Top Recommended Free WordPress Plugins

Our Top Recommended Free WordPress Plugins:

Security

Wordfence (Highly Recommended)

This is a must-have security plugin for a WordPress website. However, check with your web host as they may already have their own security in place.

There’s a premium option on offer with Wordfence. However, the free version should be more than adequate for most people’s needs. Wordfence makes it MUCH harder for hackers and bots to get into your website maliciously.

You can tweak settings that block out an IP address for a period of time after too many failed attempts. Also, you can permanently block unfamiliar IP addresses that are repeatedly trying to login. In addition, there are a huge range of settings you can play with to make your WordPress website as watertight as it can be.

Speed

WP Smush Pro (Highly Recommended)

You can lose visitors if your website takes too long to load.

One of the major culprits here is large image sizes. One way to get around this is to compress your images or lower the size when you upload them to your website. However, a much faster way is to get a plugin to do it for you.

WP Smush Pro automatically compresses images on your website to make everything load faster. It does this in such a way that users won’t notice any difference in image size or quality, but there will be a noticeable difference in speed.

Compressed images mean faster loads, and faster loads means kudos from Google, who rank faster websites higher. Unfortunately, it’s not free but you do get a free trial to try it out.

You can also try:

JPEGmini

This reduces the file size of your photos by five times. It’s available as a free (limited benefits) or a paid version.

Shrink O’Matic

This is a free design and photography program. You can use it to resize JPGs, GIFs and PNGs.

Split Testing

Remember that your website is ultimately a marketing platform for your products and services. The best kind of website is the one that allows you to test new ideas so that you can keep improving your results.

To help you do this I recommend:

Simple Google Content Experiments

This is open source software that lets you create new custom fields on your site that link with Google Analytics so that you can track conversions and run split tests.

Mobile Readiness

If your website isn’t mobile ready, you’ll lose the opportunity to convert hot prospects into subscribers, social media followers and customers.

• 74% of mobile-using consumers will wait five seconds for a web page to load before leaving the site.
• 71% expect web pages to load almost as quickly or even faster than the web pages on their desktop or laptop.
• 46% will not return to a mobile site if it didn’t work properly when they last visited.

Mobile users also hate the following problems:

• The text copy doesn’t automatically fit into the screen.
• Your font/text size is so small they can’t read it easily.
• They can’t touch the links with their fingers to click-through.
• Your videos don’t play on their mobile.
• The links are broken or don’t work.
• There are too many menus and options, so they can’t easily navigate.
• They are taken off your site to another website (for instance a shop or sales page) that loads too slowly or that’s also mobile unfriendly.
• They can’t buy because you don’t offer a one-click solution like PayPal.

Therefore, why it’s imperative to choose a mobile-friendly theme for your WordPress website.

If you have an existing WordPress website that isn’t optimised for mobiles there are some plugins you can use which will help.

JetPack (Free)

Jetpack has a feature that will make your site mobile responsive. It’s called “Mobile Theme” and automatically optimises your site for mobile devices so that it runs quickly and smoothly, including contact forms and image galleries. It’s not as good as having a theme which is already mobile optimised but it’s not a bad second best if that’s not an option.

WPTouch Pro

WPTouch helps optimise websites to run faster. This includes scaling down images and allowing you to opt for separate content for mobile devices. The home page has a slider to display all your best posts, or categories of post, for easy navigation.

This one is recommended by Google so may help your search engine rankings.

While it’s free, there’s also a paid version that comes with additional features.

WordPress Mobile Pack

This plugin allows you to take your current website and adapt it for mobile browsers, giving it the look and feel of an app. It works across all devices, with a responsive interface that makes it easy to use. You can also customise it so it’s exactly how you want it.

To Your Success!