WooCommerce plugins are a significant reason why Woo-built online stores have so much potential. They help boost functionality quickly and easily, without the need to write any code. Product filters, web forms, inventory recommendations, and the fast checkout you enjoy so much are probably the work of a handy add-on.
Our mission today is to find some of the best WooCommerce plugins available on the market…
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a plugin that adds ecommerce features to the WordPress CMS (content management system). It is extremely popular today, with over 30% of the top million online stores running this plugin.
The way it works is straightforward. First, you’ll need to install WordPress as the base of your website. Next, use the internal plugin system to find and install WooCommerce.
With these two actions, you’ll have all you need to start selling online – once everything is configured, of course.
Why Use WooCommerce?
There are many reasons to use WooCommerce as your ecommerce platform of choice.
Since it’s a WordPress plugin, WooCommerce is easy to install. The high popularity of both WordPress and this plugin also means help isn’t far away if you need it.
Other reasons to use WooCommerce:
- Free to use.
- Very user-friendly, even for non-techies.
- Plugins for feature scalability.
- Stylish and customizable designs.
- Works on multiple platforms.
How WooCommerce Extensions Help
WooCommerce extensions work in the same way that WordPress plugins – they expand your site capabilities. Adding a plugin, you can quickly include new features on your WooCommerce online store that may not come by default.
The system works effortlessly, and installation is quick and easy. This convenience allows even small online stores to rival their competitors in areas like design, functionality, user experience, and more.
WooCommerce extensions can also help you with:
- Advanced analytics
- Powerful marketing tools
- Advance product and inventory options
- Taxation and payment gateways
- Order logistics
…and many, many more.
Best WooCommerce Extensions on the Market
Now that we know their value let’s see which are the crowd favorites, the most preferred WooCommerce plugins to power up your online store.
MonsterInsights
Top Features
- Centralized reporting
- Detailed ecommerce statistical data
- Affiliate link and ad tracking
- Real-time statistics
- Privacy compliance (GDPR)
MonsterInsights practically adds Google Analytics to your ecommerce site dashboard. It’s not unique to WooCommerce, but the utility doesn’t change across platforms. MonsterInsights is invaluable when it comes to gaining a deeper understanding of your web traffic from a centralized location.
In the context of ecommerce, you get to track multiple dimensions of customer purchasing behavior. For example, see which products are most popular, quickly calculate average order values, or even see how many of your site visitors are converting to actual customers.
While you can utilize Google Analytics on its own, using MonsterInsights gives you much more neatly presented information. At the same time, you don’t have to hop around various sites to find what you need.
There are free and paid versions of MonsterInsights. The Lite edition comes with all basic features included, while the Paid ones offer extras like real-time reporting, site speed analytics, and custom dimensions.
Price: Free / From $99 per year onwards
Beeketing
Top features
- Pop-up functionalities
- Mobile conversion booster
- Intent-based sales optimization
- Dynamic pricing options
Online marketing for ecommerce stores can be a challenge for any shop owner. That’s where Beeketing comes in handy with its advanced marketing automation. Through a variety of features, Beeketing aims to help you increase conversion rates as much as possible.
The extension is modular, so you can selectively choose which areas you need help improving in. For example, the Personalized Recommendation extension will strategically place customized offers for visitors and do its best to upsell them.
Compared to the typical marketing automation plugins, Beeketing lets you make surgical improvements. You won’t have to be concerned about affecting areas already doing well that should be left alone.
While this is great, there is a slight downside. The same modular system means you need to pay for each Beeketing module separately. The cost can quickly escalate if you get over-enthusiastic and start adding modules like crazy.
Price: Free trial / $19 per month onwards
Yith WooCommerce Wishlist
Top Features
- Promotional email distribution
- Cost estimation capabilities
- User wishlist management
- Display price variations
- Wishlist design templates
While the concept of letting customers create wishlists may not be unique, Yith gets creative with how the information is used. Since you’re getting data from the items users are adding to their wish lists, why not take this chance to boost sales?
Aside from letting users quickly tally up prices of items, Yith WooCommerce Wishlist also enables you to let them share the lists – maybe a friend of theirs will turn into your customer as well.
Knowing what your customer wants can also help you improve promotional targeting. Reach out to the right people the minute you lower prices for an item they like. Everything on Yith WooCommerce Wishlist is geared towards helping you improve your sales.
Yith WooCommerce Wishlist is available for free, but that only gives you the essential wishlist function and analytics. A paid subscription is necessary to take advantage of their sales-boosting features.
Price: $115 / site onwards
OptinMonster
Top features
- Customizable pop-up designs
- Pop-up gamification
- Page-level targeting
- User intent detection
- Geolocation targeting
From the creator of MonsterInsights, OptinMonster can help you increase your sales through the use of pop-ups. It isn’t just your run-of-the-mill pop-up maker, though. OptinMonster is so feature-packed you’ll be stunned at how creative you can get.
From lightboxes to gamified wheels and exit intent detection – OptinMonster does it all. The plugin is far from difficult, thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop builder for popups. The extension can monitor everything and react according to your predefined rules.
Popups may have somewhat of a bad reputation, but they can be fantastic if used correctly. Combining OptinMonster with acceptable design practices may easily bring loads of happy converting customers, and seasoned marketing specialists can confirm that.
OptinMonster is subscription-based so expect to pay ongoing fees. The most basic plan will work for smaller ecommerce stores, but as you scale up, expect the need for a more powerful (and expensive) package.
Price: starting from $9/mo
LiveChat
Top Features
- Automated customer support
- Targeted messaging
- Chat routing, transfer, and ratings
- File sharing
- Widget customization
In 2021, many of us are already familiar with chatbots. These automated scripts have increasingly become the first line of customer support for many big brands. With LiveChat, you can add that dimension to your online store as well.
LiveChat works with multiple platforms, including WooCommerce. Although many people see it as more of a support tool, you can use it to improve sales easily. For example, some users may need help selecting a product or simply want to know a specific detail quickly – LiveChat can store this information, ready to be returned at a moment’s notice.
The extension also includes tracking settings you can use to serve customers more efficiently. As they shop around and add items to their cart, the chatbot can keep track of the inventory. This way, it will be able to ‘understand’ the context when customers ask for assistance.
You can use LiveChat with all essential features for free. Advanced features like staffing prediction and better reporting come at varying prices, depending on how many chat agents you wish to deploy.
Price: Free / $16 per month and up
Booster for WooCommerce
Top Features
- Multi-currency handling
- Checkout cart enhancements
- Order and shipping customizations
- Custom scripting and user roles
- PDF invoicing
If you’re tired of hunting for WooCommerce extensions, take a look at Booster. This all-in-one solution includes everything but the kitchen sink. It was designed to be multi-feature capable so that users will have an easier time managing their WooCommerce site extensions.
In reality, Booster for WooCommerce covers many areas directly related to sales. This includes tweak options for pricing, buttons and labels, payment gateways, shipping, and more. If used well, Booster can boost (pun intended) your sales sky-high.
The best thing is that Booster is fast and streamlined despite its rather impressive feature set.
The downside for getting so much done with Booster is, of course, the price. While there is a usable free version, it comes with none of the bells and whistles you get in Booster Plus. The latter starts at a minimum of $99 per year.
Price: Free / $99 per year onwards
TrustPulse
Top Features of Trustpulse
- On-fire notifications
- Page-level targeting
- Mobile friendly
- Display timers to potential buyers
- 14-day money-back guarantee
Sometimes it helps if customers can see that others have faith in your business and products. That’s called social proof – demonstrating the positive experiences of past customers to existing ones.
TrustPulse helps WooCommerce stores achieve this so you can avoid losing customers who need some form of positive reinforcement to push them past the finish line. By letting you show new users how much your existing ones love you, you’re giving them the motivation to complete their purchase.
Behind the scenes, TrustPulse also keeps track of everything happening on your sites. This monitoring helps you strategically place popular product notifications to encourage buyers. It’s a smart way of targeting those who are already interested in certain products.
With a price tag that starts at only $5 per month, TrustPulse is quite affordable. The pricing is likely far less than the extra sales you’ll close with potential customers. Of course, prices are also volume-based, so as you scale up, so do the costs.
Price: starting from $5/mo
Possible Problems with WooCommerce Extensions
If you aren’t careful with the WooCommerce extensions you choose, problems may easily crop up with your site. These issues can affect many areas, such as security and performance. For WooCommerce sites, these two areas are a significant point of concern.
On a more detailed level, some possible issues can arise from:
- Lack of updates – Updates typically add features or improve usability, but they often help with patching known vulnerabilities as well. WooCommerce extensions that aren’t updated for extended periods may have growing gaps in their defenses, opening loopholes for anyone that wants to breach in.
- Conflicts – Given how large the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem is, there aren’t any guarantees that extensions won’t conflict with one another. If you notice problems when running a new plugin, always test your site by deactivating other add-ons one by one to see which is the conflicting one.
- Extensions are not working – If you install a WooCommerce extension and something breaks, it may be caused by a misconfiguration in your hosting account. To resolve this, you may need to approach both the plugin developer and your web hosting support team to work together in figuring out the right environment.
ScalaHosting and WooCommerce
Aside from WooCommerce and its extensions, partnership with a reliable web hosting provider is pivotal in ecommerce. The faster your online store serves customers – the more likely you are to rake profits quickly.
ScalaHosting highly recommends Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans as ideal for ecommerce store owners. These packages offer improved performance thanks to dedicated resource allocation. On top of that, you can always contact the ScalaHosting Support Team if you have any technical difficulties with WooCommerce – we will always be glad to help out!
ScalaHosting’s Managed Cloud VPS not only gives you the power to succeed but does it at affordable prices. The secure server environment backs these excellent plans so you can run your online store with complete peace of mind.
Conclusion
We hope this list of excellent WooCommerce plugins will help take your online store to the next level. Remember – choose your extensions wisely and stay focused on your ecommerce site performance. Only by securing an optimized environment for your Woo project you can start thinking about extra plugins.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I add extensions in WooCommerce?
The easiest way is by connecting your site to your WooCommerce account. From there, you can manage all extension subscriptions. Alternatively, you have options in the WordPress dashboard, where installations don’t take more than a few mouse clicks.
Is WooCommerce really free?
Yes, it is. WooCommerce and WordPress are both free and open-source systems. Anyone can download and run them on the platform of their choice. Still, we need to remember that WP needs PHP and MySQL to run properly, so a Linux hosting solution would be the best fit.
Can you use WooCommerce without WordPress?
No, you must have WordPress installed. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that needs the base installation to get started.
