WordPress is full of great plug-ins, as many owners of full WordPress sites can attest, but some are definitely more valuable than others. At any given time my real estate website is running 10-15 plug-ins but my two newest additions really stand out.
Sidebar Countdown Plug-in – There are a lot of opportunities to use a countdown plug-in on your site. First, you can use it to create urgency as home buyers visit your website and see the $8,000 home buying tax credit slipping away second-by-second (See an example here, right sidebar).
Another great option would be to use it as a countdown to your upcoming home buying seminar or to track how much time is left for a once-in-a-lifetime builder sale.
Next up, this breadcrumb navigation plug-in saved my website theme’s butt by adding a breadcrumb trail to the top of every page and post on my website. A breadcrumb navigation is basically a virtual trail listed at the top of every page showing you the hierarchy of the page you’re currently on.
So, for example, if a user is browsing my Brighton Green community profile they will see a trail showing how far in that page is from the homepage and what that page’s parents are.
Here’s a visual example of what a breadcrumb navigation element looks like:
Based on the above example my homepage leads to an Orange County, NY page which houses a town page for Newburgh. The Newburgh town page serves as the parent of my Brighton Green community profile. Now a user can click back to any one of those pages without having to use the ‘Back’ button every time. This greatly improves your website’s usability as shown in the community profile page above.
Here’s how to get that effect with one plug-in:
Breadcrumb NavXT – This plug-in does require some template edits but following the guide on the author’s website makes for a very quick and easy install. This plug-in alone will dramatically improve the usability/navigation of your site.
Do you have any must have WordPress plug-ins you would add to the list? Let me know about them in the comments below or on Twitter!
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