As of 2016, there were 28.8 million small ventures in the US. However, 50% of these small initiatives have a lifespan of five years or more, and only about one-third of the businesses last ten years or longer. These figures tell an important story, one of horror and worries.
The first part of this story is that your initiative is swamped with fierce competition. Another aspect of this story says that survival is tough. Your small business’s life resonates with Charles Darwin’s famous evolutionary theory. It stands on the significant pillar of “survival of the fittest.”
In simple words, as a small business owner, you need to sail through tough competition. But, if you’re good at what you do, you will succeed. One way to beat the competition is by empowering your WordPress business website with special tools called plugins. Since WordPress powers almost 27% of the Internet, you need these plugins to outpace the crowd.
So, without further ado, let’s dig into five essential plugins for small business websites:
Yoast SEO
93% of the traffic for a webpage comes via search engines. This means that you need to ensure that your business website ranks high on the search engines so that more and more traffic heads its way. But, of course, this can only be achieved when you follow the rules that please browsers. In short, you need to consider search engine optimization (SEO).
As its name suggests, Yoast SEO provides a shortcut to ending up in the good books of a search engine. The plugin is dedicated to improving your ranking by helping you craft content that incorporates keywords.
Keywords are the anchor texts that help your content rank better on Google. Yoast SEO consists of a section below the posts you need to fill for proper keyword usage. Subsequently, the tool encourages you to use keywords in your title, sub-headings, meta description, etc. Therefore, this plugin helps with optimizing your website to boost its SEO.
WP Review
WP Review is the plugin you need for encouraging your customers to leave a review for your business. Online reviews are one of the best means of earning the trust of new customers. This makes them a critical weapon in the arsenal of small companies. Three interesting statistics can convince you of the importance of online reviews.
For one, 90% of the consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. Secondly, 74% of the customers say that positive reviews help them trust a local business. Lastly, 84% of people say that they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
The key takeaway is simple- online reviews provide your small business with a golden opportunity for growth. Using a plugin such as WP Review allows your customers to give you a testimonial. The plugin goes on to display the reviews in Google searches. Thus, helping you to attract more clients and grow your venture.
Google Analytics by MonsterInsights
The right step is to take measures to boost your business’s search engine ranking for better traffic and lead generation. However, your step doesn’t have a proper direction until you measure its performance. This brings us to analyzing significant numbers, introducing Google Analytics by MonsterInsights.
The plugin brings all the numbers churned by Google Analytics to your WordPress dashboard. The tool offers a complete picture of all the analytics. It tells where your traffic is coming from, how many pages views you are getting, new visitors to your business, etc.
Such an analysis helps you take your next steps so that statistical confirmations back your business decisions. Although there are tons of other similar plugins, this one is special. It goes a step ahead to allow you to track the outbound link clicks and downloads.
The premium version of this plugin also allows you to learn “page view per post” and “page views per author.” Moreover, you can keep tabs on users and searches, and if you run an e-commerce store, you can check out your downloads with the plugin.
Contact Form 7 Database
Establishing contact with your customer is the first step in doing business. That’s a no-brainer. However, the problem surfaces when your website does not offer sufficient contact details. This is the reason why you need the Contact Form 7 Database plugin.
Insufficient contact details can make your customer suspicious of your business. At the same time, it can negatively impact your SEO ranking. In this regard, this plugin helps you keep all your contact information in one place.
As its name explains, the tool saves all the contact forms into a database. In this way, you won’t miss any contact details of any of your leads and clients. Essentially, you can begin with setting up the Contact Form 7 plugin. Then, use it to make customizable contact forms for your clients. On top of that, use the Contact Form 7 Database to keep all the information handy.
Salesmate
An essential aspect of any business is maintaining good customer relationships. Unfortunately, informal means of maintaining customer records, including spreadsheets, waste a lot of time. In contrast, CRM applications boost sales and sale productivity by 29% and 34%, respectively. Plus, half of the CRM users agree that it significantly impacts their customer retention.
Since any business is incomplete without its customers, you need one of the best WordPress CRM plugins, such as Salesmate. The tool allows you to manage your customer details in one place. It will enable you to create contacts and place information related to deals. You can identify potential leads as well.
Plus, the plugin comes with a Gravity Form. It allows you to capture all the custom fields concerning a potential client. It encourages lead multiplication while helping you keep your customer records organized.
Salesmate is simple and quick to set up. But, over and above that, it is an easy-to-use web app. In addition, offering customer relationship management can assist you in boosting your business.
Wrapping up
There are tons of WordPress plugins that you can use for your business. Of course, some of these web apps are more helpful than the rest and are almost must-haves for small ventures. Salesmate, Contact Form 7, Yoast SEO, MonsterInsights, and WP Review are some of these.
About the Author:
Alma Causey is a Freelance writer by day and sports fan by night. She writes about tech education and health-related issues. So live, give generously, watch football, and be a technology lover.
