Ever wondered which WordPress plugins we considered at Bicycle Couriers?
Let me tell you. Right here. Quite a few actually. Not all of them are in use anymore. Or all of the time. but you get the idea. No need to reinvent the wheel. There is just so much we can do with freely available WordPress plugins already out there. Which saves us some time. so that we can better take care of our core business. Which is boxed bicycle deliveries. All across South Africa. Every single weekday. Now enough with the short sentences. Here are some of the WordPress plugins to consider. Oh, and seeing as there are almost 50 plugins listed below, we’ll group them into a few subheadings for easy reading. It’s all about those green lights for SEO, right?
Our WordPress plugins part 1
Advanced Form Integration – so we can export all our trades. Every order goes into a google spreadsheet from where it is quicker to manage than in WooCommerce. And I just love a good spreadsheet. Even though the google sheets are vastly different then Microsoft excel. But it is online and fit for purpose.
Advanced iFrame – not required with the latest versions of WordPress anymore, but we have some older iframe embeds on some pages and posts. And I don’t want to spend the time to go back and look for them. Rather use that same time to write a new blog post. Like this one.
Antispam Bee – to keep the pesky scam comments to a minimum. And used as an alternative to Akismet which is a paid for platform for business use. According to my understanding. Tried this once and never looked back. No need to clear out the spam folder each time I log in anymore.
Block Emails for WooCommerce – at some point we received a lot of fake order coming through a certain set of email addresses. and it was easiest just to block them altogether. Which stopped the nuisance. Anything for automating timesaving. Because time is our ultimate currency.
Burst Statistics – Privacy-Friendly Analytics for WordPress. Not in use at the moment. Because I just grab all the stats I want to see from my hosting provider xneelo. And it works like a charm. With even more info. That I don’t look at very often anymore.
Our WordPress plugins part 2
Classic Editor & Classic Widgets – because maybe I am getting on to be a classic. I wanted a good clean and fast website. Which is as easy as possible to manage. So set up the structure that the layout remains fairly fixed. With no special and irritating moving parts. And a large blog section for all the SEO articles that drive our traffic.
Converter for Media – now we also serve next gen images. Speed up your website by using our WebP & AVIF Converter (formerly WebP Converter for Media). Serve WebP and AVIF images instead of standard formats JPEG, PNG and GIF now! A lot of AVIF images on Unsplash, which is a favourite source of great free stock footage.
Easy Table of Contents – great for those auto intro’s that summarise the headings of an article. And surely good for structured data and a bit of SEO somewhere on the page. Mainly because I personally like an overview before getting into the detail. So the headings summary tells you what the article is about.
Export Products, Orders & Customers for WooCommerce – this one I use once a month. To check our stats. And see how we are going. It imports into a single page summary for the whole bicycle couriers business. For numbers at a glance. Advanced export tools for all your WooCommerce store data: Orders, Products Customers & More, export to XML or CSV in one click.
Facebook for WooCommerce – not active at the moment. Because as you very well know bicycle couriers aren’t big on social media. We focus on the website. And organic traffic from google. Which works like a charm for what we want to accomplish.
Our WordPress plugins part 3
Flexible Checkout Fields – because the default WooCommerce checkout field didn’t work for us. I want to know from where to where a bicycle must be sent. Not just a delivery address. And we grab some dates and bike specifics as well. So this worked perfectly. Change order, labels, placeholders and add new fields.
FluentCRM – Marketing Automation For WordPress – and the Fluent Forms that go with it. I don’t think we are using the latter. Because I love ninja forms for, well, forms. But we certainly use the former. As fluent CRM is the easiest I have come across for managing contacts and sending newsletters and subscriptions. Love it.
Forget About Shortcode Buttons – yip, buttons and calls to action everywhere. Even though our style changed over the years. Less shouty, more discreet. With a simple questions, most often the ‘where can we send your bicycle today’ at the end of blog posts. But we do have a great few buttons on the site as well.
Gallery Custom Links – so each image in a gallery can have a custom link (internal or external) when you click on it. which is great for our blog posts and lists of cycling events and bicycle shops. But you don’t always want to take your traffic off-site. And we have since added many more SEO effective articles. Yet will always have a need for gallery custom links somewhere on the site.
Google for WooCommerce – inactive. I spent some time installing and configuring this only to hit a brick wall. It looked like this was a great idea but just could get it working. I think it was intended for wordpress.com or that you are forced to have a active jetpack account. Which I didn’t want because of all the bloat. Pass for now.
Our WordPress plugins part 4
HD Quiz – not in use at the moment. But I love the plugin. And used it on a blog post where we interacted with and tested customer knowledge of our delivery areas. Maybe it is time to find a new quiz and load those questions. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below? oh how I hate that phrase, but I do want the answers.
Health Check & Troubleshooting – isn’t this part of WP by default now? Either way, I had it on at some point to check the health. And we are in great shape. So, no need to spend some more time on this. by now we all know the basics. Keep it simple. Deactivate what you don’t use. Remove the clutter. Avoid duplicate plugins. And have your security in place.
iKhokha Payment Gateway – another payment gateway for WooCommerce. So we can accept online card payments. And this is the last one of the three payment gateways we have subscribed to and activated. And it works like a charm. Very similar to YOCO. As you can get up and go within the same day and start accepting payments.
Joinchat – for our WhatsApp button. Because we get 2 kinds of customers. Those who book and pay for immediately. And those who have a few presales questions. And then WhatsApp is quicker and often preferred over email for instant answers. I have also added a separate company WhatsApp sim and nr to separate business and private to a certain extent.
Our WordPress plugins part 5
Move Comments – inactive at the moment. And with good reason. Because when you have the plugin activated and you go and edit and save a page or post it strips out all of your formatting. So use this with caution. Enable. Move. Then disable immediately afterwards. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But a great solution from moving comments from one post or page to another. Especially when your landing page becomes too cluttered. But you still want to show interaction. Then just move the comments to a different page ever so often.
Ninja Forms – the easiest way to build WordPress forms. And the reason I started using this was that by default and for free you can log and export all your form submissions to CSV or Excel. And I have already told you how much I do love a good spreadsheet. The form builder is also great. And there are many extensions, none of what we need for now.
PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce – a great way to export a PDF invoice for those customers who want it. Yes we do send out the order confirmation emails for everyone and for most this is a perfect prompt for payment. But there are corporate customers with more hoops to jump and red tape to cut before the make payment and this is a real timesaver.
PDFjs Viewer – Embed PDFs – used for a few PDF embeds. Like the insurance policy wording. And the rate card. Which stayed the same for the last few years. Maybe it is time to revisit our pricing again. But we increase our volumes. And get better rates. So we are in a healthy position. And can pass on savings to customers. Which means no need to raise prices. Great.
Our WordPress plugins part 6
Product Open Pricing (Name Your Price) for WooCommerce – used on our open product. Where you can name the price. Because WooCommerce doesn’t by default have a product where you can set the price as a blank variable. So now we can add odd requests. Or get customers to enter the value. For gift vouchers, or ad hoc boxing, etc.
Really Simple Security – from the people who created the really simple SSL plugin. Which works wonders. And makes it easy for you to consider their other offerings. Easily improve site security with WordPress Hardening, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), Login Protection, Vulnerability Detection and SSL certificate generation.
Redirection – used for when you change a URL. So to avoid 404 missing content errors. And when you want to change links and redirect traffic somewhere else. Either temporarily or in future. A lightweight tool which we use on many other sites as well.
Site Reviews – when the next black Friday and cyber Monday comes along I might grab the full version of this plugin. Which would make it the only paid for plugin we have on the site. Because that is how much a value its functionality and ease of use. We send many bicycles. And get many reviews. Because for it. And it is quick and easy to give one.
Solid Security Basic – hide backend and more. With over 1 million installations last time I checked. Have been using this for years. To keep the site safe and secure. Because we need 100% uptime. Shield your site from cyberattacks and prevent security vulnerabilities. The only security plugin you need for a solid foundation.
Our WordPress plugins part 7
Sullivan Compatibility Plugin – inactive. Used once. When there was a clash or conflict or update on the main theme and we switched out to the Anders default shopping theme. Which worked like a charm for the day until we were back up and running with the familiar look and feel. Problem solved.
SVG Support – so we can upload SVG files. Obviously. Has to do with sanitizing. And wasn’t built-into WP by default when we needed it. In fact, I’m not sure if it is built in by now. But this little plugin works like a charm. For our little images, which lead to faster oage loads.
Ultimate FAQ Accordion Plugin – I love the easy of use. And we have a few FAQ frequently asked questions sections on the site. And I guess with the way we browse and ask for questions and answers this will become ever more important for the future of SEO and how AI spits out answers our way.
WC Kalkulator – used to do a few calculations for the insurance product. Which we since stopped using. But a quick and easy what to use user input fields to do a calculation and then base a price for a WooCommerce product on it. TADA!
WooCommerce – the most important plugin on the site? Because it runs our transactions. And you have to be in a position to see what we have, like what we have, and pay for what we have all in 1 go. Isn’t that what sets us apart? Oh, and the great SEO…
WooCommerce Peach Payments Gateway – another payment gateway. One of three used on our site. And the first one we started with way back when. Have since added both YOCO and iKhokha as alternatives. And run all three in tandem.
Our WordPress plugins part 8
WP External Links – oh I hate it when I browse on a site, and I link that is supposed to be on-page or on-site takes me away from there. Never to be seen again. Which is why it won’t happen with us. And there are so many external links. That blanket rules just make sense. And saves time.
WP Fastest Cache – so you don’t have to load the whole page from scratch every time. We also use tiny images for fast page loads. Because no one likes a slow website. And I have spent many hours optimizing on google PageSpeed Insights for a fast experience.
WP Mail Logging – at some point you are going to hit a wall with the built in wordpress mailer. Especially when you send lots of them. And seeing as order confirmations are a crucial part of the bicycle couriers business, I don’t want to take any chances. The logs are small anyway.
WP Rollback – handy for when you need to roll back to a previous version of a plugin. Which we have had to done maybe once before when troubleshooting. Which can happen if you have many plugins activated at the same time. and why I like to keep it mean and lean and clean.
Yoast SEO – cannot go without them. Even though I can write a perfectly scored SEO article in WORD and just cut and paste it over to the WordPress blog and see all the green arrows light up. done it hundreds of times. And practice makes perfect.
Yoco Payments – for accepting YOCO payments through WooCommerce. Cash or card? I think about I think our income is fairly evenly split. With 60/40 from EFT vs online card payments. And we use YOCO and iKhokha and peach payments.
WOW!
And that was that for Our WordPress plugins part and the bicycle couriers tech stack. Now enough with the 1’s and 0’s for the time being. Another 2500 words come and gone. Let’s get outside and ride our bicycles. And on that note – where can we send your bicycle today?
