WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems on the internet. Approximately 65.2 percent of all websites with known Content Management Systems are built using WordPress. The platform was initially released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. When it was released, its primary purpose was to provide bloggers with an open-source, customizable platform for hosting text and image posts. The open-source nature of WordPress would prove to be the key to a far more broad success that went far beyond the blogosphere.
The open-source architecture of WordPress enabled 3rd party developers to legally produce their own templates and plugins to enhance the WordPress site owner experience. Templates are largely focused on changing the aesthetic ‘look’ of a site. Plugins, however, can enable much deeper improvements and specializations. Plugins are essentially software addons that can add functions to a WordPress site. Plugins for WordPress are written in the PHP coding language, which means that they can be integrated seamlessly into a site built using the CMS. At the time of writing, there were 58,612 free WordPress plugins. There are also plenty of more specialized paid-for plugins available. These plugins enable WordPress site owners to enjoy pretty much any specialized web feature they can think of without incurring any extra cost.
There are hundreds of plugins dedicated to finance in its many overlapping forms. Here are some of the most useful finance and commerce plugins that you can download and integrate into your WordPress site. Some plugins are extremely useful to finance and commerce site owners without being specifically crafted for their use. This article will cover a couple of these plugins as well as more specialized examples.
WPHRM
WPHRM is a powerful human resource and finance management plugin popular with business owners that have to deal with complicated staffing issues. This plugin allows you to effectively factor in the expenses and gains made when advertising for and hiring new employees. It also includes a set of tools that are suited to scheduling shifts, department management, and application denial and acceptance. Every employer knows that the financial expenditure on Human Resource management is a huge drain on a company. Being able to assess and control these processes from a dashboard is potentially a huge financial boost. Incorporating tools to help with HR expenditure in a CMS like WordPress allows for the increased centralization of your HR decision-making.
WP Amortization Calculator
Amortization is a term used to describe the spreading out of loan repayments across time to a set date. If, for instance, you were selling a mortgage, you would need to calculate the ideal loan amortization rate for clients to depreciate their mortgage over time without putting the lender in a financial hole.
The WP Amortization Calculator plugin allows you to include visitor-facing widgets that can be used to calculate ideal loan repayment rates. As potential customers enter their ideal rates and the calculator provides them with financial answers, they are essentially giving you data about customer preferences. The WP Amortization Calculator processes and delivers this information to you and gives you solid lead generation data that you can use to pursue custom.
Cost Calculator for WordPress
Another calculator plugin that allows you to display information to your visitors and collect data about their preferences at the same time, the Cost Calculator For WordPress, has emerged from a surprisingly basic concept: a widget that allows for the integration of multiple factors to calculate cost.
This plugin allows you to host a calculator that delivers accurate costing information based on any number of variable factors. It has a fully customizable layout so that you can maintain your brand identity while adding a really useful new feature. It is fully mobile compatible and has a relatively large, very helpful support team ready to help you out with any issues. Cost calculators allow customers to make complex inquiries about the cost of products and services in a very simple way and also give site owners valuable insights into customer preference. Collecting data about the kind of variables your visitors are interested in can help you develop a long-term product strategy and tailor your services to the needs of your leads.
OptinMonster
In finance, commerce, and marketing, one of the most important factors to consider is conversion rate. A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who eventually go on to complete an action desired by the site owner. Desired actions can include purchases, inquiries, feedback, or data entry. OptinMonster is a useful plugin designed to help increase conversion rates. Using this software, a WordPress site owner can create pop-ups, slide in’s, gamified forms, and welcome mats that encourage visitors to join email lists or enter data before leaving a site. This can demonstrably increase conversion rates and visitor retention numbers – which leads to increased financial success.
OptinMonster allows you to target your conversion rate boosting measures to individual customers based upon their preferences and locations. Users of the plugin have reported conversion rate increases in the 1000 percent range, which is a huge boost. Optimizing conversion rates should be a top priority for every company looking to grow on the internet.
WP Currencies
WP Currencies is a very simple plugin that shows live currency exchange rates and values. This information is incredibly important for financial services providers that wish to trade internationally or offer money-making pathways using exchange rates. For cryptocurrency trading, a display of side-by-side currency worth can be very useful indeed.
Updraft Plus
While Updraft Plus is not strictly speaking a financial or commercial plugin, it does offer a service that will be of great interest to site owners working in those fields. Updraft Plus is essentially an automatic web data backup plugin. This plugin automatically uploads web data to a secure cloud storage location so that your site can be returned to the internet extremely quickly (and without being compromised) after a hacking attack or technical mishap. If your web-based data is important to you, consider installing a backup plugin like Updraft Plus.
Sucuri
Speaking of the value that you should place on your web-based data, you should be heavily invested in security if you run a financial or commercial site. Sucuri is a WordPress security plugin and web application firewall that is designed to stop your data from being stolen or your website from being hit with a DDOS attack. The hacking of financial services and eCommerce websites is an incredibly lucrative trade. Every year, millions of dollars are pilfered from the pockets of unsuspecting businesses. Plenty of financial services businesses were affected by the WannaCry ransomware attack. This sophisticated attack encrypted data and offered it back to companies if they paid a ransom in Bitcoin. The attack was said to have originated in North Korea. Sucuri constantly scans and monitors your website, and its staff members keep up to date with new holes in site building code that are being exploited by hackers. Protecting against malware is immensely important if you want to keep customers, clients, and collaborators comfortable when working with you and entrusting you with their data.
Interest Only Loan/ Mortgage Calculator
By far the simplest plugin on this list, this is a bare-bones plugin that allows you to create and display an interest calculator on your site. It does not contain any sophisticated data capture features but is very lightweight – meaning that it will not engorge the loading time of your site. Loading time is very important for search engine optimization. If your site takes ages to load, it will not rank well. Search engine ranking is incredibly significant to any site owner wanting to ensure that there is a healthy flow of traffic to their page.
Stockdio Stock Market Overview
This stock market overview plugin allows you to integrate displays showing a categorized list of equities, market indices, currencies, and commodities with their prices and variations. Sites offering financial services can make great use of a clear overview display of market status and trends to show their forecasting ability and present the brand image of a group keeping on top of market trends. This plugin allows site owners to choose from a very large pool of stock market parameters for display.
Stockdio Historical Chart
If you need to display historical stock market trends with wide time-based variables, the Stockdio Historical Chart plugin might just be for you. This plugin allows you to incorporate easy-to-digest charts on your site that show how market values have changed over time. Unlike the Stock Market Overview plugin offered by the same company, the Historical Chart plugin offers visitors an understandable long view, wide lens interpretation of stock parameters.
Payment Gateway Plugin
The rise of cryptocurrencies has truly shaken up the market. Plenty of financial service companies have started to offer investment plans and other options based on exploiting cryptocurrency markets. Likewise, commerce has been widely attempting to adapt to this new financial reality by accepting cryptocurrencies as payment. The Payment Gateway plugin allows for the exchange of established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It can be used as an all-in-one payment portal that accepts Bitcoin, Google Pay, AliPay, traditional debit cards, and many other mediums. As cryptocurrency markets continue to evolve, the Payment Gateway plugin by XAdapter will likely adapt alongside it.
By James Daniels
Bio: James Daniels is a freelance writer, business enthusiast, a bit of a tech buff, and an overall geek. He is also an avid reader, who can while away hours reading and knowing about the latest gadgets and tech, whilst offering views and opinions on these topics.