13 Best WordPress Plugins to Boost User Engagement

Probably you are getting lots of new visitors every day. Ever wondered that whether your users are engaging with your site? Luckily, WordPress has lots of plugins to increase user engagement. Let’s have a look at some of the best WordPress user engagement plugins.

Boost discussion with Disqus

We, human beings, are discussion lovers by nature. That’s why it’s obvious to install a discussion corner on your blog. The Disqus plugin replaces the native WordPress comment section with a stylish discussion layout. Users can sign up with their social media accounts and start a discussion or take part right after that. Voting or adding comments to a particular thread is possible as well.

Some of the best Disqus features that makes it recommendable are:

• Seamless integration with existing comments in a single click
• User engagement boost with a community-like commenting experience
• Real-time rich user engagement features such as voting, photo & video upload, embedding media, spoiler tags, user mentions, and so on
• Auto-moderation tools to block offensive users or flag comments
• Improved SEO score with user generated content.
• Rich analytics to understand your audience potential better
• Monetization feature to grow revenue

Overall, Disqus is a very easy to manage and user engaging discussion plugin which you should have on your site. If you’re looking for the Disqus plugin’s alternatives, check out this post about the best WordPress comment plugins.

Social media integrations with Super Socializer

The Super Socializer plugin supports social media and incorporates all the regular social media updates and trends as well. Features from this plugin like social sharing, share counters, social login, social media follow icons, and so on make it a one-stop solution regarding all social media-related features. You have the chance to customize each of these tools by your choice.

Tools that make Super Socializer a great user engagement plugin for WordPress are:

• Rapid & hassle-free signup process using existing social media accounts
• Auto saving user data such as e-mail makes it easy to communicate with the audience on a broad term
• Smart spam reduction filter to keep the discussion section look organic.

Forum-like Experience with bbPress

Maybe, forums sound like an old internet thing, but it’s still there anyway. We all love them undoubtedly. Forums increase user engagement to a great extent. You can use bbPress for this.

bbPress made it to this list of user engagement boost plugins for WordPress, because of these features:

• Easy installation and activation
• Section-based multiple forum functionality
• Fast, light, yet simple user interface
• Huge customizable templates collection
• Spam protection & RSS feed

The lightweight and stylish BBPress plugin offers an easy-to-customize interface, impressive management tools and supports Akismet, the plugin that keeps the spammers away.

Better internal linking with Yoast SEO

It’s a known fact that a large portion of the Internet traffic comes from search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. With that being said, it’s a must for any kind WordPress website to have an SEO plugin. Using a strong SEO plugin like Yoast SEO can boost your traffic dramatically with just some easy tweaks.

Yoast SEO plugin helps with internal linking and suggests ways in which you can keep your audiences looped into your website. With the crosslinking process automated for your site, you will see more engagement for sure.

It’s unimaginable that in how many ways you can boost user engagement using Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. Some of the relevant Yoast SEO plugin features are:

• Auto XML sitemaps generation
• Custom meta header and description
• Focus keyword inspector to improve SEO on certain keywords
• Easy auto redirection feature to keep even dead links alive
• Bulk title and description customization features

You can use the premium version of the Yoast SEO plugin to create smart internal links which is very helpful to reduce bounce rate. If you want to know about Yoast SEO plugin alternatives, then you can check out this post about the best WordPress SEO plugins.

Fast loading time with WP Rocket

Cache plays a vital role in user engagement boost while it comes to WordPress websites. WP Rocket has been proven as one of the best caching plugins available out there for WordPress. WP Rocket claims to provide easy customization for faster websites. The best things about WP Rocket are:

• Cache management to make WordPress sites lightweight and SEO-friendly
• Inbuilt GZIP Compression that compresses web pages on the server and decompresses them in the browser to appear content faster on the audience side
• Cache preloading to load pages faster even after making changes to the site
• eCommerce optimization for a better online shopping experience

Faster access on mobile devices with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Mobile devices drive most of the traffic on the internet these days. So prioritizing mobile audiences would be a good choice. That’s where AMP, which means Accelerated Mobile Pages, comes into work. What WordPress AMP does is decrease the loading time of your page and create the same copy which contains the same content as those articles on your site. As AMP improves the load time and overall experience on your site, it’s a thumbs-up choice to have.

Some benefits of having AMP implemented on WordPress sites are:

• Presence of ads and analytics even after being a compressed web version
• Reduced loading time that results in more engagement and low bounce rate
• Enhanced SEO optimization and compatibility with mobile browsers
• Auto sitemap optimization by Google

There are many AMP plugins out there. All of them get the job done. To know more about WordPress AMP and AMP plugins, check out our post linked above.

Popups with OptinMonster

Not every visitor pays attention to offers and newsletter campaigns while navigating through a website. OptinMonster shows a popup to the audience and makes sure that they don’t miss what’s happening on the site and why they should take part in it.

With OptinMonster, you can use either the geo-targeting method or typical pop-up techniques to get people to opt for your emails or newsletters. The plugin also makes sure that it doesn’t hamper user experiences. It offers the following and more.

• MonsterLinks to convert any link or image into an opt-in form with just two steps
• Geo-location targeting to improve conversions by personalizing campaigns based on visitor’s location
• Exit-intent technology detects users’ mouse behavior and shows them a targeted message as they are leaving
• Easy and customizable drag and drop opt-in form builder
• Various campaign types to fit any occasion and screen size

Efficient email marketing with  MailChimp

Email marketing is nothing new these days. A plugin like MailChimp will ensure that your content is reaching the subscribers properly and letting them know what’s new on your website. With MailChimp, you can create targeted email campaigns, automate the follow-up to your campaigns, and refine your products based on your customer’s preferences and interests.

Some of the amazing MailChimp functionalities are:

• Simple and customizable user interface
• The free version works well for small blogs and small business owners
• Detailed analytics makes it easy to plan the next steps
• Rich email marketing and management tools trusted by millions

It doesn’t matter what your site is about, it’s obvious to have an email marketing plugin like MailChimp.

Engaging notifications with OneSignal

This plugin adds more to your user engagement potential. OneSignal sends notifications directly to the subscribed user’s desktop or mobile. Every time you post new content, your audience can receive a notification from you. This is an awesome way to keep your audience engaged with your business.

OneSignal is a great choice because of these features:

• Support for web and native platforms, smart assistance such as Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri is coming soon
• Easy to set up and works on any platform
• Send notification in bulk or segments
• Detailed analytics makes it easy to plan the next campaign

Audience driving contests

Using a plugin like Contests by Rewards Fuel can provide more than 30 different entry methods, social media enabled giveaways, contests, and surely newsletters. More features like digital prizes, easily embeddable contests, location selection, and automated contests are also available with this plugin.

Interactive Quizzes

It’s unlikely that you haven’t heard of BuzzFeed. This site’s fortune is made upon its interactive content types. One of them is quizzes. Interactive contents like trivia quizzes and personality quizzes work on a personal level and add a whole new level to user engagement. If you can set up these quizzes the right way, you will see a huge amount of user engagement boost using the plugins on your WordPress site.

Yet Another Stars Rating

This plugin works in a simple, but very effective way. The readers can share their ratings and reviews. These ratings and reviews will help online audiences assess your content better even before going through them. The Yet Another Stars Rating offers some blocks for Gutenberg as well.

Custom Related Posts

If you care much about user engagements and interactions on your WordPress blog, then it’s not a waste of time to spend a few minutes adding related posts beneath your articles. Obviously, there are tons of plugins that do the job. But, you as a human can recommend better than any other program.

If you’re not hesitant about taking that extra step, then Custom Related Posts is a perfect fit to boost user engagement on your WordPress blog site. You can display related posts with a shortcode, widget, or block. The plugin works flawlessly with both WordPress Classic editor & Gutenberg block editor.

Easy Select And Share

Easy Select And Share is a simple yet significant plugin for sharing content to social media channels. Sharing some highlighted quotes from the article increases the desire in visitors to read the full article. It leads to an increase in the website traffic. It provides 4 sundry positions for social media buttons with customizing options to change the color and experience of the designs.

This free plugin support 3 major social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It has a fully customized user interface and easiness for WordPress users. This plugin has a Pro version, and it has 14 popular social media channels.

Summary

If you’re running a content-rich website, then you should consider using more user engagement scopes like discussions, forums, contents, subscriptions, social sharing, etc. The right combination of features according to your site’s category can lead you to the goal you’re looking to achieve.