Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 The world is changing – more and more people are looking for effective ways of establishing a web presence, either for themselves, their private business or a company they are a part of. This is a good thing. It means that we can look forward to more widely available information on various fields, and that exchanging cash for products and services will become even easier as time goes by. However, people make changes gradually as it takes time to adjust to new technologies and a different way of thinking. New strategies need to be applied and new skills acquired before a person or organization can strive in this vast virtual frontier. We see new websites popping up left and right, looking pretty basic or even bizarre, and there are, of course, many old timers that fail to keep up with the times. This is understandable, not everyone is a programmer, and even amongst those who dabble in programming the true experts are spaced apart fire and wide. This is when content management systems like Joomla or WordPress come to the rescue. They make it a whole lot easier for the uninitiated to create their own websites, make changes and perform maintenance. WordPress in particular has become a staple amongst bloggers, and it is not difficult to see why – you can get a hang of it pretty quickly, it is easy to set up and use and it is great for SEO. It is perfect for simple business, e-commerce and content-driven websites. One of the perks of WordPress is the added functionality offered by the thousands of available plugins. The plugins listed below, in ascending order, have all been rated with 4.5 stars or greater and have been purchased over 2,500 times – making them the most popular WordPress plugins currently available. uSquare – Universal Responsive Grid for WordPress With an exceptional 4.54 average rating and just over 2,500 purchases at the time of writing, the uSquare plugin seems to be high in demand. As the name would suggest it is a responsive grid which enables you to display images and text, with some additional functions available as well. It is perfect for team pages on company websites, as it allows a decent-sized image to be displayed in a square next to square containing information (name, rank and serial number, so to speak). Each image can be clicked on to uncover a true wealth of information on the team member, with an available scroller, and buttons linking to social networks and email addresses. It can also be used for displaying items offered for sale on an e-commerce website. The uSquare plugin can be customized to a great extent to fit an intended purpose, and for any questions you might have or problems you might face, the author has a dedicated support forum. Justified Image Grid – Premium WordPress Gallery An excellent choice for a WP gallery, the Justified Image Grid plugin has a very high average rating of 4.75 stars and has been purchased over 3,500 times. It allows for several image sources and has 200 different settings as well as 18 preset styles available for the user to choose from. You can use an unlimited range of colors for borders, shadows, captions and overlays (where you can also set the opacity). You also have at your disposal some very nice effects such as desaturation, sepia, glowing and blurring. A particularly beautiful effect is the blended blur or Orton effect, where the images gain a soft blurring effect, as if looking through light mist or sleepy eyes. Several lightbox choices are also available. The plugin is compatible with mobile devices and allows swiping. As an additional bonus you get a 50 page PDF document to help you out in troubleshooting. Quform – WordPress Form Builder The Quform plugin has an average rating of 4.75 stars and has been purchased a little over 7000 times. Why is it so popular you might ask? Well, it keeps the user well away from any code typing, allowing you to create custom forms in just a few quick clicks. Creating forms with this plugin is as simple as dragging and dropping elements. A total of 15 element types are included. You can use conditional logic to determine weather additional fields will be opened or not. A variety of themes both dark and light are included, but you have the ability to create your own theme as well as choose from a range of different types of forms and layouts. It really is as simple as arranging the elements, typing in the text and clicking through the available options – you end up with the right form without typing even a single line of code, in just a couple of minutes, if that. RoyalSlider – Touch Content Slider for WordPress Averaging a 4.63 star rating and with over 12,000 purchases the RoyalSlider is a true CodeCanyon top seller. The plugin’s incredible popularity stems from the fact that it is not only responsive, but actually created with mobile devices in mind. This is an image gallery and content slider which fully enables the use of touchscreen technology, i.e. quickly swiping across a number of images with your finger. It can be used in several different variants, including: full width slider, slider with animated blocks, slider in lightbox, a simple vertical slider, gallery with fade and vertical thumbs, gallery with deep linking, gallery with visible nearby images, image gallery with full screen option, video gallery and HTML content slider. It also enables lazy-loading (preloading nearby images) and allows the use of several sliders per single page. It includes four skins that the user can edit using CSS, and has quick transitions. These plugins are popular for a reason – they are hot sellers because they offer the WordPress user a high level of utility as well as aesthetic appeal. In a world where everything has to be done as soon as possible, where we have to adapt quickly and impress the hordes of online consumers, in the hope of improving traffic and conversion rate, it is essential that we have the proper tools at our disposal. These great plugins can make a significant impact on how well we fare in our online endeavors, so they are well worth the tiny investment. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article was written for Business 2 Community by Ivan Dimitrijevic.Learn how to publish your content on B2C Author: Ivan Dimitrijevic Follow @urbanosaurus1 Director of Demand Generation @ Funky Marketing | We Create Demand Generation Programs To Help B2B Companies Generate Consistent Revenue Growth Search Engine Optimization, Social Media and Marketing and Sales professional since 2003.Author & Blogger. My favorite topics: Tech, Business, Digital & Social Media, Demand Generation.Ex chess professional and… View full profile ›More by this author:How to Manage a Professional Facebook Profile5 Useful Gadgets Every Vehicle NeedsCreating Your Unique Business Brand