Must-Have Web Design Plugins for WordPress in 2022
In this age of digital marketing, having a website is almost a necessity for most businesses. This has been especially significant as the coronavirus pandemic hit, and social distancing has been the norm.
The best part about this is that the effects of improving digital marketing in business will remain significant even after the crisis. The growth of e-commerce had slowed in recent years, but there had been growth all the same.
The earlier slowdown itself had been seen to be a temporary thing since e-commerce is said to have seen a 175% increase in 6 years.
With all this in mind, it’s not hard to see why businesses are giving more importance to their online presence. Web design, for one, has turned into a necessary investment for modern businesses.
Investing in Web Design
People have tackled web design in different ways. For those with the money to invest, outsourcing has been a reliable option.
Trying to find the perfect firm for your business can be baffling. If this is the case, try to begin by thinking about your purpose for the site. If you’re a nonprofit, go for a firm that has experience in website design for nonprofits.
Alternatively, others might prefer to invest their own time in this project. It’s a relatively inexpensive approach, if not a time-consuming one. This option will give you much more control over your site since you’ll play a big part in its design.
The emergence of services like WordPress has certainly made things a little easier for either option. WordPress, in particular, allows all sorts of plugins to be used in site development, and even web design firms will use it.
WordPress’s capabilities as a service are evident in its popularity. It’s convenient and easy to learn. Plus, new plugins are being offered constantly, thanks to an active community.
You can only imagine how many plugins there must be for web design alone. Just to give you an idea, if you were to search “web design” on WordPress’ site, you would see there are 49 pages of results!
With that in mind, we’ve compiled web design plugins to get you started:
A big trend with websites is the use of photos for user interaction. They’re nice to look at and you could fit quite a bit of information in them. Problem is, it could get messy if not done right.
Envira Photo Gallery is a plugin that offers a fast, web optimized, and aesthetic gallery. Its functionality includes drag and drop and a responsive interface. It’s an intuitive design that promotes productivity.
Out of the box, it comes with templates and the option to make your own. The plugin also allows you to add social media sharing buttons to the gallery.
It’s not hard to see why this tool is a must-have for web design.
Talking about photos, WP Smush helps you optimize them. It’s a handy plugin that helps you keep your site’s loading times low.
This is an important factor in SEO. Page loading speeds are factors for your site’s rank. Smush takes that into account and simultaneously keeps your photos crisp and clear.
It does this through its unique compression algorithm. Often, uncompressed or badly compressed files cause page loading times to substantially increase.
For busy users, Smush will let you do things automatically. Enabling the option in the settings lets you “asynchronously auto-smush” your files.
It also gives you the option to defer images still offscreen, also known as lazy loading. The best part about it is all that comes for free.
This plugin is not strictly a web design plugin, but has the web designer in mind. It’s a drag and drop page builder that makes designing your layout a breeze.
Visual Composer page builder caters to both professionals and amateurs. With the emphasis on its drag and drop function, adding and placing elements is a breeze, a much easier job for the web designer.
Additionally, it even automatically helps you make your site responsive. For web designers, this helps you see how your final layout looks on other screens.
Visual Composer lets users do all this, even without prior coding experience. This will allow a great number of people to take a more proactive role in their web design.
You’re going to want your content to be shared far and wide, right? Well, adding this plugin allows you to do just that with any part of your page.
UltimatelySocials’ share buttons are a highly adaptive addition to your page. Page designers are given the capability to add customized sharing buttons that fit the site’s layout.
The share buttons themselves are highly customizable. Off the bat, the plugin lets you choose from 16 different designs.
As a bonus feature, the plugin will let web designers assign more than one function to the buttons. For example, the share buttons themselves could link visitors to your social media page.
In Conclusion
The bottom line is: it’s all about what your site needs. It can be tempting to hit “download” for every plugin or template you find. This is especially true with all the free plugins available on the market.
Try to have a “blueprint” for your site. Basing your decisions on this blueprint will help you set priorities for different tasks.
Templates and page builders help people set websites up, from blogs to online WordPress stores. It’s important to know what you need when designing your site.
It doesn’t have to be the hardest job. Stick to your plan, do your homework, and your efforts will be rewarded sooner rather than later. Lastly, have in mind that web design constantly changes. So, if you realize it’s time for a design upgrade you can always redesign your existing website.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
