In commercial real estate website design, we don’t have many out of the box plugins that match with our niche requirements.  To help you on your search, I’ve provided a few suggestions on plugins to add to your website!

Drift ChatDrift Chat is an easy-to-use chat function for your website.  People can click on the little “Message” icon at the bottom-right of their screen and send you a direct message.  This message pops up on your mobile phone instantaneously – chat in real time anywhere!  You can even set the chat to start/stop at certain days and times I.E. only allow messages from 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday.  I suggest you leave it on during the weekend – you’ll be shocked at how many people want to chat on Sunday morning.  (shrug)

Yoast SEO – SEO is a long-game, and one of the first things you can do is create a meta title and description for each page.  The labeling of your website pages will help search engines categorize and read the website’s content.  Additional features like featured images for social media sharing make this plugin a must-have!

HubSpot – HubSpot has a free WordPress plugin that tracks your users as they visit your website.  You’ll be able to see what page they visited, how long they stayed on those pages, and their landing page.  Great data that makes it easy to start conversations with potential leads.

GA Google AnalyticsBefore you say, “duh” you’ll be shocked at how many people never track their website traffic or conversions.  If you don’t have an account, open your Google Analytics account today and setup your tracking.  Even if you only check it once a year, it’s better to collect data than to never have it.

Cerber Security – “No one would want to hack my website!”  HA!!!  Now-a-days, hackers don’t need to have a beef with you personally to hack your website.  They use “web crawlers” to search the vast expanses of the internet for vulnerabilities.  If you don’t update your WordPress, themes, and plugins on a regular basis (once a month) you are vulnerable.  One way to lock out these attempts is by using Cerber Security.  It limits login attempts, requires captcha to login, and requests authorization for suspicious characters.