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8 WordPress Plugins That Will Keep Visitors Glued to Your Website

No one the Internet can deny that WordPress is everywhere. As of 2020, it’s powering 35% of all websites online. There’s no denying it’s the most popular Content Management System.

If you’re one of the millions of people using it, you should maximise its features to stand out from your competition.

WordPress plugins are one of the best ways to supercharge your website. Once you choose the right ones, you can use them to generate leads, attract visitors and much more.

In this post, we’re going to discuss 8 WordPress plugins that will keep visitors glued to your website.

What are WordPress Plugins?

Before we talk about different WordPress plugins, let’s define what they are in the first place.

WordPress plugins are software that can perform a specific function for your website. As of September 2018, there are 56,024 plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

No matter what function you want for your website, it’s likely there is a plugin for it.

Editorial Calendar

Despite all the new technology and tactics we hear about, great content is still the best way to get people to stay on our websites. If you are informative, helpful or entertaining, your visitors will stick around.

Editorial Calendar is a plugin that nudges you toward content creation greatness. It doesn’t do all the work for you, but it helps you look at the bigger picture.

If you click on All Posts in the WordPress dashboard, you’re going to see all your posts lined up from newest to oldest.

The Editorial Calendar plugin is more detailed than that. It lays out all your blog posts, including drafts, in a calendar and helps you:

• Organise your blog posts. The plugin lets you drag and drop posts from one date to another. If you think you’ve been posting about one topic too much, you can drag the post to another date and replace it with something else.
• Post more consistently. One glance at the calendar will tell you right away whether you need to create more content or not. The blank days serve as a reminder that you need to finalise that draft or schedule another post.

Yoast SEO

Yoast’s tagline is “SEO for everyone,” and it couldn’t be any truer.

It’s perfect for people who are starting out in or don’t have time to learn SEO. Yoast works like this:

• You enter a title and write your blog post.
• Underneath the WordPress blog post editor, Yoast has a little box where you can enter your chosen keyword, blog post title and meta description.
• It runs a test to see how SEO-friendly your blog post and its elements are.
• Once the test is done, it rates you SEO-friendliness using three colours–red for bad, orange for average and green for good.
• Yoast then offers specific suggestions for improving your post’s SEO-friendliness. Possible suggestions include using your keyword in the first paragraph of your post or shortening your blog post title.

Yoast serves as an easy guide to making sure people find your content online. It checks your web content for you and instantly gets you customised tips to make it more SEO-friendly.

Installing the plugin is like having an SEO expert giving you advice as you create content.

Sumo

Sumo is a plugin that includes several tools all designed to get more subscribers to your newsletter.

You’ve probably visited a website where you saw a pop-up that asked you to sign up for a newsletter. Sumo creates that pop-up for you, letting interested visitors sign up for your newsletter with ease.

If you think sudden pop-ups are too disruptive, Sumo offers other placement options. You can place a Smart Bar at the top of your page, a constant reminder for visitors to sign up without being as pushy as a pop-up.

Collecting emails from potential customers is great for your business for several reasons.

• You can tell people whenever you have a new blog post. This will drive return visitors to your website.
• You stay connected to your followers without bending to ever-changing algorithms. Social media sites change their algorithms all the time. Today, all your Instagram followers might be able to see your post, but that could change tomorrow. Having their emails means you can contact them without worrying about algorithms.
• You reach people who are interested in your business. If someone chose to give you their email address, it means they’re genuinely interested in your solution or advice. You have a better chance of converting them into loyal customers.

OneSignal

OneSignal is a push notification service.

When someone opens your website, a little note pops up and asks if they’d like to be notified whenever a new post goes up. Once they agree to it, they’re going to receive a desktop notification–even if they’re not on your website.

After a person leaves your website, they might forget all about you. They can be distracted by the latest social media update or other pressing real-life concerns. Push notifications are your way of reeling them back in so they can look at the new content you’ve created.

OneSignal has a nifty tracking system that gives you real-time monitoring capabilities. You can send test messages to a group of users and determine which one worked best.

It also allows you to personalise when the messages are going to be sent based on location for maximum impact.

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WordPress Share Buttons

With its title alone, WordPress Share Buttons pretty much explains its purpose.

If you install this plugin, it will add “share buttons on the side of your page, following your reader as they scroll.” They make it easy for visitors to share your content on sites like Facebook, Messenger, Pinterest and other social media platforms.

You might be wondering why that matters to your business. A recent survey says that 90% of marketers say that social media marketing has increased exposure for their business. Another 75% say it increased their traffic.

In short, social media sharing does two major things for you.

• It gets your business name out there, reaching people who might’ve never heard of you before.
• It drives traffic to your website. If you play your cards right, you could turn that traffic into higher sales.

Social media share buttons might sound like a no-brainer for a business website, but they’re difficult to install for someone with little or no coding knowledge. This plugin simplifies the whole process for you.

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Broken Link Checker

Broken links are the bane of a business website’s existence. They can damage your website in two ways.

• They hinder Google from indexing your web pages. If there aren’t any links to a webpage, Google won’t be able to find and index it.
• They make a bad impression on visitors. Broken links tell visitors that your site isn’t updated regularly and could turn off potential customers. If a user lands on a page that no longer exists, it could also result in a negative experience.

Broken Link Checker does most of the major link housekeeping for you. It checks links in blog posts, web pages and even comments. Whenever it finds broken links, it informs you through email or the WordPress dashboard.

Click to Tweet

Click to Tweet is a great way to make sharing your content easier for visitors. It embeds your selected text in the middle of blog posts, and lets visitors share them on Twitter in seconds.

This plugin will work better if you choose the right content to highlight. You can choose:

• Meaty short summaries of your blog post’s thesis.
• One-liners that highlight how your post can help others.
• Important data that backs up your blog post.
• Discounts, giveaways and other promotions.

Click to Tweet also tracks how many clicks your highlighted content gets. With this information, you can see which type of content gets more clicks and what you should embed more of in the future.

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WP Live Chat Support

WP Live Chat Support does exactly what its name says. It embeds a chat box in the lower right corner of your website so visitors can reach out to you should they have any queries.

According to a recent survey, more than 50% of customers prefer to get support via chat instead of over the phone. Calling could lead to long wait times. With live chat, they get a response within seconds.

But only 9% of companies include a live chat function on their websites. Doing so would enable you to:

• Help your customers better.
• Stand out from your competition.

If you’re wondering if you need to be online all the time for this, don’t worry. You can turn off the live chat function when no one is available to reply to customers. The plugin will show a Leave a Message option instead.

Conclusion

WordPress plugins are a great way to supercharge your business website.

If you want to give site visitors a great experience, there are several plugins you can choose from. They can help you create content, make sharing your content easier and let you communicate with potential customers faster.

Before you install a plugin, though, make sure it’s in line with your business goals. A plugin, no matter how useful it may seem, can slow down your site and distract site visitors.

Determine what your goals are for your website, and you’ll find the right plugins that will help you achieve them.

Cornerstone Digital is a WordPress development company in Sydney. We’d be glad to implement or customise your WordPress site to help visitors stay glued to your website. Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.