Although it can do a lot to propel your brand and make it more noticeable to customers, a visually appealing website alone won’t be enough to give your business a strong online presence. You’ll also need to consider its functionality, as it plays a huge part in ensuring that customers have a positive experience when visiting your website. 

Luckily, you don’t necessarily need to be a web developer to do important things to improve your business website’s performance. The right website plugins will impart your website with additional features that can make it more user-friendly for both you and your target audience.

Website plugins are prebuilt software components that add specific features or functions to a website. They’re typically designed to integrate seamlessly with existing website platforms or content management systems (CMSs) and are fairly easy to use. Plugins are meant to serve as ready-made solutions for common website needs, which frees you from having to develop your own software to improve your business website’s performance. 

There are thousands of free and paid website plugins available to modern entrepreneurs, and each one has something unique to bring to the table. But the ones you should likely prioritize to get a leg up this 2024 are the following:

1) Payment Gateway Plugin

If you use your business website for e-commerce, you’ll greatly benefit from using a payment gateway plugin. This plugin is designed to facilitate online transactions and securely process payments on your website. 

Many fintech companies, like the Philippines’ Maya Business, offer payment gateway plugins that are compatible with popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. They also utilize secure encryption and uphold compliance with payment card industry standards to protect sensitive payment information from customers and curb the spread of fraudulent activities. What’s more, these plugins support a wide range of payment methods, including credit or debit cards, e-wallets, and QR codes. 

This type of plugin will allow you to streamline your website’s checkout process and provide your customers with various payment options—factors that all contribute to a positive website experience and higher chances that a customer will return to make a purchase. It’s in your best interest to get a payment gateway Philippines’ trusted businesses use or its equivalent if your business serves local customers.

2) Customer Service Chatbot Plugin

Another plugin you should consider getting if you run an e-commerce website is a customer service chatbot plugin. Since customers can visit and make purchases from your website at any time, they’ll appreciate having a 24/7 chatbot to provide them with immediate assistance whenever they need it. 

A lot of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots can interact with visitors in real time and are capable of answering and thus resolving common inquiries. They’re also programmed to route complex issues to human agents when necessary.

You can expect a customer service chatbot to offer automated responses to common queries such as order status, product information, and return policy. In that vein, a chatbot plugin will help you resolve issues instantly and reduce the workload on your human support agents.

3) Contact Form Plugin

Contact form plugins enable you to streamline communications between you and your website visitors. They’ll provide visitors with a user-friendly and accessible way to get in touch with your business. 

These types of software also let you create custom forms with various fields (e.g., name, email, and phone number) so that your customers can send messages, inquiries, or feedback in a more organized manner. Integrating this type of plugin into your website can improve your customer service capabilities, thus enhancing your business’s professionalism and reputation for being customer-centric. 

When selecting a contact form plugin for your website, get one that includes built-in spam protection measures such as CAPTCHA verification and form validation. These measures should prevent spam submissions and maintain your data integrity. 

The plugin must also come with email notifications to alert you whenever you’ve received a new form submission. This will enable you to respond to your customers’ queries in a timely fashion.

4) Page Builder Plugin

With a page builder plugin, you’ll have the ability to create professional-looking and visually appealing web pages without the need for coding skills or technical expertise. This software typically features a user-friendly and intuitive interface that lets you easily add, remove, and rearrange page elements so that you can easily design your website’s pages the way you see fit. 

Many of the best page builder plugins come with a library of pre-designed templates and blocks, and it won’t be hard to customize the pages to match your brand identity and style preferences. That means that this plugin will help you save a lot of time and effort in the page design process.

5) Automation Plugin

Automation plugins can leverage advanced automation capabilities to eliminate manual intervention, increase efficiency, and enhance productivity across various aspects of your business website’s management and marketing. Integrating this plugin into your website’s arsenal allows you to automate repetitive tasks such as scheduling the publication of blog posts, sharing content on social media, and deleting spam comments. 

With this software handling the majority of rote and labor-intensive work with regard to your website, you and your human staff will have more time to focus on high-value activities and strategic initiatives that can grow your business.

6) SEO Plugin

To ensure that your business website remains at a high rank in relevant searches, you can also use a search engine optimization (SEO) plugin to optimize your website for search engines. This software comes with a wide range of features and tools designed to improve website content, meta tags, and overall site structure, all towards achieving better visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Some plugins even offer SEO analysis tools that can give you deep insight into your website’s performance. Using these, you’ll be able to identify optimization opportunities and apply the correct strategies to improve your business website’s search engine ranking.

Simply put, when it comes to running a business website, functionality matters. As long as your website is performing as it should, you and your visitors will have no trouble navigating your website’s pages and using its features. Consider onboarding any of these six plugins to your website’s tech stack this 2024, and see for yourself what improvements they’ll bring to your business.