Essential Website Add-Ons And How To Make The Most Of Them

There was a time when every website needed a guestbook, animated Gif’s and tacky music on every page. The internet has come a long way since the hamster dance!

Hopefully, no one is tempted to fill their site with dancing babies these days. But you do need to know what to add to your site, or what to tell your web designer you want. And while it’s easy to know just what extras aren’t needed on your website, it can be difficult to know what is essential.

We’ve put together a simple list to give you a bit of insight on some essential add-ons that will add value to your website in ways a guestbook never could.

Whether you’re building your own site or are using a web designer, it’s important to figure out what your site needs and what it doesn’t.

Light Box

A light box is an add-on that enables your images to fill the screen when clicked, dimming the rest of the page and making your image look the best.

Instead of trying to squish your images into each page and hoping they look ok on different screen, a light box allows every image to be enabled to look its best on any device.

How To Get The Most Out Of It:

The two most important things to focus on when using a light box is installation and versatility. A light box can be installed as an application, a plugin, or in the actual code of your site. Make sure it’s installed correctly, or hire a web designer.

When it comes to versatility, you need to find a light box add-on that works on as many different systems and devices as possible. Depending on your hosting, this can vary. If you’re not sure what to use, contact us and we can help you out.

Live Chat

Many people want to get customers to contact them, but not every website visitor can be motivated enough to send an e-mail. That’s why a live chat add-on for your website is so powerful.

A prospective customer is able to message you the second they have a question, and you’re able to answer back in real time.

Contact is a great example of a live chat add-on, and is available for free. It’s also very easy to install, saving you or your web designer a lot of time.

How To Get The Most Out Of It:

This comes down to availability. If you have the time to be available for a live chat, then it’s a great option. Add-ons with smart phone capability makes this much easier!

But if you don’t have the time to answer your visitors, this is an add-on best not implemented.

Contact Form

A contact form is a very simple, but powerful tool. With so many people using web-based e-mail addresses, linked e-mail addresses can be a bit of a hassle. Your website needs to make everything as easy as can be.

Installing a contact form on at least one page of your site is a must.

How To Get The Most Out Of It:

Keep your contact form as simple as possible – only ask for the info that you need. Some websites have contact forms with more than ten fields to fill out. How daunting! If your contact form starts looking like a tax form, you’ve gone too far.

On this note, creating custom contact forms for each page is also a great idea. While your contact page can have a generic form, your sales page, for example, could have questions relating to what you’d need from a customer to compose a quote.

Imagine any questions that your customers could have on any given page, and if you can’t answer it on that page create a contact form that can help them.

Security

Depending on how your site is hosted, a security add-on is definitely essential. Particularly if you have a WordPress site, you should install something like WordFence.

No matter where your site is hosted, you need to know who is trying to maliciously access your website and how to keep them out.

How To Get The Most Out Of It:

Security add-ons are some of the most tricky to use because they have the most complex settings. Set them too strict, and people may not be able to access your site. Set them too loose, and they may be pointless.

If you’re making changes from the defaults, make sure you know what you’re doing – or that you’re working with a web designer who does.

Conclusion

Your website will greatly benefit from having a live chat option and contact forms to put you in touch with your visitors. A Light Box will make sure your images look incredible, and a Security add-on will keep your site alive.

If you’re working with a web designer, you now have a list of functions to ask for. If you’re working on your own, you have an idea of what you need to implement.

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