WordPress for E-commerce: 10 Must-Have Plugins to Maximize Sales

The journey from a visitor’s first click to the final purchase involves a series of steps, often referred to as the sales funnel. This funnel requires multiple tools to ensure each step is optimized for conversion.

Whether it’s capturing leads, nurturing them, or finally converting them into paying customers, each stage demands a specific tool. Integrating these tools seamlessly with your e-commerce platform is crucial for efficiency and to provide a consistent user experience.

WordPress — with its vast array of plugins — offers e-commerce businesses the flexibility to have all these functionalities in one place, eliminating the need for external integrations. This consolidation not only simplifies the backend operations but also provides a smoother journey for the customer.

Recognizing these advantages, many e-commerce businesses are making the switch from legacy platforms like Drupal to WordPress. To expedite this transition and gain a competitive edge, leveraging Drupal to WordPress migration services from seasoned agencies isn’t uncommon.

10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins to Maximize Sales

In this article, let’s look at ten must-have WordPress plugins that can supercharge your e-commerce sales funnel and help you maximize sales.

WooCommerce: Comprehensive e-commerce plugin

WooCommerce stands as one of the most favored open-source e-commerce plugins. Its popularity stems from the flexibility it offers, amplified by a vast global community. This plugin allows you to retain full ownership of your store’s content and data, ensuring you’re in control at all times.

WooCommerce is not just about selling products; it’s about creating an entire online shopping experience. From launching a business, and taking a brick-and-mortar store online, to developing sites for clients, WooCommerce seamlessly blends content and commerce.

You can showcase both physical and digital goods, product variations, custom configurations, instant downloads, and even affiliate items. The platform is equipped to handle subscriptions, bookings, or memberships, all thanks to its developer-vetted extensions.

E-commerce brands prefer WooCommerce as it:

• Provides a blend of content and commerce.
• Offers flexibility for both low and high-volume stores.
• Enhance SEO and visibility on search engines.

Cart Abandonment Recovery: Win-lost sales

E-commerce businesses often face the challenge of cart abandonment, where potential customers add products to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. The Cart Abandonment Recovery plugin addresses this issue head-on for WordPress e-commerce stores.

This plugin works by capturing the email addresses of users on the checkout page. If a purchase isn’t completed within 15 minutes, the plugin initiates an automated series of follow-up emails.

These emails can serve various purposes, from reminding customers to complete the purchase to offering them custom discounts to entice them back.

This plugin increases the sales of your e-commerce store by:

• Automatically re-engaging customers who abandoned their carts.
• Helping you tailor your follow-up emails to match your brand and strategy.
• Providing shoppers with a link that takes them right back to their prefilled checkout page, reducing friction and increasing conversions.

AffiliateWP: Create affiliate programs

AffiliateWP stands out as a premier self-hosted WordPress affiliate program plugin. With AffiliateWP, you can easily set up your affiliate program, track referral links, affiliate coupon codes, custom landing pages, and more, all without the need for complex coding.

Here’s what AffiliateWP brings to the table for WordPress e-commerce store owners:

• Easy and reliable affiliate tracking by monitoring the performances of each individual link.
• Customizable affiliate dashboard that provides affiliates with all the essential information they need to succeed.
• Smart fraud detection feature to detect and report potential affiliate fraud, ensuring the integrity of your program.
• Effortless affiliate management by streamlining the daily operations of your affiliate program, from managing affiliates to sending payouts.

LiveChat: Assist your customers

LiveChat is more than just a chat tool; it’s a customer service powerhouse tailored for WordPress e-commerce platforms. With it, you can instantly connect with visitors, addressing their queries and concerns in real time.

You can use this plugin to:

• Providing live guidance to your visitors to boost sales.
• Giving instant answers to their queries about products, policies, etc.
• Getting real-time feedback to enhance store offerings and optimize sales processes.
• Improving customer loyalty by personalizing the purchase experience.

OptinMonster: Capture and nurture leads

OptinMonster is designed to elevate your lead generation efforts on WordPress. With its intuitive popup builder, you can craft beautiful campaigns that turn casual visitors into loyal subscribers and customers.

Whether it’s through eye-catching popups, sticky announcement bars, or gamified spin-a-wheel opt-in forms, OptinMonster ensures your messages resonate with your audience.

For WordPress e-commerce store owners, OptinMonster can help with:

• Converting abandoning visitors into paying customers.
• Ensuring lead generation campaigns look great across all devices.
• Targeting relevant audience members and minimizing intrusive popups.

PushEngage: Bring visitors back to your site

PushEngage is designed to supercharge your engagement by sending personalized web push notifications on autopilot. Imagine being able to effortlessly bring back visitors to your site, turning them into regular readers, loyal fans, and repeat customers.

You can use PushEngage to maximize sales by:

• Sending push notifications to your audiences across all devices and browsers.
• Segmenting your visitors to send personalized messages.
• Enabling push automation to save more time for complex tasks.

ReferralCandy: Incentivize word-of-mouth marketing

ReferralCandy is a dynamic plugin tailored for WooCommerce stores, aiming to help set up and manage referral marketing campaigns. By leveraging the power of word-of-mouth, this plugin offers an automated solution to reward loyal customers for bringing in new clientele.

Some advantages of using ReferralCandy to boost your e-commerce sales are:

• Easy to set up. ReferralCandy automatically tracks and rewards your customers.
• Offers a free 14-day trial for you to test it out.
• Set and manage your offers and discounts with any technical help.

Accept Stripe Payments: Process credit card payments

The Accept Stripe Payments WordPress plugin allows your e-commerce store’s customers to complete their purchases with their credit cards. Leveraging the safety and smooth transaction experience of the Stripe payment gateway, this plugin elevates the checkout and invoice processing workflows for the customer and store owner respectively.

Here’s what it brings to the table for WordPress e-commerce store owners:

• Effortless integration with other tools in your store’s sales ecosystem.
• Use shortcodes to place Stripe “Buy Now” buttons anywhere on your site.
• After payment, customers are redirected to a “Checkout Result” page, detailing their transaction.
• All transaction info is captured and can be viewed from the WordPress admin dashboard.

FOMO & Social Proof Notifications: Leverage UGC

The TrustPulse plugin capitalizes on the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to amplify your sales and conversions using social proof notifications.

Whether it’s showcasing recent sales, membership signups, or any other activity, this plugin provides real-time notifications to your visitors, instilling a sense of urgency and trust.

This maximizes sales by:

• Increasing trust with real-time user activity.
• Enhancing user engagement with dynamic push notifications.
• Encouraging immediate action from potential buyers.

Table Rate Shipping: Offer multiple shipping options

Table Rate Shipping for WooCommerce enables e-commerce stores to offer customized shipping rates based on various factors.

This plugin can help you improve sales by:

• Integrating seamlessly with WooCommerce shipping zones.
• Defining shipping rates based on total cost or weight.
• Setting up multiple tiers, making it effective for a wide range of stores.

Wrapping up

WordPress plugins help e-commerce store owners make their sales pipeline more efficient and effective. Here are the  best plugins to get you started:

• WooCommerce offers a comprehensive solution for setting up and managing an online store on WordPress.
• Cart Abandonment Recovery helps reclaim potential lost sales.
• AffiliateWP allows you to set up and manage affiliate programs effectively.
• LiveChat ensures real-time assistance for your customers, enhancing their shopping experience.
• OptinMonster is your go-to for capturing and nurturing leads.
• PushEngage is instrumental in re-engaging visitors and driving them back to your site.
• ReferralCandy incentivizes word-of-mouth marketing, turning your customers into brand ambassadors.
• Accept Stripe Payments streamlines credit card payment processing.
• FOMO and social Proof Notifications harness the power of user-generated content to build trust.
• Table Rate Shipping offers flexible shipping options tailored to your store’s needs.