manually or to schedule them on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. What sets BackupBuddy apart from other backup WordPress plugins, is the support the developer provides. They also do a great job providing video tutorials, with step-by-step instructions. You can literally move a website from one server to another in under 10-steps. With the flexibility of customization options, BackupBuddy is a must have plugin, for business owners who use WordPress for their website.
Ninja Forms
Every website needs a form. It could be as simple as a contact form; so potential customers can contact you with questions. Other sites require more in-depth forms for questionnaires or even surveys. Although forms are an essential part to a business’s website, they used to require an experience web developer to create. Fortunately, that is no longer the case!
Ninja Forms is the most flexible WordPress form builder available today. It is a free plugin in the WordPress community, and trumps all other form builders, including the once industry standard Contact Form 7. Once you understand the logic of the Ninja Form click and drag form builder, you will be creating amazing contact forms in minutes. It allows you to collect general information like name, email and phone number, as well as create multiple-choice questions, to find out more information from potential customers. Ninja Forms also has a great video tutorial library, to help you get started. We have been using this plugin for years and larger hosting companies like GoDaddy, are even starting to recommend it as well. If you have not used using Ninja Forms yet, I would recommend you check it out ASAP.
WooCommerce
For any business owner that sells products at a brick and mortar, I recommend you consider an E-commerce platform for your website. As we move towards a world, where people prefer to shop online, then driving to a store, it is important for you to develop an E-commerce plan. For years, E-Commerce platforms have been costly to setup and would require an experienced web developer to create.
WooCommerce has changed the landscape for E-commerce. This WordPress plugin makes it possible to transform your WordPress website, into an online retail store. Easily track your purchases from your dashboard and link a payment gateway like Authorize.net, Paypal or Stripe to accept payments. It also allows you to setup shipping and tax options, which means the plugin will do the calculations for you. There is also an abundance of WordPress plugins that work with WooCommerce, to help customize specific needs for your E-commerce store. Finally the best part of this plugin is that it’s free!
If you are a business owner who currently uses the WordPress platform to run your company’s website or you are just starting out, these three WordPress plugins are worth checking out. The beauty of WordPress is the ability to find plugins, to help you customize your website to fit your business. It is important to find plugins, that stand the test of time, have been vetted and you know will continue to receive updates. We have been using these three plugins, for many years and can safely recommend each one as a top WordPress plugin. If you would like to know more about these plugins or are in search a specific plugin, to help you customize your website, please call us at 202-683-6881 or send us a message. We look forward to helping you build the best website for your company.
