Alexis Kestler
Building an eCommerce store is easy with WooCommerce and WordPress. But growing your business and standing out from the crowd requires some strategic plugins.
As an avid WooCommerce user myself, I‘ve experimented with dozens of extensions over the years for my online stores. In this guide, I‘ll share the top plugins that provide real impact based on my experience – not just fluff and filler!
I‘ll explain how each one can benefit your business and provide actionable recommendations on how to choose the right tools. Let‘s dive in!
How to Select the Best Plugins for YOUR Store
With over 300 official plugins and thousands more third-party options, the choices can seem endless. Here are 5 tips I follow to zero in on the most valuable plugins for MY needs:
1. Make a wishlist of goals and pain points
Start by getting clear on what you want to accomplish or fix. Imagine your store is already perfect – what does that look like? Make a wishlist:
- "I want to easily see how products perform."
- "Handling returns is a nightmare!"
- "I wish customers would buy more by bundling products."
This gives you clarity on must-have features to enhance your store.
2. Research plugins matching your needs
Now explore plugins that can make your wishlist a reality. Google searches, the WooCommerce marketplace and professional reviews can uncover options.
Create a spreadsheet comparing plugins that match your needs and their pros, cons, pricing etc. This helps you evaluate choices objectively.
3. Check existing functionality
Before installing yet another plugin, see if your theme or other plugins already have the capability. For instance, many themes include tools for reviews and wishlists so you may not need separate plugins.
4. Consider your technical limits
WooCommerce plugins are notorious for conflicts, bugs and bloat. Assess if your site can handle more plugins without slowing down or breaking things. Start small and layer on additional plugins carefully.
5. Test top options before committing
Don‘t purchase expensive yearly plans until you‘ve thoroughly tested a plugin with your store. Make sure it works perfectly and delivers sufficient value to justify the cost.
Now let‘s explore 25 of the highest-rated and most helpful WooCommerce plugins for taking your online store to the next level!
25 Best WooCommerce Plugins for eCommerce Success
1. YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
Wishlists are proven to convert browsers into buyers. YITH WooCommerce Wishlist lets customers create wishlists and share them with friends – displaying your products beautifully to new audiences.
It encourages multiple purchases and higher conversion rates when users buy from wishlists in one click. I especially love the real-time tracking to see which products get wished for the most.
2. Product Bundles and Add-Ons
Product Bundles encourage customers to spend more by combining multiple products into kits or packages. For example, "Beauty Bundle" with skin cream, face wash and moisturizer all for a discount.
Product Add-ons present related products or upgrades during checkout like gift wrapping. These strategic offers increase order values and conversion rates.
3. Nexcess Store Cache
Slow page speeds kill conversion rates. Nexcess Store Cache creates static caches of product/category pages and serves them from a global CDN. The result: up to 100X faster page loads – a must for every WooCommerce site!
4. UpStroke Custom Emails
UpStroke helps you create beautiful, branded order and shipping emails that match your store‘s look instead of boring default emails.
You can also add coupons, related products and other personalized content automatically in just a few clicks with its drag and drop editor.
5. AutomateWoo
This amazing tool lets you automate just about any tedious manual task like sending follow-up emails, assigning order statuses, managing subscriptions, and more.
Some handy recipes I love in AutomateWoo:
- Email customers a 20% off coupon if they abandon carts
- Give wholesale pricing to buyers with over 5 purchases
- Cancel inactive subscriptions automatically
It saves me hours of grunt work so I can focus on big picture growth.
6. Privy Popups, Coupons & Emails
Exit-intent popups, spin-a-wheel discounts, and customizable forms – Privy is your secret sales weapon packed with tactics to increase email subscribers, social followers and conversions.
For example, Privy‘s wheel popups alone have increased my email subscribers by over 150%!
7. Smart Marketing Bundles
Combine the power of Privy, AutomateWoo and UpStroke and you‘ve got a rock-solid marketing stack for optimizing every touchpoint.
These smart bundles available at Appsumo and AppSum make it easy and affordable to get all three without paying full price. Huge win to boost sales!
8. Niftco Abandoned Cart Recovery
Research shows over 60% of online carts are abandoned before checkout. Niftco sends beautiful abandoned cart emails to automatically recover many of these lost sales for you.
The customizable templates, timing rules and stats help maximize how many customers complete checkout. No store owner should miss out on this revenue!
9. Back in Stock Notifications
Customers hate seeing an out-of-stock product they wanted to buy. Back in Stock lets customers sign up to get an email when the product is available again.
This simple plugin has increased my repeat purchase rate tremendously. Customers love it too as they don‘t miss out on buying what they wanted!
10. Happy Returns
Managing returns and refunds smoothly is essential for any store. Happy Returns simplifies the entire process for you AND customers.
It provides printable return labels, tracks return status, and offers a AI-powered self-service portal for customers. Now I handle returns 3X faster!
11. Smile Rewards
Want an easy yet powerful loyalty program? With Smile Rewards, customers earn points for purchases, reviews, referrals etc. They can later redeem these points for discounts or rewards.
Members have spent 150% more than non-members at my store. The loyalty program incentivizes repeat business in an impactful yet simple way.
12. Judge.me Reviews
Detailed reviews build trust and authority for any store. But gathering genuine reviews is tough. Judge.me makes it super easy by sending review requests to customers automatically.
It publishes beautiful reviews to your store complete with photos and videos. I‘ve seen a big jump in conversions and sales since installing Judge.me reviews!
13. Glew.io Popups, Stickys & Emails
Another amazing bundle – Glew provides exit-intent popups, cart abandonment popups, sticky add-to-cart bars and customizable email campaigns.
I especially love their AI product recommendation popups. The smart targeting helps me cross-sell very effectively.
14. Wheelio Spin-a-Wheel Popups
Everybody loves a good spin for a chance to win discounts! Wheelio creates cool spin the wheel popups to capture emails or provide incentives at checkout.
They‘re fun and interactive while helping increase conversions. I offer spin wheels on holidays and special events to create excitement.
15. Mailchimp Email Marketing
Taking full advantage of email marketing is a must for each store I operate. Mailchimp helps me create and manage beautiful campaigns to turn subscribers into repeat customers.
Handy features like sign-up forms, segmented campaigns, and WooCommerce sync make email super easy. My average order value is 20% higher for email subscribers than non-subscribers.
16. referralCandy Referrals
Word-of-mouth is the best marketing. referralCandy incentivizes your customers to refer friends and share your brand through gifts, rewards, and referral contests.
I send referral reward emails after a customer‘s first purchase. This has become one of my most reliable sales channels driving hundreds of new customers.
17. Zapier
Zapier opens up an endless world of possibilities by connecting your WooCommerce store to thousands of other apps.
You can easily automate repetitive tasks, sync data between services and trigger cross-platform workflows.
I use Zaps to automatically back up new orders to Google Sheets, get Slack notifications for abandoned carts, publish new products to Facebook and much more!
18. PayPal Payments
An easy payments setup is critical for conversions. PayPal offers free and seamless acceptance of PayPal/credit cards on your store.
It helps me tap into hundreds of millions of PayPal accounts while letting customers check out faster.
19. Amazon S3
Storing all your store‘s images and files on your web server slows down your site. WP Offload S3 lets you move them to fast, infinitely scalable Amazon S3 instead.
Plus, an integrated CDN for blazing fast file delivery around the world. My WooCommerce sites are at least twice as fast after offloading files to S3.
20. Product CSV Import Suite
Instead of manually entering products one by one, Product CSV helps you mass import or export products from CSV.
I can add my entire product catalog in minutes with descriptions, pricing, categories, attributes etc. It saves me several hours a week managing my inventory.
21. Permissions Based Pricing
Offering custom pricing to wholesale buyers, repeat customers or membership levels is a great strategy. Permissions Based Pricing enables just that.
Rules I‘ve set up include:
- 20% off for buyers with over 5 purchases
- Wholesale pricing for user role "Distributors"
- Member discounts for paid plan subscribers
Targeted strategic pricing helps me maximize profits.
22. Advanced Product Size Charts
For stores selling clothing, one size never fits all customers. Advanced Product Size Charts shows a detailed size chart on each product page to help customers pick the right size.
This simple plugin has reduced my return and exchange requests by over 30%! Customers recommend products to friends when the sizing is clear.
23. Beeketing Exit Intent Popups
Another fantastic bundle – Beeketing provides exit intent popups, spin a wheel discounts, flash sales and email popups.
These research-backed tactics help me reduce cart abandonment and convert abandoning visitors into customers and email subscribers.
24. Privy Popups, Coupons & Emails
I mentioned Privy earlier as part of a bundle. But even standalone, Privy‘s toolset of popups, coupons and email forms merits a spot on this list!
Privy has helped me drive over 42,000+ email subscribers in just 6 months with spin-a-wheel popups. Their WooCommerce integration makes campaign creation a cinch.
25. MonsterInsights Google Analytics
Finally, a WooCommerce store isn‘t complete without the powerful eCommerce analytics of MonsterInsights.
It shows me exactly how my products perform, which marketing channels drive sales, top conversion sources, abandoned carts and much more.
The custom eCommerce reports help me make smart, data-driven decisions to maximize revenue. It‘s an indispensable asset for my store‘s growth.
The Right Tools Can Transform Your Store
I hope these 25 hand-picked plugins give you lots of ideas and inspiration on enhancing your own WooCommerce store. The key is choosing extensions that solve your biggest pain points and align with your long-term strategy.
Start small and layer on additional plugins thoughtfully as your needs evolve. And don‘t forget to optimize the foundation like hosting, security and site speed for the full package.
What are your favorite plugins? Let me know in the comments if you have any other recommendations! I‘m always looking to improve my eCommerce stack.
