Even as Shopify is experiencing massive growth, the majority of ecommerce stores are built on WordPress. 

In fact, 42% of the ecommerce sites on the internet are built on WordPress’ biggest ecommerce platform, WooCommerce:^[*] 

If you have an ecommerce store build on WordPress, you can customize your online store to look and function exactly how you want it to with plugins. 

From triggering social proof to increasing conversions and creating a better user experience, there are WordPress plugins for everything.

So I rounded up the best of the best WordPress plugins for your ecommerce site. 

Oh, and you don’t have to use WooCommerce to use them. We have another guide for that. You can benefit from these plugins no matter what WordPress ecommerce platform you use. 

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Don’t want to install 16 plugins on your site and risk slowing it down? Click here to get the cheat sheet of the top 6 best WordPress plugins every ecommerce store NEEDS.

WordPress Plugins for Selling

You wouldn’t have an ecommerce store if you didn’t sell anything. Here are the best plugins for selling. 

#1: WooCommerce

Key Takeaway: WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce platform for WordPress. Click here to install WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is hands-down the most popular plugin for ecommerce stores on WordPress. In fact, they have 94.3% of the WordPress store market share, blowing all other ecommerce WordPress platforms out of the water:^[*] 

WooCommerce is an entirely customizable WordPress ecommerce platform, allowing you to transform your WordPress site into a thriving ecommerce store based on what you need. Whether you sell digital or physical products, services, or subscriptions, WooCommerce allows you to do that all on their simple and efficient platform.

It allows you to: 

• Embed products on any page
• Take unlimited orders
• Sell affiliate products. 

Because it’s such a huge platform, there are thousands of extensions and themes available for WooCommerce, so you can make your store do anything you want it to.

It’s no wonder why 42% of online stores are built on WooCommerce.

WordPress Plugins for User Experience

#2: Relevanssi 

Key Takeaway: Relevanssi replaces the standard WordPress search with a better search engine that gives more relevant results to your visitors based on parameters you can set. Click here to install Relevanssi.

If somebody’s searching for a product on your site and they use the default WordPress search bar, they’re likely not going to get the result they’re looking for. 

That’s because WordPress’ native search function is a bit too simple. It’ll bring up all the relevant results on your site, rather than just products (or just articles). 

That’s where Relevanssi comes in. 

You can limit the search to only your ecommerce products by checking off only “page” so when users search, they don’t find your blog content, too. Or if you want them to find your blog content, leave “post” checked off. 

Relevanssi also brings up results based on partial terms. For example, if your customer wanted to find “ecommerce packaging” by typing in “ecomm packaging” on your site, Relevanssi will show results with the entire word, too. 

It’s simple, it’s easy, and it makes your site more user-friendly. 

#3: 404page

Key Takeaway: 404page lets you create a custom 404 page that can point visitors to other parts of your store. Click here to install 404page.

If you don’t have this plugin, when your users click to a page that doesn’t exist and gives a 404 (which some of them inevitably will), they end up on a page like this: 

Which is okay if you don’t care about branding, building your email list, or keeping your visitors on your site.

Many of the visitors who 404 on your site will leave (and not return). Why not keep them on your site by customizing your 404 page to give them options?

Options like signing up for your email list, suggesting your popular products or content, or even just giving them a peek into your brand like we have: 

404page is compatible with WooCommerce and other ecommerce platforms, so you can stop losing so many visitors to generic 404 pages. 

Or, you could use this next plugin. 

#4: Redirection

Key Takeaway: Redirection lets you redirect 404 pages to existing pages, automatically helps you manage all of your redirections (for example when your page titles change), and lets you identify when people are linking to an old post. Click here to install Redirection.

A 404 page can be a great place to collect your visitors’ email addresses. 

But if you’re not building your email list or would rather redirect them to another page on your site (like a product page), then this is the plugin for you. 

Redirection allows you to redirect all 404 errors to existing pages on your site. 

Ever moved your domain or radically changed your URL structure? It’s easy to redirect the old URL to the new URL without needing to mess with files on your web server. Not sure what 404s people are finding on your site? Look in the logs, and create a redirection right from the plugin.

This plugin can also… 

• Automatically do a redirection when your page URL changes (like when you update a post).
• Let you look through and see when people are linking to an old post.
• Help you see if people are trying to attack your site.

This is one of those plugins you didn’t know could be so useful. 

#5: Broken Link Checker 

Key Takeaway: Broken Link Checker automatically detects broken links in your site and sends you an email notification. Click here to install Broken Link Checker.

Let’s say you just launched a new product. 

You link to it in your menu, put a link in your existing product pages and add a few links to your popular articles. 

You think you’re all set, but there’s a problem: 

You mistyped the link to the product page, meaning all those visitors who would be checking out your new product and potentially buying it? They’re going to a 404 page. 

Sounds like your worst nightmare, right? That means that you’re giving up potentially hundreds of dollars worth of sales each day. 

But not if you have Broken Link Checker. 

Broken Link Checker (you guessed it!) automatically checks links for you and sends you an email to let you know if there are any broken links. 

Saving you from losing sales and making your visitors 404.

#6: WP Performance Profiler

Key Takeaway: WP Performance Profiler monitors and detects plugins that slow down your site. Click here to install WP Performance Profiler.

Plugins take your WordPress site from empty blogging shell to functional ecommerce store, but some plugins can also slow down your site. 

And since page speed (the amount of time it takes for your pages to load for your visitors) impacts SEO, this is bad news.^[*]

 Enter WP Performance Profiler. 

It tells you the average amount of time (in milliseconds) the plugin or theme adds to your page load time, so you can delete the clunky plugins and find an alternative to keep your rankings in Google.

Note: This plugin may require some help from your web developer to set up.

#7: Regenerate Thumbnails

Key Takeaway: Regenerate thumbnails is great if you’ve uploaded your images, changed your thumbnail dimensions, and now have a bunch of thumbnails with the wrong dimensions. Click here to install Regenerate Thumbnails.

If you’ve changed dimensions for your thumbnails in your settings, your existing thumbnails will look wonky. 

This might happen if you’ve switched WordPress themes for example.

This is bad news, though, because product photography is very important to your ecommerce store. You can’t have the thumbnail version of your product images looking out of sorts. 

That’s where Regenerate Thumbnails comes in. 

It allows you to bulk resize your thumbnails so you don’t have to do it manually, saving you loads of time. 

WordPress Plugins for Sales Optimization

#8: Sumo Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut

Key Takeaway: Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut can help you set up a complete cart abandonment strategy that’s been proven to make $100,000s for stores. Click the button below to install Sumo to get the Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut.

Want to reduce cart abandons by up to 10%?

Let me introduce you to the Sumo Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut – a neat app that you set up once, that then reduces your cart abandons forever.

With the Sumo Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut, Sumo’s seen an average reduction in cart abandons of 9.54% for Shopify stores who use it.

So by not using Sumo, for every 100 people who abandon your cart, you could be missing out on 10 new customers.

Here’s exactly what it looks like on BlendJet’s Shopify store, when someone tries to abandon the cart:

This success form is then shown so people can claim the discount offer straight away, without having to search for an email in their inbox:

The result has been $276,912 in new revenue for BlendJet:

On average, every time someone abandons their cart, BlendJet makes $6.57.

This Shopify cart abandonment research study on 10 different Shopify stores proved that these results are standard for any Shopify stores who install the Sumo Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut. All stores using it have made between $7,000 to $311,000 in sales.

#9: Proof

Key Takeaway: Proof builds social proof by letting visitors know about recent purchases made by others and the total number of visitors on any given page. Click here to install Proof.

Social proof is important. 

It gives people FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and proves that your products are worth buying. That’s where Proof comes in. 

Proof is a plugin that allows you to display a notification to shoppers on your site that others have purchased products. 

You could also set it up to display the number of visitors currently browsing the site. 

The notification shows up as a slide-in on your website, so it’s unobtrusive while also giving your site a boost of social proof. 

It also gives you detailed customer profiles about anybody who enters their email addresses, and shows you the customer journey: what pages do they navigate to and what steps do they take before they convert? 

#10: Reviewer WordPress Plugin

Key Takeaway: Reviewer lets customers review your products, lets them upload images, and allows Google rich snippets. Click here to install Reviewer WordPress Plugin.

In 2014, 88% of consumers reported trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations.^[*]

And that stat is for local businesses; can you imagine the impact of online reviews for online businesses?

That’s why it is a good idea to allow your customers to write reviews for your products on your site. 

Reviewer WordPress plugin helps you do that. 

Reviewer WordPress even allows you to set rich snippets, which helps users using search engines understand what’s on your page. Rich snippets are the extra pieces of information that Google displays with your result, like reviews, places, and video images: 

This plugin is simple, easy to use for both you and the customer, and makes your products more trustworthy. 

#11: Testimonials Showcase

Key Takeaway: Testimonials Showcase lets you display testimonials from clients. Click here to install Testimonials Showcase.

Reviews are user-generated, uncurated ratings of your product or service. 

On the other hand, testimonials are usually curated, sought after and displayed by the site owner. 

Testimonials act as social proof and show your customers that your product is trustworthy. So as you gather feedback from your customers, why not display it on your site?

That’s what Testimonials Showcase helps you do. 

You can display the testimonials on a grid or in a slider, complete with the customer’s image and star rating of the product. 

WordPress Plugins for List Building

#12: Sumo Grow Email List Shortcut

Key Takeaway: Grow Email List Shortcut can help you rapidly grow your email list. Click the button below to install Sumo to get the Grow Email List Shortcut.

The Sumo Grow Email List Shortcut is a staple in a successful Shopify stores toolkit.

Many successful Shopify stores have used it to grow their email list by offering:

• $150 store credit (Rhone case study)

• 20% discount email updates (GroceryGetter case study)

Here’s an example of what it looks like (you set a timer, and it shows up after someone has been on your site for X seconds):

Rhone has been using it to grow their email list by 100-200 emails per day:

To do what Rhone did, all you have to do is change the copy on your form to offer store credit vs the standard “get exclusive email updates” copy most stores use.

WordPress Plugins for Search Engine Optimization

#13: SEO by Yoast

Key Takeaway: SEO by Yoast optimizes all SEO aspects in your site. Click here to install SEO by Yoast.

What would ranking on the first page of Google for your top products do for your business?

My guess is that it would bring in a lot more traffic, email addresses, and sales, right?

But it can be tough to track whether you’ve optimized all of your product listings — from the product title, to the description and product options and page titles — it’s enough to make your head spin. Until you install Yoast SEO. 

The Yoast SEO plugin is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists on WordPress.

It takes all the SEO things you’d otherwise have to pay a developer to implement on your site and gives it to you for free.

The Yoast plugin:

• Grades your optimization in a scorecard based on the keyword you’ve identified
• Shows you exactly how your product listings will show up on Google
• Gives you an easy-to-use checklist of things to optimize.

There’s other SEO stuff Yoast takes care of automatically, but all you need to know is this is a plugin you must have on your site if you want more traffic.

#14: Google XML Sitemaps

Key Takeaway: Google XML sitemaps creates special sitemaps which help search engines index your site and show up in search results. Click here to install Google XML Sitemaps.

Yoast has XML sitemaps built in, so if you already installed Yoast you can ignore this plugin. 

However, if you for some reason don’t want to install Yoast, this plugin generates an “XML sitemap” for your site. If you don’t know what that is, all you need to know is that it helps search engines better index your site.

At Sumo our website has thousands of pages, but we don’t waste time creating our own sitemaps. We use a sitemap generator like Google XML Sitemaps to automate it.

Use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to save time and automate your own sitemaps.

WordPress Plugins for Analytics and A/B Testing 

#15: Sumo Google Analytics

Key Takeaway: Sumo Google Analytics allows you to see how many people have visited your page, directly on your page (without having to login to Google Analytics.) Click here to install Sumo to get the Google Analytics app.

You could go all the way to Google Analytics to see your stats. Or you could just use Sumo Analytics to see them directly on the page:

Want to see more than that? Find your site-wide analytics in your Sumo dashboard:

Without ever having to leave your site.

WordPress Plugins for Website Protection & Maintenance

#16: Wordfence Security

Key Takeaway: Wordfence Security is the most downloaded security plugin. It protects your website from attacks. Click here to install Wordfence Security.

Speaking of hackers, have you ever used a site that went down because of a server attack?

You probably can think of at least once where you experienced this, so it’s not exactly rare. 

That probably happened to the site because they weren’t using Wordfence Security. Wordfence Security is the most popular security plugin for WordPress. 

It scans your site, putting up a firewall and allows you even to enable a cell phone signin for an extra layer of security. 

So you can sleep well at night knowing your site won’t be taken down by some dude in pajamas who still lives in his mom’s basement and plays Halo all day (when he’s not trying to hack your site). 

Turn Your ecommerce Store Into a Conversion Machine

I just gave you 16 WordPress plugins to take your ecommerce store from good to great. 

That’s not a number to cough at. So you might be a little overwhelmed with which ones to start with. 

We’ve gathered opinions on the most essential WordPress plugins for your ecommerce store that you absolutely must start with.

If you can only use six of the plugins in this guide, it should be thes. Click the button below and get the starter pack.

Don’t want to install 16 plugins on your site and risk slowing it down? Click here to get the cheat sheet of the top six WordPress plugins every ecommerce store NEEDS.