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When the first companies began to sell their products through the internet years ago, there was an initial competitive conflict that arose: who could market themselves in the best way possible, and who could create the best website to attract customers to their online “store”?
Since then, digital advancements have improved exponentially year over year, and more people that want to do business online opt for creating their own site rather than seeking the services of a developer, largely due to the many hosting and web building pages available. For any person hoping to DIY their website, there is no CMS more popular than WordPress, as the globe has heard of that brand in every corner of the world wide web.
WordPress is very intuitive and allows even those with limited or no business/development experience to not only create a beautiful site, but to grow that website to new heights of traffic and viewership. WordPress offers a marketplace of free (and premium) plugins to help your website do all kinds of things to support your business – including sell products. This marketplace is user-generated, so the market is ever-expanding and has a lot of customer feedback for you to review. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of plugins – some of which are fantastic and others which won’t benefit your site. There are many things you can download to grow and develop your online store, but in this article, we will review the best E-commerce plugins that you can install for absolutely free.
The Best E-Commerce Plugins of 2018
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is immensely popular amongst the plugins related to e-commerce, especially for smaller and medium-sized businesses. WooCommerce is very widely known and offers very effective tools which streamline not only your storefront but also the back-end operations of your E-commerce site. As are the rest of the plugins listed here, WooCommerce is absolutely free and makes it simpler for your store to convert visitors to your site into paying customers.
WooCommerce chief feature is that it prioritizes simplicity and organization, reducing the number of steps that your potential customer has to make to conduct a transaction with your store. WooCommerce is highly customizable and even integrates with Google Analytics. WooCommerce is a community within itself and develops a continuous stream of extensions for its eCommerce tools. WooCommerce makes your life easier by giving you the ability to sell both digital and physical goods directly on your page without needing a third party. WooCommerce also features shipping settings, a plethora of payment options, secure data policies and a design platform for your storefront.
Product Catalog
The most important part of the store, of course, is the products themselves. No matter how glamorous your page is and how effective your marketing is delivered, you won’t sell very many products if those products aren’t easily accessible, navigable, and clear to see. Once you have chosen the products you would like to sell, you will need to position them in the most aesthetically pleasing and psychologically advantageous way to attract your prospective customer.
The Product Catalog plugin is a free WordPress plugin that prioritizes organization and customization. It is often overwhelming to position your products in the best way possible, especially once your store is offering a myriad of great items and you are focusing on increasing your sales and new product launches. The Product Catalog boasts an easy and completely free way to remove the guesswork from positioning your products by offering such features as customizable product displays, intuitive product organizer, the capability of quote requesting, simple integration on your site and SEO tools for all catalog entries.
Yoast SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, began officially when marketing professionals and business owners figured out that search engines, such as Google, have certain algorithms that are used to rank pages. Because it is not human, the algorithm needs to have a calculated way of returning the most optimal results when a user enters a search. Search engine developers quickly realized that marketers figured this out, so algorithms were adapt to change every few months so that no one single technique dominates the market. Once that occurred, professional SEO and marketing agencies made it one of their primary services as thousands of businesses require professional SEO work to consistently rank highly on Google, Amazon and other search engines.
This is where the Yoast SEO tool comes into play. Instead of needing to hire a professional, you can take the time to do it yourself and have an automated assistant at your disposal to help you choose the most relevant SEO techniques. Yoast has been designed by the developer to provide easy to understand analytic tools that make the most impact on your site. Yoast also helps to create meaningful and visible web content so that Google will detect and return your site to potential searchers.
Yoast SEO features sitemap functions, URL settings that ensure content is not duplicated, simple to use templates that provide consistent meta descriptions and titles, a linking feature which will streamline your internal structure, and chiefly, an SEO tool that measures optimization for your keywords.
Holler Box
Building on one of the above plugins, Holler Box is designed to be primarily compatible with the WooCommerce plugin. Holler Box takes the basic construction to one step forward, capturing the leads that have been drawn to your site by your marketing efforts.
If you have ever visited a site, you have probably encountered a pop-up box asking for your details. Many of them can be large and blocky, which can be a deterrent to your visitor. Holler Box dons a lightweight solution which is a stark contrast to the in-your-face style heavy duty popups that you might see on lesser trusted sites.
Holler Box features include unlimited pop-up for both entry on-site and exit, notifications and delay options for the pop-up, easy to integrate with most email marketing campaign platforms, template designs which are highly customizable, and analytical tools to track your conversion rate.
Holler Box is free to use, but as your business grows, you will have the option to upgrade your content and targeting filters which will help you exponentially increase your visitors and leads.
Find your own!
On top of what was mentioned above, the plugin marketplace is ever-changing and growing community with many customizable options for your growing e-commerce platform. It is good when just starting out to find a base amount of needed plugins, but only you as the business owner will know exactly what kind of tools you need to further your acumen and sales. We hope you have enjoyed and learned more about the Best E-Commerce Plugins.
