WordPress is the most popular platform to make a beautiful, fast, and profitable website. With 409 million people viewing 20 billion pages through WordPress each month in 2021, we cannot ignore the impact WordPress has on the internet.
If you have decided to use WordPress you must have come across the term “plugin” during your research. What are plugins and what factors should you consider before choosing the right plugins is what we will find out in this article.
What are WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are tools that add functionality to our site meaning that you can perform certain functions and use a specific feature by using plugins. It really depends on your purpose and what features you want to add to your site. If you own a site where you provide PPC services e.g. “PPC Management New York” then your plugin needs would be very different then if you own a blog on pets.
Coming to variety there are 58,675 options out there which make the search overwhelming but also ensure that there are specific plugins for every user. How to select a plugin? Let’s find out!!!
6 factors to consider before choosing a WordPress plugin
Here are the 6 factors you should consider when you go plugin shopping online!!
1. Make a list of features according to your niche
First things first, you need to make a list of features you want for your site depending on your niche. If you have requirements well-established then your search will be much easier. If you have an e-commerce site then we recommend you try Woo Commerce that will help you set up your online store. You can manage and grow your business with this tool.
If you own a blog then Easy Social Sharing can help you share your posts and pages with a large audience.
2. Check updates and compatibility
After your requirements are well decided it’s time to check for plugins that are well updated. Why does that matter? It matters because a plugin that is recently updated and in routine check by developers works great with the latest version of WordPress.
The last thing you want is to have a plugin that doesn’t work on your site and affects other plugins. How can you check for updated data? You can do that by visiting the WordPress Repository for plugins where you will find WordPress plugins and their respective details. In the details section, you will find the “last update” information.
3. Customer ratings and reviews
Another important factor to consider is how customers perceive a plugin. The ratings on the plugin page and the reviews can tell you a lot about user experience. If a plugin has a 5-star rating then that indicates good performance where a 1-star shows poor results.
After looking at ratings you can also check the review section where people write their experiences. This section can make your views about a plugin very clear but make sure the reviews that YOU consider have a valid reason behind them. Another thing to notice is the number of ratings. If more people have had similar experiences then that makes it more legitimate but even a few reviews with proper reasoning can prove to be right.
Many people don’t leave reviews so you might have to do with what is available!!!
4. Active installations
Now with the ratings, updates and reviews checked let’s see how many people have downloaded the plugin of interest. If the number is high then that indicates that the plugin was useful to many people. It might be the case that a plugin beneficial to your niche may be less popular so you have to keep that in mind.
5. Support
This factor is very important because the first time you use a plugin can make you nervous. That is where support can help you better understand the plugin and ways to tackle uncertainties. On the plugin page, you will see the support section on the sidebar.
In the support section, you can see different threads where people asked questions and where answered. There you can explore the number of issues that got resolved and which didn’t. You will also identify popular issues and queries.
6. Test the speed
With the above tests done, let’s run a final test to make sure we select the best plugin. Use “Pingdom” or any other site to check how the plugin affects the speed of your site. Check the speed after and before activating the plugin. If the plugin greatly slows down your site then leave it otherwise your plugin is good to be installed!!
There are security plugins for WordPress like WordFence and Sucuri they can secure your website from spy apps and other malicious software. And this would have less bandwidth attacks.
Conclusion
In this article, we defined what a plugin is and how you can select the best one. A plugin adds features to your site which make it easy to use and functioning properly. If you are searching for the right one then try to list down what you want according to the nature of your site, check reviews, last updates, ratings, and active downloads.
Make sure to check the support section as well on the plugin page and test the plugin after activating to see if it affects the site speed. With these tests, we are sure you will find the right plugins, and even if there are some mismatches your knowledge about plugins will definitely widen!!!