9 Best Lead Generation WordPress Plugins (Powerful)

Are you looking for the best lead generation plugins for WordPress?

Using the right lead generation tools can help you get more customers and sales faster, so you can grow your business.

In this article, we will share some of the best lead generation WordPress plugins to help you improve your marketing.

What is Lead Generation and Why Does It Matter?

Lead generation means getting the interest of prospective customers. It can be done in a number of different ways.

On your website, lead generation might mean getting visitors to:

• Join your email newsletter.
• Submit a contact or inquiry form on your website
• Contact someone at your company through live chat.
• Talk to a chatbot (automated chat).
• Call your sales team, or book a call with them.

Lead generation is an essential for all online businesses. Of course, it’s also important to have a strong process for converting the leads into customers. However, most businesses struggle to get enough leads in the first place.

Even if you run a nonprofit, lead generation matters. It can help you get more donations and more support.

Our goal with this list is to share the absolute best WordPress lead generation plugins that you can use to grow your business, faster.

Unlike other best lead generation tools list, we are not just sharing a list of plugins that do the same thing. Instead we’re focusing on lead generation from a holistic point of view.

For each lead generation solution category, we share an expert pick along with one alternative option for that category. This will help us keep this list comprehensive without causing choice paralysis.

With that said, here are the best lead generation plugins for WordPress.

1. WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form plugin on the market. Over 3 million website owners use their drag & drop form builder to easily create any type of online form for their WordPress site.

It comes with over 100 pre-built form templates that you can use as a starting point. From there, you can easily customize the form to match your needs using the drag & drop form builder interface.

Some of the lead generation templates include:

• Newsletter signup form
• Content download form
• Online event registration form
• Request a quote form
• Contest entry form
• Neighborhood events questionnaire form
• Personal trainer signup form

WPForms also integrates with your favorite email marketing service and CRM providers. This lets you automatically add leads to your email list.

Each time someone submits the form, you will automatically get an email notification. You can easily turn this off if you prefer not to receive email alerts. WPForms will store each completed form in your WordPress database too.

It’s also possible to send notifications to multiple recipients using WPForms. For example, you might want to send the customer inquiry notification to a specific person in the sales team and their supervisor.

Price:

WPForms costs from $39.50/year.

There’s also a free version of the plugin, which has limited features.

Alternative:

Formidable Forms (from $59/year) is a good alternative to WPForms. It has powerful tools that let you create all sorts of different forms, including lead calculators, however it’s not as beginner friendly as WPForms.

2. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a powerful lead generation software that you can use on your WordPress site. It lets you create high converting popups and email signup forms that helps you turn abandoning website visitors into subscribers & customers.

It has lots of useful features, including Exit Intent ® technology. This lets you show your popup at the exact moment when someone is about to leave your site. You can combine it with their page targeting feature to show customized popup messages for each page which is proven to increase conversions.

With OptinMonster, you even get special popups like spin the wheel popups and Yes/No popups. These can boost your conversion rate even further.

There are lots of different professionally designed templates included in the app. This makes it quick and easy to create your lead forms using the drag and drop builder.

You can also use OptinMonster to generate leads in other ways. For instance, you might use the Content Locking feature to ask visitors to join your email list before they can read your full content.

You don’t necessarily need to use it to generate email leads, either. You could add a Click to Call button to your popup instead, use it to show special discount codes, and more.

Price:

OptinMonster costs from $9/month (billed annually). To get advanced features like Exit Intent technology and Yes/No forms, you need the Pro plan from $29/month.

Alternative:

ThriveLeads (from $67) is a good alternative to OptinMonster. It offers a range of different types of lead generation forms. It also has a drag and drop builder.

3. LiveChat

LiveChat is the best live chat software for WordPress websites. It’s very easy to set up, and you can integrate it with dozens of other marketing services.

This plugin places a chat button in the bottom right-hand corner of your website. Visitors can click on this to chat with your team in real-time.

Your support team members don’t need to be logged into WordPress in order to use LiveChat. Instead, they can use the Live Chat app on their laptop or mobile device.

If a visitor contacts your team outside support hours, LiveChat will create a support ticket instead.

LiveChat is fast and easy to use, for your visitors and for your support team. It lets you quickly turn leads into customers by answering pre-sales questions straight away.

Price:

LiveChat costs from $16/month (billed annually) with a 14 day free trial. Our LiveChat coupon gives you an extended 30 day free trial plus a 30% discount.

Alternative:

Sendinblue offers a simple, free live chat feature that you can use on your website. It also offers email, SMS, and a CRM tool that integrate with the live chat.

4. ChatBot

ChatBot lets you use automated live chat to connect with your potential customers. Through the power of AI (Artificial Intelligence), it can respond to customer questions 24/7.

To help you get started quickly, ChatBot has lots of pre-designed templates. For instance, you could use the lead generation bot to book calls. The sales bot template allows you to sell products directly from the chat window.

ChatBot can be used in Facebook messenger as well as on your website. That makes it a great option for companies and organizations that get a lot of inquiries through Facebook.

It’s easy to integrate it with other apps such as LiveChat. This means that a live agent can step into the conversation seamlessly if needed.

Price:

ChatBot costs from $50/month. There’s a 14-day free trial available.

Alternative:

Drift (from $500/month with the chatbot feature) combines a chatbot with live chat. It’s a powerful tool if you have a larger business and can afford it.

5. OneSignal

OneSignal lets you add push notifications to your WordPress site.

Push notifications are shown on the user’s desktop or in the notification area on their mobile device. They are a highly effective way to convert website visitors into loyal followers and customers.

Visitors simply give their permission to receive push notifications by clicking a button:

OneSignal makes it easy to create push notifications. You simply need to create an account and install the WordPress plugin.

With OneSignal, you can fine-tune exactly how your push notifications are displayed. For instance, you could display a prompt after a certain number of page views or after a visitor has been on your site for a certain length of time.

Price:

OneSignal has a free plan that covers you for up to 30,000 desktop subscribers and unlimited on mobile.

For more subscribers and advanced features like delayed notifications, it costs from $99/month.

Alternative:

PushEngage (from $29/month for up to 5,000 subscribers) is a good alternative to OneSignal. It also offers a free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers.

6. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded

Subscribe to Comments Reloaded is a WordPress plugin that lets people sign up for comment notifications.

This can be a good option if you have a website that involves a lot of interaction in the comments. The plugin lets you customize the notification messages, too. You could use these to increase brand awareness or even promote your products.

Subscribe to Comments Reloaded makes it easy for users to manage their subscriptions. That means they can easily unsubscribe from comments on particular posts, or even from all comments.

You can also require double opt-in, so users need to click a link to confirm they want to receive email notifications of comments.

Price:

Subscribe to Comments Reloaded is free.

Alternative:

Lightweight Subscribe to Comments (also free) is a fast, lightweight plugin. It works straight out of the box and offers some customization options.

7. WP Call Button

WP Call Button allows you to easily add a ‘click to call’ button on your WordPress website or WooCommerce store. Visitors can simply click or tap the button to call you straight away.

If your customers need to call you before purchasing a service or booking an appointment, then adding a click to call button on your website will definitely increase your leads / sales.

WP Call Button makes it easy to add your button to any post or page. You can include it in your WordPress sidebar, too. It’s also easy to create a sticky floating call button that stays visible all the time.

It works with all top business phone services such as Nextiva and RingCentral.

Price:

WP Call Button is free.

Alternative:

You can also create a click to call link using the manual method covered in adding a click-to-call button in WordPress.

8. All in One SEO

All in One SEO is a powerful search engine optimization (SEO) plugin for WordPress. It lets you optimize your website as effectively and efficiently as possible so that your content can rank highly in search engines.

SEO is an important part of lead generation. You need to bring people to your website before they can join your email list, call you, subscribe to push notifications, or anything else on this list.

WordPress beginners often feel that SEO is something too technical or complicated for them to do. All in One SEO makes it easy, with powerful on-page optimization tools. These let you easily add things like meta titles and descriptions to your pages.

All in One SEO can also automatically create sitemaps, add social media data to your site, and much more. It makes it easy to connect your website to tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

There are also lots of video tutorials that walk you through all the different aspects of SEO. The friendly support team is always happy to answer questions, too.

Price:

All in One SEO costs from $57/year.

There’s a fairly robust free version available as well, but it doesn’t include some of their powerful features.

Alternative:

Yoast SEO ($89/year) offers similar features to All in One SEO.

9. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is a powerful way to add Google Analytics to your WordPress website. It lets you quickly and easily see crucial statistics about your site.

This means you can easily find out what’s working and what’s not, so you can focus on the areas that really matter. For instance, you might use MonsterInsights to enable author tracking and see which writers for your site are producing the best-performing posts.

Or you could use MonsterInsights to track link clicks and button clicks. This can let you figure out which links and buttons are getting clicked and which ones aren’t, letting you pinpoint areas for improvement.

MonsterInsights is quick and easy to set up and gives you real-time stats. It can even track things like your eCommerce data, form completions, and file downloads. This gives you more insights about your lead generation efforts.

Price:

MonsterInsights costs from $99.50/year.

There’s also a free version available with limited features.

Alternative:

ExactMetrics (from $99.50/year) offers similar features to MonsterInsights.

Our Pick: Best Lead Generation Plugin for WordPress

We believe that you need multiple plugins to have a robust lead generation strategy on your site. With that said, WPForms is the best lead generation plugin for WordPress. You can use their drag & drop form builder to create any type of online forms.

If you’re looking for live chat solution to improve leads, then Live Chat and ChatBot are both great options.

If you want to improve your overall conversion rate on your website, then nothing in the market beats the powerful features that OptinMonster has to offer.

With any lead generation strategy, attracting leads is only the first part. You have to ensure that there’s a proper sales process to close the deal.

If you rely on phone calls, then we recommend using Nextiva. It comes with auto-attendant, call-routing, CRM and many powerful sales features that you can use to increase your sales.

To summarize, our top 5 lead generation tools are:

1. WPForms
2. OptinMonster
3. LiveChat.com
4. ChatBot.com
5. Nextiva

We hope this article helped you learn about the best lead generation plugins and tools for WordPress. You might also like our comprehensive list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites, and our ultimate guide on how to improve WordPress speed and performance.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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September 04, 2020 at 04:22PM

How to Password Protect Your WordPress Forms

Do you want to password protect a form on your WordPress website?

Normally, when you add a form to your website, it is visible to all users who can see that page. If you want to protect a WordPress form and limit its access to only certain people, then you may need to password protect that particular form.

In this article, we’ll explain step by step how to easily password protect your WordPress forms.

Why Password Protect WordPress Forms?

There are lots of reasons why you might password protect forms on your WordPress website.

For instance:

• You create and maintain websites for a number of clients. When they need support, they fill out a support request form. Non-clients shouldn’t be able to request support using that form.
• You have weekly appointments with clients over Zoom or Skype, which they can book through your website. Non-clients shouldn’t be able to book an appointment.
• You run an online photography club. Members can send in their best photos each month and you feature a selection on your website. Non-members shouldn’t be able to send in photos.

In all these situations, you want to prevent non-clients or non-members from filling in your form. Otherwise, you need to carefully go through all the form entries to check whether they are valid submissions or not.

We are going to cover 2 ways to password protect your forms in WordPress.

1. Password Protect a WordPress Form Using WPForms

WPForms is our #1 rated contact form plugin for WordPress. It allows you to create any kind of WordPress forms by using a simple drag and drop form builder.

It also comes with a form locker addon which allows you to add password protection to your WordPress forms when needed.

First,you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, you need to set up your form. Just follow our instructions on how to create a contact form in WordPress for help with this.

Once you have your form ready, the next step is to install the Form Locker addon for WPForms. First, go to WPForms » Addons in your WordPress admin.

Here, you need to search for the ‘Form Locker’ addon. Just click on the ‘Install Addon’ button to install and activate it:

Now, go to WPForms » All Forms and find the form that you want to protect. Simply click on the form name to start editing it:

Next, go to Settings » Form Locker and you will see the Form Locker options. Go ahead and click on the ‘Enable password protection’ box:

You will now be able to enter a password. You may also enter a display message if you want to.

Don’t forget to click the Save button at the top of the screen after setting your password:

Now, when someone visits a post or page with that form on, they will see the rest of the content but not the form itself.

When the user enters the password, the password box and message will disappear. They will see the page content and the form itself:

You could also use this method to password protect forms in widgetized areas such as your sidebar.

As you can see, outside of just password protection, the form locker also offers other advanced features like limiting total number of entries, restricting access to logged in users only, and even enabling form submissions for only certain dates.

However if you’re looking for a free option to password protect your form, then see option #2.

2. Password Protect the Form’s WordPress Page

What if you want to hide the whole page, not just the form itself? This is very easy to do in WordPress.

First, create or edit a page and add your form to it, as shown above:

Then, click on the ‘Document’ settings on the right hand side. Simply click on the ‘Public’ link here:

You will now see the ‘Post Visibility’ popup. Next, click the ‘Password Protected’ option and type in the password you want to use:

Now, when someone visits that page, they will need to enter a password to see any of the content:

We hope this article helped you learn how to password protect your WordPress forms. You may also want to see our guide on how to password protect a WordPress website, how to secure your contact forms, and how to improve overall WordPress security to keep your content safe and protected.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Password Protect Your WordPress Forms appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 03, 2020 at 06:50PM

How to Install WordPress in a Subdirectory (Step by Step)

Do you want to install WordPress in a subdirectory? Installing WordPress in a subdirectory allows you to run multiple WordPress instances under the same domain or even a subdomain name. In this article, we will show you how to install WordPress in a subdirectory without affecting the parent domain name.

Subdomain vs Subdirectory? Which One is Better for SEO?

Normally, you would want to start a WordPress website on its own domain name (for example, wpbeginner.com). However, sometimes you may want to create additional websites on the same domain name.

This can be done by either installing WordPress in a subdomain (https://ift.tt/2hzonaq) or as a subdirectory (https://ift.tt/2xFg3Kh).

One question that we get asked is which one is better for SEO?

Search engines treat subdomains differently from root domain names and assign them rankings as a separate website.

For instance, search Engines consider WPBeginner and our WPBeginner Videos website as two separate websites.

On the other hand, sub-directories directly benefit from the domain authority of the root domain thus ranking higher in most cases.

One way to create separate WordPress sites in both subdomain or subdirectory is by installing WordPress multisite network.

However, if you want to keep two websites managed separately, then you can install different instances of WordPress. You can also use WordPress site management tools to set up a single dashboard for managing your multiple WordPress installations.

Requirements for Installing WordPress in Subdirectory

There are no special requirements to install WordPress in a subdirectory. If you already have a WordPress website in the root domain name, then you are good to go.

All top WordPress hosting companies make it very easy to install multiple WordPress websites using the same hosting account.

For instance, if you are using Bluehost, you can add a new WordPress website from your hosting dashboard.

However, please keep in mind that most shared hosting accounts have limited server resources. A sudden traffic spike on one of your websites will affect the performance and speed of all other websites on the same account.

If you are just starting out, then you can do that on shared hosting. Keeping in mind that you’ll need to upgrade to a managed WordPress hosting as your business grows.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily install WordPress in a subdirectory.

Step 1. Create a Subdirectory under The Root Domain Name

First, you need to create a subdirectory or a folder under the main website. This is where you will install WordPress files.

Connect to your WordPress hosting account using a FTP client or File Manager in cPanel.

Once connected, go to the root folder of your website. Usually it is the /public_html/ folder. If you already have WordPress installed in the root folder, then you will see your WordPress files and folders there.

Next, you need to right click and select ‘Create new directory’ from the menu.

You need to be careful when choosing the name for your subdirectory. This will be part of your new WordPress site’s URL and what your users will type in their browsers to reach this website.

For example, if you name this directory travel-guides then your WordPress website’s address will be:

https://ift.tt/2hzlZ3j

Step 2. Upload WordPress Files

Your newly created subdirectory is empty at the moment. Let’s change that by uploading WordPress files.

First you need to visit WordPress.org website and click on the download button.

Your browser will now download the zip file containing the latest WordPress software to your computer.

After downloading the file, you need to select and extract it. Mac users can double click the file to extract it and Windows users need to right-click and then select ‘Extract All’.

After extracting the zip file, you will see ‘wordpress’ folder containing all the WordPress files.

Now let’s upload these files to your new subdirectory.

Connect to your website using an FTP client and go to the subdirectory you created in the first step.

In the local files panel of your FTP client, go to the ‘wordpress’ folder you just extracted.

Select all files inside the folder and then upload them to your new subdirectory.

Step 3. Create New Database

WordPress stores all your content in a database. You need to create a new database to use with your new WordPress site installed in a subdirectory.

First, you need to login to the cPanel dashboard of your WordPress hosting account. Click on ‘MySQL Databases’ under the databases section.

Note: Your hosting dashboard may look different than the screenshot above. You simply need to locate the ‘Databases’ section.

On the next screen, enter a name for your new database and then click on the ‘Create Database’ button to continue.

Your cPanel dashboard will now create the new MySQL database. Click on the Go Back button to return to the Databases page.

Next, you need to add a username and password for the database.

Simply scroll down to the ‘MySQL Users’ section and provide a new username and password. Click on ‘Create User’ button to continue.

Next, you need to give this newly created user privileges to work on the database you created earlier.

Scroll down to ‘Add user to database’ section. Select your MySQL username and then select your newly created database.

Click on the Add button to continue.

Cpanel will now grant the MySQL user full privileges on your newly created database.

Step 4. Install WordPress

Now that everything is in place, you can go ahead and install WordPress. Simply visit the directory you created earlier in a web browser by typing the URL like this:

https://ift.tt/2xF4suA

This will bring up the WordPress installation wizard. First, you need to select the language for your WordPress website and click on the continue button.

Next, you will be asked to provide your WordPress database name, database username, password, and host. Enter the database details and click on the submit button.

WordPress will now connect to your database and you will see a success message like this:

Click on ‘Run the install’ button to continue.

On the next screen, you will be asked to provide a title for your website and choose an admin username, password, and email address.

After entering your website details, click on ‘Run install’ button to continue.

WordPress will now set up your website and will show you a success message:

You can now go ahead and login to your new WordPress website installed in the subdirectory.

Step 5. Fix Permalinks

If you have a separate WordPress install in the root directory, then the .htaccess files of your subdirectory will cause conflict. This will result in 404 errors on your website.

To solve this, you need to edit the .htaccess file in your subdirectory WordPress install. Replace the code inside your .htaccess file with the following code:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /your-subdirectory/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /your-subdirectory/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Don’t forget to replace /your-subdirectory/ with your own subdirectory name.

We hope this article helped you install WordPress in a subdirectory. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Install WordPress in a Subdirectory (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 02, 2020 at 06:00PM

How to Delete All Pending Comments in WordPress

Do you have a lot of pending comments in WordPress that you want to delete? This can easily happen if you get a lot of spam comments.

Normally, deleting comments in WordPress is easy, but it gets trickier when there is a large number of pending comments. You may even come across weird errors while bulk deleting comments if there are too many of them.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily bulk delete all pending comments in WordPress, step by step.

What Are Pending Comments in WordPress?

Pending comments in WordPress are the comments that are awaiting moderation.

You’ll find them in the WordPress admin area by visiting the ‘Comments’ page and switching to the ‘Pending’ tab.

We recommend users turn on comment moderation on all their websites to combat comment spam. This means all comments on your website will go to the Pending queue before they are approved.

Why would anyone want to delete pending comments?

There are many scenarios when you may need to do that. For instance:

• Akismet anti-spam plugin got disabled on your site and suddenly all spam comments are appearing in pending.
• You simply forgot about a website, and it gathered hundreds of comments that are no longer relevant.
• Articles on your website generating a lot of unwanted comments
• You forgot to turn off comments on older posts

It can take a long time to go through and moderate each comment individually. If you are confident that there are no comments marked ‘pending’ that you want to keep, then you can simply bulk delete them all.

1. Deleting All Pending Comments in WordPress Manually

If you only have a few hundred pending comments, it’s quite quick to delete them manually.

Simply go to the ‘Comments’ page in WordPress admin area and then click on the ‘Pending’ tab to see a list of all your pending comments.

By default, this list will show 20 pending comments at a time. To change this, click on the ‘Screen Options’ tab at the top-right corner of the page.

Next, type ‘100’ into the ‘Number of items per page’ and click the Apply button:

Now that you have 100 comments displaying, simply check the box to the left of ‘Author’ at the top of the list of comments. This selects all the comments on the page:

Then, click on the ‘Bulk actions’ dropdown and select the ‘Move to Trash’ option. Go ahead and click the Apply button to move all those comments into the trash:

WordPress will automatically show the next 100 comments on the page. Simply repeat the process to remove these too.

When you delete any comment on WordPress, it is not deleted right away. Instead, it is sent to the ‘Trash’ and will remain there for 30-days. After that, it will be automatically deleted permanently.

If you would rather delete them permanently right away, then you need to switch to the ‘Trash’ tab on the ‘Comments’ page and then click on the ‘Empty Trash’ button.

You will then see a message confirming that those comments have been deleted:

Note: You can use the Screen Options to show up to 999 comments per page. However, this will increase the load on your WordPress hosting servers and slow down your site. You might also see an error message like this one when you try to move comments to the trash:

If you have more than a few hundred pending comments, then we recommend using a plugin method to delete them.

2. Deleting Large Number of Pending Comments in WordPress Using a Plugin

The quickest way to delete a very large number of pending comments is to use a plugin.

This will delete your pending (and spam) comments permanently. We recommend making a backup of your WordPress site before proceeding, just in case you change your mind later.

First, you need to install and activate the Delete Pending Comments plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to the Comments » Delete Pending Comments page in your WordPress admin. You will see a message letting you know how many pending comments there are.

Note: This figure includes spam comments, which are deleted at the same time as the pending comments.

To delete all the pending comments, you need to type the required line of text into the box. You can copy and paste this text if you prefer.

After that, go ahead and click the ‘Delete Pending Comments’ button.

You will then see a message confirming that all pending and spam comments have been deleted.

Deleting Spam Comments Only in WordPress

What if you don’t want to delete pending comments but just want to delete the ones that are marked as spam? That’s very easy to do in WordPress.

First, go to Comments in your WordPress admin and click on the Spam tab:

Next, click the Empty Spam button. This will delete all spam comments permanently, not just the ones on the current page:

We hope this article helped you learn how to delete all pending comments in WordPress. You may also want to see our WordPress security guide to protect your website, or see our guide on how to allow users to report inappropriate comments in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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September 01, 2020 at 05:00PM