New customer behaviors, expectations, and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence are laying a foundation for a digital transformation to streamline operations, improve customer service, and optimize marketing efforts.

This article will explore 15 fresh and effective WooCommerce plugins that can give you a competitive edge in 2023. These plugins are designed to enhance user experience, highlight your products effectively, minimize cart abandonment and recover lost sales, optimize your marketing efforts, and ultimately boost your sales.

1. AI Engine

According to its download statistics, this may currently be one of the fastest-growing WordPress plugins. Artificial intelligence is a hot topic, and this plugin does an excellent job capitalizing on it. AI Engine allows you to effortlessly generate content, correcting grammar and spelling, and translating content using OpenAI’s API.

This plugin is being actively developed, and new features are regularly added. Be sure to try this one to create better WooCommerce product descriptions that are more marketable and SEO friendly, resulting in more visits and better sales.

Pros

• User-friendly design and easy to get started using all of the features.
• Excellent for creating new WooCommerce products as it can help with generating all of the necessary input fields instantly.
• Ability to train AI to do specific tasks for you. This one, however, gets a bit technical and is more intended for advanced users familiar with AI concepts; • Built-in image generation with the help of AI is very convenient for creating featured images, but there is also a downside which will be addressed in the “Cons” section; • Knowledgeable and quick support from the plugin developer.

Cons

• Chat feature currently does not have access to the website’s content; therefore, it is not content aware, which is something you would expect from a support assistant.
• Since the plugin relies heavily on tools like OpenAI and they are still in the early stages of development, generated content can be complete fiction.
• Since image generation is based on DALL-E, all images are square-shaped. You must manually crop them to fit your desired aspect ratio.

2. CartBounty

Shopping cart abandonment is a major challenge many businesses face when running an online store. It happens when a customer adds items to their cart, maybe starts the checkout process, but does not go through with the purchase. CartBounty tries to save these shopping carts so that store managers have information about such events and helps to recover them by sending abandoned cart reminder messages.

It has a free version with essential features and a paid plan that adds additional features and integrations. An excellent plugin for dealing with shopping cart abandonment to increase sales and stay competitive. It also is being actively developed and is receiving updates regularly.

Pros

• Monitor every shopping cart in real-time.
• Various options for abandoned cart reminders – emails, SMS text messages, web push notifications, and the possibility to expand to additional media using webhooks.
• Ability to track the progress of the abandoned cart recovery process.
• Option to include generated coupon codes to increase sales.
• Various built-in efficiency tools for limiting shopping cart abandonment and increasing customer contact information collection.
• Multiple language support.
• Well considered user experience.
• Good plugin support.

Cons

• Currently lacking good abandoned cart analytics.

3. Product Feed PRO

Product feeds are often an overlooked method for businesses to improve product visibility beyond the boundaries of their online stores.

A product feed is a file that contains a list of products and their attributes, organized in a way that can be readily displayed, advertised, or compared on different marketing channels. By creating and distributing accurate and up-to-date product feeds, businesses can improve their visibility on search engines, comparison shopping engines, and marketplaces, reaching a wider audience and increasing sales.

This plugin lets you quickly configure and generate WooCommerce product feeds for all your marketing channels, such as Google Shopping (merchant center), Facebook, Remarketing, TikTok product catalog, and many more.

Pros

• Simple to set up and quickly start creating product feeds.
• More than 100 pre-defined templates for various marketing channels and comparison shopping websites for each country.
• Advanced features such as category and field mapping, rule-based filtering, and product variables support.
• Good product support from the plugin developer.

Cons

• Can take a lot of time to go through and setup feeds for each country and all of the various systems.
• Take care with new product version releases as sometimes they lack solid testing and may cause errors.

4. LiveChat

Fast and convenient communication channels available to customers when placing an order can be the determining factor between completing the purchase or seeking an alternative store.

Many businesses struggle with cart abandonment and lost sales due to customers’ unanswered questions or concerns during checkout. This live chat plugin allows customers to talk to you directly from your WooCommerce website, enabling you to instantly address any questions and give customers the confidence to make a purchase.

With features such as automated messages to proactively contact customers when they get stuck on the checkout page, and chat invitations to increase customer engagement, this plugin provides a comprehensive solution for improving your shopping experience and increasing sales.

Pros

• Good user experience and overall design.
• Automated messages if customers get stuck somewhere in your store.
• Ability to see customer’s current shopping cart contents for better support.
  
• Built-in ticketing system for tracking communication progress and history.
• Chat window customization options.
• Use the desktop app for quick and convenient responses to inquiries.
• Easily integrates with other external applications.

Cons

• Not sure if this is a con or rather a strategic decision, but consider hiring a knowledgeable support specialist or assigning priority to live chat for an existing employee who can provide assistance and support to customers when they have questions.

5. InvoiceBoo

You might wonder why an invoice generation plugin is included in this list of plugins for increasing sales. Well, it’s not just a simple invoicing tool. Optimizing the checkout process can help boost sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment.

When customers must fill out lengthy forms with multiple fields and provide detailed information during checkout, it can create unnecessary friction and frustration, possibly leading to cart abandonment. InvoiceBoo allows customers to provide company details required for the invoice after the order has been placed, keeping the checkout process shorter. It can be handy for businesses selling virtual or downloadable products as they do not require calculating shipping costs. With InvoiceBoo, customers can easily view, update, and download their invoices, whether registered or signed in as guests.

Pros

• Simple and fast to get started.
• Beautiful and easy-to-use user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
• Professional-looking invoices, including the option to download them as PDF documents.
• Lower cart abandonment ratio and ask for business details after the order.
• Ability to customize pre-designed Invoice templates.

Cons

• You will need to use another plugin that allows you to edit the WooCommerce checkout form and remove fields.
• Best suited for businesses that sell goods and services that do not require shipping.

6. Wishlist and Save For Later

Wishlist and Save for Later for WooCommerce is a plugin that improves customer experience by enabling customers to create lists and save products for later. How can such lists help businesses? I will list a couple of ideas:

• Increased engagement. Prolonged engagement can lead to higher brand recognition, repeat visits, and higher chances of conversion in the future.
• Customer insights. Analyzing wishlist data can provide valuable insights into customer preferences, popular products, and trends. Use this information for planning your marketing activities and strategy to improve your efforts.
• Personalized marketing. Since you know what your customers are interested in, you can remind them about these items, create sales and inform them about them individually according to their preferences.

This plugin allows customers to quickly add products to their wish list or save them for later, providing a convenient way to track their favorite products and return them to pick them up later. I love how easy and pleasing the customer experience has been designed for this plugin.

Pros

• Beautiful and excellent customer experience design.
• Great compatibility with WordPress themes.
• Users can share their wish lists with others.
• Easy to look through and search contents of all wishlists.
• Many customization options to tailor this feature to your needs.

Cons

• The free version is somewhat limited and provides just the basic features and a glimpse into the powerful features it holds.
• Reporting could be improved with additional graphs and more analytics.

7. WPFunnels

This plugin is a catch in terms of how it looks, feels, and works! This plugin enables you to create sales funnels. For those unfamiliar with this term, here is a brief description.

A sales funnel is a marketing concept that describes a customer’s journey from initial awareness of a product or service to the final purchase. They are helping businesses by providing a structured approach to guiding customers through the buying process. By understanding the different stages of the funnel and tailoring their marketing efforts to each stage, businesses can more effectively engage with customers and maximize their sales. Sales funnels also provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, helping companies to optimize their marketing strategies and overall performance.

WPFunnels provides a visual drag-and-drop funnel builder that allows anyone to easily create highly converting sales funnels within WordPress without any prior funnel-building experience. With features such as pre-made templates for several niches, order bump offers at the checkout, and one-click upsell offers after checkout, this plugin provides a comprehensive solution for creating and managing sales funnels to help businesses increase their sales and improve their overall performance.

Pros

• Outstanding built-in funnel development process without the requirement to leave the WordPress dashboard.
• Ability to test funnels using A/B testing thus improving sales.
• Pre-made templates for various niches.
• Sell more enabling order bump offers at the checkout, including one-click upsell offers.
• Integrates very well with popular theme builders like Elementor, Divi, and others.
• Detailed and great reports and analytics.
• Fast and responsive product support.

Cons:

• I find that the free version is very limited and allows you to test the product.

8. XT Quick View

When people are shopping online, they want to see the products up close and learn more about them before they decide to buy them in a fast and quick manner. Product quick view allows customers to click on a product and see more pictures and information about the product without leaving the page they are on. This feature can generate more sales since visitors can browse products faster and get more information in the limited time they are in your store.

XT Quick View plugin provides store owners with an interactive and beautiful product quick view modal with various display options that provide quick access to main product information. It is a simple yet efficient and beautiful plugin that easily integrates with WordPress themes.

Pros

• Smooth animations and beautiful out-of-the-box responsive design that looks great also on mobile devices with smaller screens.
• Various settings and customization options.
• Ability to quickly switch between next and previous products inside a quick view modal window.
• Multiple quick view modal styles (default, fullscreen, inline).
• Quick and easy to set up.

9. Variation Swatches

WooCommerce allows the creation of products with variations that the end-user can later select. However, the user is presented with dropdowns that are not very convenient or beautiful. That is where Variation Swatches for WooCommerce comes in to assist and improve user interface and overall user experience. This plugin helps to display product variations in an attractive, visual, and user-friendly manner.

This plugin lets businesses showcase product variations using color, image, or label swatches, creating a visually appealing and intuitive customer experience. Simplifying the selection process enhances customer satisfaction and ultimately drives more sales.

Pros

• Excellent at improving the overall customer experience when looking at variable products. Instantly displays out-of-stock variation options.
• Ability to add variation selection on all product pages, allowing customers to quickly see and select desired variation without the requirement to open the product page.
• Seamlessly integrates with XT Quick View plugin, presenting all variation features inside the modal window.

Cons

• Lots of customization options. It can get complicated, and it takes time to go through all of them.

10. Customer Reviews Collector

Customer reviews are another critical feature that can enhance sales — if they are good ones :)

Reviews provide social proof, build trust with potential customers, and can improve search engine rankings. When you see that other customers have had a positive experience with a business, you are more likely to trust that business and go through with a purchase.

However, collecting positive customer reviews is something many businesses are struggling with since not all customers want or have the time to leave reviews after the deal. Customer Reviews Collector for WooCommerce is a simple but effective plugin that automatically sends review invitations to customers following a successful order.

The setup is relatively simple and quick - you provide a link where customers can leave reviews, set when the invitation should be sent, and customize the message. In addition, this plugin has an “Intelligent review invitation system” that helps avoid negative reviews by suggesting contacting support instead of leaving a review lower than three stars. Overall a simple yet effective tool for gathering reviews and potentially increasing sales.

Pros

• Very simple to set up and start using.
• Beautiful and seamless user experience design.
• Built-in system for avoiding negative reviews.
• Beautiful and solid reporting dashboard to keep track of the review process, how many emails have been opened and links clicked.
• Ability to integrate with the most popular review platforms and display collected reviews on your store.
• No limits on how many emails can be sent out as review invitations.
• It is a free plugin.

Cons

• Lacks integration with professional email platforms. WordPress email server is not the most stable one, so it would be an excellent option to have an alternative here.

11. Link Whisper

This small but clever plugin helps to keep your website’s internal links in good health. Why is this important? Keeping them alive and healthy is vital for search engine optimization (SEO), which brings new visitors to your website. Here are a couple of reasons to keep them in order:

• Internal links help distribute page authority and link equity throughout your website. When you link to a page on your site, you pass some authority and trust from that page to the linked page. This helps search engine crawlers quickly go through different pages of your website through a single link. As a result, your website gets better recognition and higher domain authority.
• Internal linking can enhance user experience, improve engagement and page views and drive users toward conversions.

Link Whisper is a plugin that helps businesses scan through posts and pages and suggest linking opportunities between pages. Once a post gets published, Link Whisper uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant links based on your content automatically. It can also create internal links based on your target keywords. By improving the internal linking structure of your website, Link Whisper can help you increase engagement, improve SEO, and get more traffic to your site.

Pros

• Great analytics and reporting on the status of internal links.
• Simple, easy to understand, and user-friendly design.
• Helps to quickly find linking opportunities in WordPress posts and pages to increase internal links and improve SEO.
• Uses artificial intelligence to suggest linkable content during writing content.
• Various features for keeping links healthy using bulk edit options.

Cons

• The free version is somewhat limited.
• Not providing support on the wordpress.org support forum where users would expect to get it.

12. myStickyMenu

This far down the list, I hope I have already illustrated that both good user experience and customer experience play an essential role in making your customers feel comfortable and satisfied, building trust in your brand, and improving conversion rates. Many businesses are finding the value gained from investing in user experience as part of their digital marketing strategy.

This plugin provides a couple of different features for improving user experience. It allows you to enable beautiful notification bars and turn your static menu into a sticky menu that scrolls along the screen as you go down the page. The notification bar can be turned into a welcome announcement or promotion feature that can be displayed to new visitors once they land in your store to inform them about sales and includes an option to collect leads.

Pros

• Easy to get started and setup.
• Many customization options and built-in rules for displaying notification bars. Built-in ability to collect leads and export them to a file.
• Countdown timer to create urgency, provide discounts and increase sales.
• Ability to display sticky menu and welcome bar on specific pages or only mobile or desktop devices.
• Good product support.

Cons

• Can have issues with some themes and conflict with other plugins that fight for the same space on the screen.
• Since collecting leads is a relatively new feature of this plugin, no built-in functions would further take care of leads.

13. WC Sales Notification

I am sure you have seen online shopping stores displaying recent sales notifications. Doing so can help create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to purchase. It can also help build customer trust by showing that other people are buying from your business. However, it is essential to be cautious and avoid going too far when using fake sales notifications. Overwhelming your visitors could have the opposite effect of what you intended.

WC Sales Notifications plugin enables your WooCommerce store to display real and fake sales notifications that include product images, descriptions, purchase times, and customer details beautifully. It also has many visual customization options, such as notification placement, colors, size, incoming/outgoing notification animation, and other settings.

Pros

• Good visual notification customization options.
• Simple to set up and start displaying sales notifications.
• It is a free plugin.
• Good product support from developers.

Cons

• Lacks the option to display fake (manual) sales notifications at random intervals.
• Backend design could be improved to enhance user experience.

14. Searchanise

WordPress search and the default WooCommerce product filtering options do the job well. However, that does not mean these features can’t be improved.

Smart Search & Product Filter for WooCommerce – Searchanise is a WordPress plugin that replaces standard WordPress search with a revolutionary site search and adds additional WooCommerce filters. It is an all-in-one live search solution that can improve your store’s user experience and sales conversion rates. And the best part about this plugin is that it works out of the box, with high-speed search functionality and flawless WooCommerce product filtering features.

Pros

• Works out of the box. Just install and activate to enable smart search.
• Wonderful user experience and customer experience improvement.
• Replaces default WordPress search with search suggestions that appear during text input and displays multiple result groups (products, categories, pages, popular search terms).
• Ability to add new product filtering widgets (filter by price, rating, stock, attributes).
• Fast search results thanks to WordPress page and WooCommerce product catalog indexing.

Cons

• The free version will get you only 14 days of product usage. After this period, the product stops working, and you must upgrade to a paid version.
• Product support could be faster.

15. Mighty Frequently Bought Together

Let us assume you are buying a phone case; you might also want to buy a screen protector or a charger. Showing these items as frequently purchased together can help remind you about products you may need or suggest new items that should be ordered. This is how using frequently bought products can help increase sales.

Mighty Frequently Bought Together for WooCommerce is a plugin that allows you to quickly and effortlessly add frequently bought-together products to your WooCommerce store. You can manually add frequently bought products for each product or base it on related products.

Pros

• Easy to set up and start using.
• Automatically adds frequently bought products based on related products.
• Option to manually add product suggestions for each product.
• Good visual customization options.

Cons

• Cannot display frequently bought together product information on actual customer data and orders.

Wrapping up

In this article of 15 fresh and effective WooCommerce plugins, we have looked at a wide range of functionalities, including artificial intelligence-powered content generation, chatbots, abandoned cart recovery, product feed optimization, live chat support, streamlined invoicing, wishlists, sales funnel creation, product quick view, variation swatches, customer review collection, and internal link management.

These plugins are designed to simplify your customers’ lives and boost your business’s sales. We hope this list gives you new ideas for improving your online business.