Our Top 5 favourite WordPress Plugins for your WordPress website!

WP Smush By WPMU DEV

For us, the load times of the websites that we create are crucial. Not only for the benefit of the clients and their customers. But also for the SEO boost that having a fast loading website gives you.

When developing a website we always ensure that images are fully optimised in Photoshop before being uploaded to a website. However, on handover and after training the images file size can often start to increase. As a result this makes the website bloated and slow loading. This is typically due to clients uploading high-resolution images taken straight from a camera! Often skipping the optimisation part we told them about!

Simply put, multiple high-resolution images on a single page can bring your website to it’s knees. We’ve seen some websites with about 50mb of images on one page, a huge no no. Therefore we always recommend compressing your images using software like Photoshop for WP Smush to work its magic.

Contact Form 7 By Takayuki Miyoshi

Contact from 7 is a really simple and easy plugin to use. It allows users to send form submissions via your website directly to any email address you want. It does require a bit of know how to set up and tailor the fields. However once it’s all set up – it performs wonderfully.

Contact Form 7 is very well maintained with regular updates and is compatible with the latest version of WordPress. There are some great add-ons too that we’ve used such as Contact Form 7 – Conditional FieldsBy Jules Colle. This enables the users to add specific fields for specific user entries or selections.

Slider Revolution By Themepunch

Slider Revolution is a premium slider plugin we’ve been using for a number of years. This plugin is not a free to use plugin, however the cost for this plugin is certainly justified! After experimenting with various free sliders and rotating carousel WordPress plugins (and premium ones), this was the one we settled on. It may take you some time fiddling with layers, effects and settings but you’ll get there.

Once you know how to use Slider Revolution you’ll want to use it for everything. Over the last year or so the developers have really optimised the plugin to be more lightweight. Ensure you optimise your images you’re using in your slider and you’ll be fine. Additionally check out the ‘lazy Load’ features!

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (formerly GADWP) By ExactMetrics

The benefits of using Google Analytics on your website cannot be understated. Having the insight of your users or customers clicks, searches and interactions is truly invaluable. This not only provides you with data on your existing content but provides you with useful information on how you can continue to grow and highlight areas you should be focusing on.

Back in the day there were several other Google Analytics plugins, but these have fallen by the wayside due to lack of support with the later WordPress versions.

GDPR Cookie Compliance By Moove Agency

With the new legislation of GDPR in the UK using cookie opt-in WordPress plugins is now something of a compulsory requirement. To collect your user’s or customer’s date you now need explicit consent. This is in the form of a user or customer action like checking a box to confirm they agree to submitting their info. No longer can you dupe the user with annoyingly complex wording into signing them up to your mailing list. For example “Click this checkbox if you agree that by not clicking this checkbox you are happy for us to send you emails”. Not only is this confusing and infuriating it is now against GDPR law.

This plugin also allows control over what cookies are stored from users visiting your website and how. The control panel is easy to navigate and options and settings easy to understand.