What Makes A Great WordPress Plugin?

WordPress plugins are an incredibly essential part of any WordPress website. But what makes a truly great WordPress plugin?

Plugins exist to perform the necessary functions of a WordPress website so it can successfully reach online consumers and facilitate good and services. A good WordPress plugin will be very user-friendly, high quality and have good support.

One way to tell if a WordPress plugin is good is by determining if the plugin solves a problem. Say you need a table of contents on your WordPress website to make page navigation easier for users as your website grows. Having a table of contents plugin would solve that problem.

WordPress is the most popular content management system available online and this is due in large part to the existence of WordPress plugins. Right now, there are thousands of plugins available from WordPress.org as well as thousands from third-party developers and other companies, both free and paid.

While these plugins provide helpful services for WordPress, the large number of them over saturate the market for plugins and make it more difficult to easily determine which plugins are the best and most efficient for WordPress users.

1) Overall Quality

The overall quality of the plugin is without a doubt the most important aspect of a successful WordPress plugin. Plugins which are a great quality run smoothly with no interruptions or issues and don’t slow down site speed.

The plugins which work the best tend to be developed over time and tweaked until any issues have been resolved. In addition, plugins that tend to be the top quality can also be rather simple to create and use. Good quality plugins don’t have to be complex to be successful, they just have to work and solve a problem.

2) Problem Solving

A good WordPress plugin will solve a problem that a website needs a solution to. A problem that needs a solution creates a purpose for a WordPress plugin, which means that there will also be a demand for it. Customers will use a plugin because it accurately and quickly performs the need for which it was installed.

3) Functionality

The simplest way to tell if a plugin is working correctly is if the plugin is correctly performing the function it is supposed to do. WordPress users choose plugins because they have a problem which they need solving and the plugin they choose offers a good solution.

For developers, it’s important to understand that a good quality plugin is built with good coding. Coding is the building blocks of a good plugin, so if there is an issue or bug within the coding, then the overall plugin will have performance issues that will greatly affect functionality.

4) Simple

Keep it simple. Great quality plugins do not have to be incredibly complex. Good WordPress plugins just have to fulfill a need for a website and complete their function easily and without issue. If you want customizable widgets, download a plugin just for that.

The plugins on your website don’t have to perform dozens of functions either since this makes them more complex, harder to use, and easier to malfunction. Having a simpler plugin will increase functionality, being user-friendly and popularity.

5) User Experience

An excellent user experience is essential to a great WordPress plugin. Customers who visit a website that doesn’t fully load quickly or is difficult to navigate will leave and not come back. This idea holds true for plugins as well, since if they don’t work there is no reason for people to use them.

The plugin dashboard should also be visibly clear and simple to navigate in an effort to improve onboarding. There are so many plugin options that people won’t wait for plugins to be fixed, they will simply move on to a plugin that is known to work and has a good user experience.

6) Customer Support

Support is another essential part of any good WordPress plugin, as even great plugins will need support on some level. Having excellent support allows for first-time users to get step by step help, and bugs or issues can be easily reported so they can be resolved.

Users can also easily request new features or changes for future updates that can improve functionality and overall quality. Customer support includes everything from support tickets, live chat support, community forums and knowledgebases with full documentation.

7) Quality Control

Creating and building a great WordPress plugin takes time and will need to be updated and fixed as time goes by. Having good quality control is important to fix and prevent bugs and running manual tests is a good way to ensure good quality control. When newer versions of plugins are introduced, it’s important to make sure the quality is maintained with each release.

8) Marketing

Marketing is an essential part of great WordPress plugins because customers need to know that a helpful plugin exists so that they can use it. Without marketing, no one would know about plugins which could help them. While plugin developers may not factor in marketing while creating a plugin, but even the name is important.

A large part of marketing is making content popular in search engines and in WordPress.org. Using keywords in the description and content is key, as well as promoting on social media. Also, a great plugin will naturally be marketed in the digital world if it’s truly the best option.

Conclusion

If you follow these eight simple steps, you have an excellent starting point to build and execute a helpful and successful WordPress plugin. It’s important that a plugin creates a need or solve a problem and be of the absolute best quality.

A great WordPress plugin will be simple, user-friendly, fully functional, have good customer support, quality control and excellent marketing to reach the biggest audience. When it comes to cost, a good WordPress plugin doesn’t need to be pricey either.

Following these steps is a helpful way to create a great WordPress plugin, although something great doesn’t happen overnight or without its issues either. It’s a good list for both customers looking for a helpful plugin as well as plugin developers who are rebuilding something useful.