Did you know that WordPress powers 43.5% of all websites on the internet? Evidently from that statistic alone, it’s clear that WordPress is one of the most popular and versatile platforms for building websites. But, what makes it truly powerful, is its vast ecosystem of plugins. With thousands of plugins available, users can customise their WordPress websites to suit almost any need. From improving SEO and speeding up performance, to adding advanced functionality like eCommerce or appointment booking. However, with so many options, finding the best WordPress plugins for your website can be overwhelming.
In this article, we’ve curated a list of the 15 best WordPress plugins that we work with here at KIJO. These are the plugins we use to enhance our client’s website’s functionality, security and user experience. These plugins help streamline workflow, bolster website usability, and take most WordPress websites to the next level.
If you want to know who’s visiting your WordPress website and what they’re doing once they’re there, Analytics WP should be your go-to plugin. It offers 20% more data than Google Analytics, and shows you entire user journeys rather than just what users clicked. This sort of analytical depth is unmatched. It’s super accurate, won’t slow down your website, is secure and offers incredible support.
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) makes it super easy to use the expanded content features of WordPress via a Graphical User Interface (GUI). This means it makes it possible for designers and developers – like us – to offer even more sophisticated and user-friendly websites to our clients. We love this plugin because it’s simple and intuitive. With its extensive documentation and professional features, it’s clearly made with developers in mind too. It’s a firm favourite here at KIJO.
Privacy is more important to website users than ever. CookieYes is a cookie consent solution that helps your website achieve GDPR and CCPA compliance easily. It allows you to generate a fully customisable cookie banner, record user consent, manage all your cookie compliance needs in one place, and is totally compatible with WordPress. That’s why it’s our plugin of choice for this task.
Compressing your website’s images so the file size is smaller, but not compromising on the picture quality, is key for ensuring a brilliant user experience. Imagify is the simplest image optimisation plugin for this. It just takes one click to resize, compress and convert your images to WebP! It’s one we use a lot here at KIJO.
Did you know that 30,000 websites are hacked everyday? That’s why your website’s security is paramount. Even though WordPress’ security is pretty robust, hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. So, every WordPress website needs fortification against cyber attacks and human error. Solid Security Pro (also known as SolidWP) is a brilliant plugin; one of the most powerful on the market for WordPress. It offers premium features – like two-factor authentication and a real-time WordPress security dashboard – that adds layers of protection to your website and business.
Yoast helps you optimise your WordPress website’s written copy so it’s best placed to rank well on Google. We love it because it’s easy-to-use and has a simple interface, has a great traffic light system that clearly indicates what’s working and what isn’t, and delivers powerful results when you hit green! We’ve even made a guide on how to use it! That’s how great it is:
Related Read:Yoast – A Quick Guide to KIJO’s Favourite SEO Plugin
Raising money for charity via your WordPress website? Do so with WP Charitable. Trusted by over 10,000 organisations, it offers secure donation payments that are privacy compliant, alongside comprehensive donor management including recurring donations. It’s easy to use, and comes with marketing integrations, as well as insightful reports so you can gain a deeper understanding of your donor base as well as discover new ways of increasing donations.
A great time-saving migration plugin, Better Search Replace is one for those looking to move their databases or for businesses managing multiple websites. The plugin makes it super easy to backup, import and migrate databases between WordPress installations and delivers easy-to-read reports which detail exactly what changes have taken place. There’s also extensive documentation available with the plugin so you know you’re completely supported when using it!
The three most overlooked search engine optimisation issues are broken external links, 404 Error pages, and redirection links. The WP 301 Redirects plugin finds and solves all of them! By fixing these errors on your website with the plugin, you’ll help boost your authentic, meaningful website traffic and understand your website on a deeper level without the bloat of more complicated analytical tools. The best part is that you can access this plugin with a one-time fee as opposed to a yearly or monthly fee. Once it’s yours, it’s yours for life!
If you want to make sure potential leads and business enquiries know how to get in touch with you, a website contact form is key. In our opinion, Gravity Forms is the most user-friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. The drag-and-drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, online order forms, quizzes, surveys, polls and more! It also lets you manage transactions. This is one plugin we often get out of our tool box at KIJO.
40% of online users will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Performance plugin WP Rocket optimises your website for Core Web Vitals helping you achieve incredible speed results and keep users happy. That’s why it’s our number one WordPress caching and optimisation plugin.
WooCommerce is the absolute top dog when it comes to eCommerce functionality on WordPress websites, and for good reason. Trusted by even the biggest of brands – nutribullet, Thermos and Björk to name a few – WooCommerce is used by 3.6million stores worldwide, and hosts 31% of the top 1 million eCommerce websites. That’s because it’s scalable, dependable, flexible and customisable. It also allows you to completely own your store and data, unlike competitors. So, no matter where your business ends up in the future, with WooCommerce, it will always be owned by you.
If you’re looking to launch an affiliate programme on your WordPress website, look no further than the AffiliateWP plugin. It’s easy, powerful and offers advanced affiliate tracking and detailed reports so you can see what’s working and what isn’t. It has intuitive commission rules and integral growth tools too. It’s also fully customisable! AffiliateWP is definitely a plugin to consider when exploring your affiliate programme options.
WP SMTP makes delivering emails directly to your customers from WordPress an absolute doddle. It has built in connectors for popular mail services like SendGrid and GMail, and it’s totally secure, authenticating your emails to prevent them from being blocked or sent to spam folders. This is imperative for any business! Alongside email tracking and deliverability statistics, it’s most importantly reliable, so that’s why we use it ourselves here at KIJO.
WPML is a plugin that enables you to build multilingual websites and run them. What’s great about this plugin is that it’s suitable for both small websites and large, corporate ones. It translates everything from pages and posts to menus and taxonomy. It’s also completely compatible with all the popular page builders, themes and other plugins!
Related Read: How to Make Your WordPress Website Multilingual & Localised
Quite honestly, the right WordPress plugins can absolutely transform a basic website into a powerful and fully functional platform tailored to your business needs.
Whether you’re looking to enhance your website’s security, improve SEO, boost performance, or add advanced features like eCommerce or appointment scheduling, the plugins we’ve listed offer reliable, user-friendly solutions. They’re also ones we use regularly! By carefully selecting and implementing these plugins, you can streamline your workflow, provide a better user experience, and ultimately grow your website.
Remember, the key is to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to plugins. Choose the plugins that best align with your business goals and watch your WordPress website thrive.
WordPress’s versatility and its plethora of plugins ensures that as your website evolves, so can your business. Its flexibility and scalability are key factors as to why we work with it at KIJO. If you want support with building or developing your WordPress website, contact us today.
Related Read: Why Use a WordPress Website Design Agency
Need expert guidance on your WordPress website design, or plugin optimisation? Book a complimentary, 30-minute consultation with our Head of Partnerships & Co-Founder, Kirk Thompson. During your call, we’ll review your website’s current performance, discuss your goals, analyse competitor insights, and explore the potential of a WordPress-powered site. Let’s bring your vision to life—book your free consultation via the link below:
