Tuesday, April 27, 2021

32 Best WooCommerce Plugins for Your Store (Most are FREE)

Are you looking for the best WooCommerce plugins for your store?

Plugins are the best part of making an online store using WooCommerce. They allow you to add new features and grow your business.

There are tons of free and premium plugins that you can use but not all of them are good. How do you find out the best WooCommerce plugins for your eCommerce business?

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WooCommerce plugins for your store to increase sales and grow your business.

Must have WooCommerce plugins for online stores

If you haven’t started your online store yet, then we have a step by step guide on how to start an online store. It walks you through how to choose the best WooCommerce hosting, install WooCommerce, select a theme, and everything that you need.

Having that said, let’s take a look at the best WooCommerce plugins for WordPress.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the most powerful conversion optimization software in the market. It helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can use it on your eCommerce website to reduce cart abandonment, increase sales conversion, grow your email list, show targeted website messages, onsite retargeting, and more.

While the main website doesn’t show the free plan, you can get the free version of OptinMonster by installing and activating their WordPress plugin. Inside the plugin, you will see the option to create your free account.

Here are some examples of WooCommerce popups that you can create with OptinMonster:

Floating header or footer bars

Header bar in WooCommerce

These floating bars are perfect to announce on-going sales, new product launch, free shipping and any other special offer. They are hard to miss and highly effective in keeping customers engaged.

Countdown timers in header or footer bars

Countdown timer header

Add a bit of FOMO effect (fear of missing out) to your banners with countdown timers. You can use these countdown timers as header bar, light box popup, full screen popup, or a slide-in popup.

Geo-targeted popups

GeoTargetted Popups in WooCommerce

OptinMonster comes with powerful display rules that allow you to show popups based on a ton of options. This geo-targeted banner shows a popup only to users in certain regions.

Spin the Wheel Popup

Spin the wheel popup

Spin the Wheel popups are full screen popups that bring in gamification to your WooCommerce store. You can set discounts and other special offers to collect emails and increase sales.

If you’re serious about boosting sales, growing email list, and recovering those abandoned cart sales, then you need this conversion optimization toolkit.

2. All in One SEO for WordPress

All in One SEO

All in One SEO is the best SEO plugin for WooCommerce stores on the market. Used by over 2+ million users, it is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you improve your search rankings without learning SEO.

Note: There’s a free version of AIOSEO that you can use as well when you’re getting started.

You can set it up to dynamically generate SEO title and description for all your products. You can also easily add SEO title and description for individual products while adding them.

Product SEO title and description

It automatically generates XML sitemaps including Product and Product Categories sitemaps. These help search engines easily find and index your products more efficiently.

It supports rich snippets schema markup out of the box, which helps search engines display your products with rich snippets. These helps products stand out in search results and brings in more traffic.

Product schema type example in search results

All in One SEO also includes Local SEO, Product Image SEO, and other features. All of them help your WooCommerce store compete in the search results and rank higher.

3. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WooCommerce stores. It comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking which allows you to easily track eCommerce data in Google Analytics reports.

Many beginners find it hard to make sense of Google Analytics reports. MonsterInsights makes it easier by showing you all the information you need inside your WordPress dashboard.

WooCommerce conversion report in MonsterInsights

This helps you make data-driven decisions to grow your business and increase sales. You can see your cart activity, top performing products, and other important data without leaving your website.

Cart reports in MonsterInsights

You can use it to find your most viewed products and improve product pages. You can also track WooCommerce customers in Google Analytics and create a more personalized experience for your users.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide on conversion tracking in WooCommerce.

4. Constant Contact

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the best email marketing service for eCommerce businesses. It is also the most beginner friendly, which allows you to easily add it to your store and start building your email list.

It comes with dozens of professionally designed email templates for various niches. You can also create multiple lists and create custom funnels to send personalized emails to selected audiences.

To learn more, see our complete tutorial on how to create an email newsletter.

Alternative: Drip and SendinBlue are also both great options.

5. Advanced Coupons

Advanced Coupons

Advanced Coupons is the best WooCommerce coupon code plugin on the market. It extends the limited WooCommerce coupon functionality and allows you to create better coupon offers.

It integrates tightly with WooCommerce and offers features like BOGO offers (buy one get one offer), coupon URLs, scheduled coupons, auto-apply coupons, shipping coupons, and more. It is easy to use and helps you boost sales on your online store.

There’s a free version of Advanced Coupons available as well.

6. SeedProd

SeedProd

SeedProd is the best WordPress page builder plugin on the market with built-in support for WooCommerce.

IF you ever wanted to quickly launch a landing page, create a sales page, or a product landing page, then SeedProd is for you.

SeedProd helps you easily create pages on-demand using an intuitive drag and drop page builder.

Editing landing pages in SeedProd

It comes with dozens of professionally designed templates that are fully compatible with WooCommerce. Simply select a template as your starting point and make it your own with point and click tools.

SeedProd also comes with built-in WooCommerce blocks that allow you to easily add products, cart, check out form, and more to any landing page on your site.

WooCommerce blocks in SeedProd

It works with any WooCommerce theme and doesn’t rely on it. This means you can create stunning product pages, sales pages, and other landing pages without any limitations.

Note: There is a free version of SeedProd available as well which lets you create beautiful landing pages. However the advanced WooCommerce blocks are only available in their Pro version.

7. WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin on the market. It helps ensure that all your WooCommerce emails are delivered to customers inboxes.

WooCommerce store sends email notifications for various actions to the store owner as well as customers. It uses the PHP mail() function to do that.

However, most WordPress hosting companies don’t have this function setup properly and some even block it. In that case, your store’s email features will not work.

WP Mail SMTP fixes this problem by allowing you to use an SMTP service provider to send emails. This ensures that your WooCommerce emails are delivered to users inbox and don’t end up in spam.

Over 2 million WordPress websites use WP Mail SMTP to improve their email deliverability.

There is a free version of WP Mail SMTP available which should work for most online stores. The paid WP Mail SMTP Pro version gives you premium support, more features, and white glove setup service.

8. Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator is the best WordPress automation plugin that allows your WordPress plugins to talk to each other. For instance, you can use it to automatically create a new customer account when someone submits a contact form on your website.

WooCommerce store owners spend a lot of their time performing repetitive tasks. Wouldn’t it be nice if you can automate all those tasks and focus on growing sales and business?

Uncanny Automator allows you to automate WooCommerce tasks, save time, and offer a better user experience to your customers. You can create recipes that can be run when a user or WooCommerce triggers an event (for instance, user adds product to cart).

After that, you can choose an action to perform based on that trigger (for instance, send user an email with similar products they may like). There are dozens of recipes that you can create and save hundreds of hours while running your online store more efficiently.

You can also use Uncanny Automator to send notifications to Slack, send WooCommerce SMS notifications, and more.

9. LiveChat

LiveChat

Did you know that on average, more than 67% of customers abandon their carts before completing a purchase? That’s because customers want instant answers to their questions.

LiveChat is the best live chat support software on the market. It allows you to easily add live chat to your WooCommerce store and answer user queries instantly.

It allows you to convert users into customers before they abandon their carts. LiveChat works with Google Analytics, all top email marketing, CRM software, and more.

To learn more see our guide on how to add LiveChat to your WooCommerce store and boost sales.

Alternative: If you’re looking for a chatbot software, then take a look at ChatBot.com because it can help automate a lot of eCommerce livechat.

10. TrustPulse

TrustPulse

TrustPulse is the best FOMO and social proof notifications app that helps you skyrocket conversions and sales.

People like it when they see other people making the same choices before making their own mind. By adding social proof, you allow them to see it right there on your website and give them the nudge to complete a purchase.

TrustPulse makes this insanely easy. You can install it on any website (no coding required) and customize badges to match your store colors.

You can smartly target pages or products where you want to run a campaign, and add on-fire notifications showing how many people are taking action in a given period. For best results, run multiple campaigns targetting customers viewing different products or pages.

You also get a full live stream of actions taken by users and detailed analytics reports to help you optimize your campaigns.

For detailed instructions see our guide on how to use FOMO to increase conversions.

11. WooCommerce Wholesale Suite

WooCommerce Wholesale Suite

WooCommerce Wholesale Suite is a suite of three plugins that allow you to easily set wholesale pricing in WooCommerce for bulk buyers and other businesses.

You can easily show wholesale pricing to wholesale customers. You can also set minimum quantity they need to order to avail the wholesale discount. At the same time, you can keep showing your regular prices to the retail customers.

For details, see our tutorial on how to easily add wholesale pricing in WooCommerce with step by step instructions.

12. YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

YITH WooCommerce wishlist plugin allows your customers to save products to their wishlist. They can use the wishlist to make the purchase later or share their wishlist with friends and family.

This is a perfect addon for your online store during busy holiday seasons when people are making their shopping lists and purchasing gifts.

13. WooCommerce Multilingual

WooCommerce Multilingual

Non-English WordPress websites surpassed the English WordPress websites in 2014. Since then more WooCommerce stores are created in languages other than English. WooCommerce Multilingual adds compatibility layer with the popular WPML WordPress multilingual plugin.

This allows you to translate your product and other WooCommerce pages in multiple languages. Your customers can choose to browse your website in their preferred language.

14. WooCommerce Products Slider

WooCommerce Products Slider

WooCommerce Products Slider allows you to easily create beautiful product sliders and carousels and add them anywhere on your WooCommerce store.

15. RafflePress

RafflePress

RafflePress is the best contest and giveaway plugin for WooCommerce stores. It allows you to grow your email list, get more website traffic, and social media followers with viral contests and giveaways.

Your users can participate in the giveaway by performing social actions like tweeting, watching a video, following a social media profile, and more. It has actions for all popular social media platforms, CRMS, and more.

RafflePress Actions

For best results, it includes verified social actions and fraud prevention. This ensures that your viral campaign produces real engagement and growth in your business.

There’s also a free version of RafflePress available that you can use for basic giveaways.

16. StoreCustomizer

StoreCustomizer

StoreCustomizer allows you to customize WooCommerce store using the live customizer. It comes with an easy to use interface to adjust store settings with a live preview.

You can edit your shop page, product pages, product categories, and more. You can change the number of products, product columns, edit text for buttons, and more.

The plugin also comes with an Ajax powered product search that you can use with any theme.

17. WooCommerce Subscriptions

WooCommerce Subscriptions

WooCommerce Subscriptions allows you to easily add subscriptions to your WooCommerce store. This enables you to sell subscription plans and other products that require scheduled recurring payments.

The easiest way to sign up for WooCommerce Subscriptions is by signing up for Bluehost WooCommerce hosting. Aside from free WooCommerce subscriptions, this Bluehost plan also comes with close to $1000 worth of premium extensions for free including Online Bookings & Appointments, Jetpack Premium, and more.

18. WooCommerce EU VAT Compliance

WooCommerce EU VAT Compliance

As the name suggests, this simple plugin makes your WooCommerce shop compliant with the new EU VAT. It will automatically detect your customer’s location and will display prices with correct VAT from the first page.

19. Order Delivery Date for WooCommerce

WooCommerce Order Delivery Date

This plugin allows users to choose a delivery date for products during the checkout. WooCommerce store owners can see the desired delivery date on their orders page in the admin area.

20. YITH WooCommerce Quick View

YITH WooCommerce Quick View

WooCommerce Quick View allows your customers to peek into product details by simply taking their mouse over a button. This enables customers to quickly get the product information without leaving the product listings or shop page.

Users will be able to see a larger product image, product description, and an add to cart button in a lightbox popup.

21. YITH WooCommerce Compare

WooCommerce Compare

As the name suggests, this plugin allows your customers to compare two or more WooCommerce products side by side. You can choose which fields users will see in the comparison table and reorder them as needed.

Ajax Product Search

Speed is crucial for the success of any website, particularly for online stores. A single second delay in page load can significantly increase cart abandonment and lower user engagement.

YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search offers a powerful search feature to instantly display products as users start typing. It uses Ajax to fetch the results which means your users can search without leaving the page they are currently viewing.

23. PW WooCommerce Gift Cards

PW WooCommerce Gift Cards

PW WooCommerce Gift Cards makes it super easy to sell gift cards on your store. Customers can purchase gift cards and share them with friends or family to redeem at your online store.

The plugin comes with a beautiful gift card email template and an admin section to view your gift card liabilities. Your customers can specify the gift card amount, recipient, and add their own personal message during the purchase.

24. WooCommerce Currency Switcher

WooCommerce Currency Switcher

As the name suggests, this plugin allows your customers to easily switch currencies and get real-time conversion rates in their local currency. You can add the currency switcher by using the shortcode or a sidebar widget.

25. WooCommerce Colors

WooCommerce Colors

WooCommerce Colors adds a WooCommerce section to the theme customizer where you can change the color of buttons and other WooCommerce elements. It is simple and highly useful if you want to customize WooCommerce elements without adding any custom CSS.

26. WooCommerce Products Filter

WooCommerce Products Filter

WooCommerce Products Filter allows your site customers to filter products by categories, attributes, product tags, product custom taxonomies, and price. You can add the filter anywhere using the shortcode or the sidebar widget.

27. WooCommerce Shortcodes

WooCommerce Shortcodes

WooCommerce comes with a bunch of shortcodes that you can use throughout your website to add products, buttons, and more. The WooCommerce Shortcodes plugin adds a drop down in your WordPress visual editor, allowing you to easily select and insert shortcodes in content areas like post, page, or products.

28. Booster for WooCommerce

WooCommerce Booster

Booster for WooCommerce allows you to add several useful features to your WooCommerce website that allow you to run your online store more efficiently. It uses a modular approach similar to Jetpack and acts like a plugin suite with tons of features.

29. Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce

Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce

Normally, product pages require users to scroll down to view more information. Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce allows you to divide product descriptions and details into tabs. This helps users switch to the section they want to view while making sure that your website looks neat and organized.

30. Variation Swatches for WooCommerce

Variation Swatches for WooCommerce

Variation Swatches for WooCommerce allows you to easily add product variation swatches to WooCommerce product attributes. Customers will then see beautiful color swatches, images, and labels, instead of dropdown menus.

This makes it easier for users to select product colors, sizes, styles, and more. It also makes these options easily noticeable and improves customer experience.

31. YITH WooCommerce Zoom Magnifier

WooCommerce Zoom Magnifier

YITH WooCommerce Zoom Magnifier let’s your customers zoom in and magnify the product images without leaving the page. It also adds a product image gallery slider below the featured image.

This helps your customers look into product images with more details visible. This increases customer engagement in your store, which brings in more sales.

32. WPForms

WPForms

Every website needs a contact form. WPForms is the best drag & drop form builder plugin for WordPress. It lets you create any type of form including contact forms, online surveys, polls, and more.

Over 4 million websites use WPForms including many WooCommerce store owners because it’s both easy and powerful.

WPForms free version lets you create a simple contact form and has all the essential features.

WPForms Pro comes with advanced features like form landing pages, conversational forms, form abandonment, smart conditional logic, etc. that you can use to really improve your form conversions.

Bonus – 33. Nextiva

Nextiva

Having a phone number for your online store can help boost trust and credibility. Nextiva is the best business phone service that works seamlessly with WooCommerce.

It’s a virtual business phone app, so you can use it to receive calls on your mobile phone, iPad, desktop and laptop computers. It comes with advanced features like call-routing, auto-attendant, and others, so your store can easily compete with the big enterprises without the high costs.

Once you have setup your business VOIP, you can then use the free WordPress Call Button plugin to add a click to call button on your online store.

We hope this article helped you find some of the best free WooCommerce plugins for your online store. You may also want to see our expert pick of the best WooCommerce themes for your eCommerce website, and our comparison of the best online course platforms to sell online courses.

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 32 Best WooCommerce Plugins for Your Store (Most are FREE) appeared first on WPBeginner.


April 27, 2021 at 10:00PM

How to Create a WordPress Multisite with Different Domains (4 Steps)

Do you want to create a WordPress multisite with different domains?

WordPress multisite allows you to use a single WordPress installation to create multiple websites. You can even give each site its own domain name.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a WordPress multisite with different domains, step by step.

Creating WordPress multisite with different domains

Why Create a WordPress Multisite with Custom Domains?

The easiest way to make a website is by using WordPress.

However for each website that you set up, you’ll need to manage updates, keep backups, and secure all separate WordPress installations separately. Plus some hosting providers limit their basic plans to a single WordPress install.

An easier workaround to this website management issue is to create a WordPress multisite network.

WordPress multisite is a core WordPress feature that allows you to easily create multiple sites using the same WordPress installation.

The best part is that you can use different domains for each of your websites.

This allows business owners to quickly launch websites without worrying about managing multiple WordPress installations.

From a development perspective, this also gives you flexibility in sharing customers, similar design elements, and more.

The downside is that all your websites use the same resources. This means that if your hosting service ever goes down, then all your websites will be down at the same time.

What Do You Need to Create a WordPress Multisite with Custom Domains?

You’ll need the following items to create a WordPress multisite with custom domain names.

  • A WordPress hosting company that supports multiple domains and WordPress multisite.
  • Domain names that you want to use.

We recommend using SiteGround. They are one of the officially recommended WordPress hosting provider and support WordPress multisite domain mapping out of the box.

This can work on the Starter plan too since technically you’re creating 1 site. This is a creative way to get around the hosting plan limits as long as your sites are low traffic.

For more hosting recommendations, see our comparison of the best WordPress hosting companies.

Next, you need to register the domain names that you want to use for your root site as well as your child sites.

We recommend using Domain.com. They are the best domain registration company on the market with a better domain search, easy to use control panel, and simpler DNS management.

You can use our Domain.com Coupon to get 25% off on your purchase of new domain names.

Step 1. Installing WordPress Multisite

If you are creating a WordPress multisite on a brand new website, then you may need to install WordPress first.

Most WordPress hosting companies, including SiteGround, come with 1-click WordPress installer. If you need help, then follow our WordPress installation tutorial for step by step instructions.

Once you have installed WordPress, the next step is to enable WordPress multisite functionality.

Enabling WordPress Multisite Feature

WordPress multisite functionality comes built-in with WordPress, but it is turned off by default. You’ll need to enable it in order to set up your WordPress multisite.

For that, you’ll need to edit the wp-config.php file. It is the WordPress configuration file that contains all the important settings for your WordPress installation.

You can edit it by using an FTP client or the File Manager app in your hosting account control panel. The wp-config.php file is located under the root folder of your website.

Editing wp-config.php file via FTP

Inside this file, you will need to add the following line just above the line that says ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing’.

define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );


After that, don’t forget to save your changes and upload the file back to your website.

Now you need to switch back to your WordPress admin dashboard and reload the admin dashboard page. After that, you need to visit the Tools » Network Setup page to configure your WordPress multisite network.

Network setup for WordPress multisite

First, you need to choose subdomains as ‘Addresses of Sites in your Network’ provide a title for your multisite network and network admin email address.

Click on the ‘Install’ button to continue.

On the next screen, WordPress will ask you to add two pieces of code.

Configuration code required for enabling WordPress multisite

The first one goes into your wp-config.php file just above the line reading ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing’.

Apart from the code shown by WordPress, you also need to add the following line to your wp-config.php file. This line ensures that users can login to each site.

define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] );

The second piece of goes into your WordPress .htaccess file replacing the default WordPress .htaccess rules.

Once you have added both codes to the respective files, you’ll need to login to your WordPress admin dashboard.

Login link

After login, you will see a new menu item in the admin bar titled ‘My Sites’. Take your mouse over it and then select ‘Network Admin » Dashboard’ link.

Network admin dashboard

Step 2. Creating New Sites Using Custom Domains in WordPress Multisite

Now that everything is set up, let’s create your first site using a different domain name.

From your multisite’s network admin dashboard, click on the Sites » Add New page.

Create new site

Simply provide a Site Address, Title, select language, and then enter the admin business email address. As for site address, you can add anything here for now because we will change it to your custom domain in the next step.

Click on the ‘Add Site’ button to create your site.

Next, you need to go to Sites » All Sites page and click on the ‘Edit’ link below the site you just created.

Edit your site

On the site edit screen, you need to add the custom domain name that you want to use for this website under the Site Address field. WordPress comes with built-in domain mapping which will automatically map your custom domains to your Site Address.

Use custom domain as your site address

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

Repeat the process to Add more sites and then change their site address to the custom domain you want to use. Here we have created a few sites with different custom domains.

Custom domains for WordPress sites on a multisite network

However, none of these websites will be accessible as your custom domains don’t point to your WordPress hosting company. Let’s change that.

Step 3. Adding Custom Domains to Your Hosting Account

Most WordPress hosting providers allow you to easily add multiple domains to your hosting account.

If you are using SiteGround, then click on the Site Tools under your hosting account.

Site Tools in SiteGround

After that, you need visit Domains » Parked Domains and then add your custom domain here.

Add parked domain

Repeat the process if you need to add more custom domains.

If you are using another hosting service, then the process is still the same. You’ll find the parked domain option under the Domains section of your hosting dashboard. Here is how it looks on Bluehost.

Adding parked domain in Bluehost

If you are using your hosting provider as your domain registrar, then you may not need to update the DNS servers.

However, if you have registered your domain name elsewhere, then you will need to update the DNS information and point it to your hosting account.

First, you’ll need the DNS information for your hosting provider. You can find it under your hosting control panel or you can ask their support staff. Usually, it looks like this:

ns1.siteground204.com
ns2.siteground204.com

Once you have the DNS information, you need to login to your domain registrar website and click on the DNS & Nameservers section.

DNS management in Domain.com

Simply select your domain and edit name server information to replace it with your hosting provider’s DNS.

Changing DNS information in Domain.com

For more details, see our guide on how to change DNS name servers for popular domain name registrars.

Note: DNS information may take a while (2-48 hours) to fully update across the internet.

As DNS information is updated, you will be able to see your WordPress multisite’s childsite for each domain.

Step 4. Managing and Login to WordPress Multisite on Custom Domains

You can perform most administrative tasks like installing plugins, themes, and updates from your root site’s dashboard.

Network admin dashboard

Related: See our pick of the best WordPress multisite plugins.

To work on individual sites, you need to visit Sites » All Sites page and click on the Dashboard link below the site you want to work on.

Manage sites

This will take you to that particular site’s admin area, and you may be required to login again. From here, you can create pages, write blog posts, and manage that individual site.

Individual site dashboard

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a WordPress multisite with different domains. You may also want to see our WordPress security guide to keep your WordPress multisite secure, and our pick of the best WordPress page builder plugins to customize your website design.

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 Create a WordPress Multisite with Different Domains (4 Steps) appeared first on WPBeginner.


April 27, 2021 at 05:00PM