If you are a B2B consultant, you know that a well designed, fully functional website is key to impressing clients. And nothing operates a website better than WordPress and its array of plugins for every possible use.
But with so many to choose from, which B2B plugins for WordPress are the cream that rise to the top, especially for your specific needs? To create a WordPress site able to successfully target your clients and even handle transactions and other functions needed for your business, you may want to consider the following.
B2B Plugins for WordPress
WP-Invoice – Web Invoice & Billing
Let’s start with one of the most important of all – at least from your perspective. WP-Invoice is a plugin which enables you to generate an invoice right from your website.
Once the invoice has been generated, the client gets a link to the invoice, via email, so they can pay you. Payment methods include credit card payments via Authorize.net and MerchantPlus’ NaviGate. Or there are also the reliable standbys of PayPal and Google Checkout.
Demandbase
This plugin works in conjunction with the Demandbase marketing cloud platform which describes itself as “the only solution purpose-built for B2B.”
With this plugin, you can customize content for each website visitor based on their company profile, or you can dynamically insert company profile attributes into the site copy (such as the company name and size). This allows each visitor to your site to see only what matters to them.
eLander
The plugin works in conjunction with the eLander service, and provides “visitor intelligence capabilities” for your website. According to eLander, the service will “support your sales and marketing force to watch out for valuable prospects.” You will know who is researching your company, and as a B2B consultant, this kind of advance intelligence is invaluable.
Another feature is that the plugin will also assist you in conforming with EU law by gaining a visitor’s consent before placing your cookies on his or her website.
All-In-One-SEO-Pack
On a more basic level, if you would like potential clients to visit your website, they need to be able to find you first. This SEO plugin makes it easier to meet your search engine requirements by focusing on the essentials.
This includes generating a sitemap, optimizing titles and meta-tags, and making sure that your links are constructed in a way that make them search-engine friendly.
Custom Sidebars
If you operate a WordPress site, you probably already know that the sidebar is probably the most valuable piece of real estate that you own. There is so much information you can put in your site’s sidebar, which is why Custom Sidebars is a plugin to consider.
Using the plugin, you can have a set sidebar for pages, posts, archives, and more. So visiting a post reveals one sidebar while visiting a page reveals another. This increases the number of sidebars you can show your visitors and an increase in the amount of information you can share with them.
Google Analytics for WordPress
When it comes to SEO and analytics, Joost De Valk is considered to be one of the top experts in the field. So any plugin that he makes is widely considered to be essential for the smooth running of your WordPress site.
This plugin integrates with your Google Analytics account, and provides a wide range of useful features. These include automatically placing your tracking code into your website, connecting your AdSense account, and tracking of various stats.
Editorial Calendar
To show your clients the wide range and breadth of your experience, it is essential to have constantly updated and fresh content on your site. And that is where the hugely helpful Editorial Calendar comes in.
The calendar will give you an overview of all scheduled posts, showing you what is going out when. And if you want to move a post, you can do it right within the calendar via drag-and-drop!
Google Sitemap Generator
For some people, the SEO plugin which we have just looked at is too much to handle. If that is the case, then at the very least, you need to use this Google sitemap generator.
A sitemap is a list of your website’s content which the search engine spiders crawl for their indexes.
Despite the name, this plugin will aid not only Google, but also Bing and Yahoo, to better index your website.
Backup Buddy
If there is one thing certain in life, it is that websites crash or are hacked. If you rely on your website for your living, then having a website go down could be a major disaster. Every minute it is down translates to lost dollars. And lost content and data are often irreplaceable.
Backup Buddy is a solution to one of these issues. It is not free – prices start at $80 a year. But break that down to a monthly amount and you will realize that you need this as an insurance policy.
Backup Buddy backs up to trusted and reliable services such as Dropbox and Amazon Web Services, so you’ll have the confidence that your data is being stored safely.
Askimet
When you have a potential client visiting your WordPress site, the first thing guaranteed to put them off is spam in your comments section. Everyone hates it, and having it widely appear on your site implies that it is poorly maintained. Askimet can be your best friend here.
After registering for a free key, activate Askimet and, right away, it will use its huge index of known spam to block much of it from appearing on your site. Note however that Askimet is not perfect – some spam still manages to slip through. So you still need to keep an eye on your comments section.
WP-Super Cache
When you are a big successful B2B consultant, the traffic to your website will start to heat up. And the increased amount of traffic will place a heavy burden on your Internet Service Provider. This will slow your site down, and finally crash it.
WP-Super Cache will generate copies of your pages, and then show them to the vast majority of your visitors, thereby lessening the burden on your ISP. This means, however, that any changes you make to your pages will take some time to show on your site, since the cache will be showing the previous copy of the page.
Hubspot
This plugin works alongside your Hubspot account. Hubspot advertises itself as an “all-in-one marketing software” and it provides services such as landing pages, calls-to-action, form building tools, marketing automation, and lead intelligence tools.
Hubspot is not free, but you can sign up for a free 30 day trial period to test drive the service first.
Salesforce WordPress
This one works alongside your Salesforce account. The plugin sends all of your potential sales leads to your Salesforce account, so you can follow up with them later, and not miss any of them.
Next Gen Gallery
The old axiom “a picture is worth a thousand words” is still true. A visitor to your site will respond better to a photo than a lot of website copy. That is where Next Gen Gallery comes in to give your site a visual flair.
The plugin lets you easily flip through a gallery of photos and choose what you’d like to use to spruce up your site. Its a place to keep images of yourself, your company headquarters, satisfied customers, or other images that can create the look and feel your blog needs.
WP-Touch
Finally, here’s a plugin to help make your site more mobile-friendly. With the popularity of mobile on the rise, it has become absolutely necessary to have a mobile Website.
But making a mobile version can be prohibitively expensive, and therefore probably out of your reach. WP-Touch can help you avoid those costs and provide a nicely formatted mobile version of your site for free. No frills, but it still gets the job done.
Which plugins do you use on your WordPress site?
The post 15 Clever WordPress Plugins For B2B Consultants appeared first on Small Business Trends.
Source: Small Business Trends
15 Clever WordPress Plugins For B2B Consultants
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