When you have a WordPress website, you look for ways to create a better user experience for the visitors. It doesn't matter what your website is all about; you want your site visitors to have the best user experience, so they love to use your website.

The easiest way to do it is by creating quality content. If your website has content that attracts visitors, then the foundation of a good user experience is set up. You can use other strategies for creating a user-friendly website. In this blog, we mentioned a few WordPress plugins that can be used for improving user-experience. Some of the plugins discussed here are paid; however, we tried to give free alternatives wherever possible.

WordPress Plugins to Enhance User Experience

1. Include Reading Progress Bar with WP Reading Progress Plugin

Lot is going on the Internet, so when you land on any post, you want to know how much time you have to invest in it or how long that piece of content is. A progress bar will tell you where you are in the post and how much is left for reading.

For creating the progress bar, you can use the free WordPress Reading Progress Plugin, which is easy to use, and can be customized as per your taste:

• Choosing the color of your choice
• Place the button at the top or bottom of the screen
• Add progress bar to certain content of your site
• Apply the progress bar plugin to the entire webpage or just some content.

2. Include Estimated Reading Time with WP Reading Time Plugin

By adding the estimated reading time, visitors to your site can understand how much time they need to invest in the post. Say for example, if a blog takes 10 minutes to read, then read that later not in your five-minute- tea break.

Use the free WordPress Reading Time plugin that adds the estimated reading time at the top of your blog post.  You can manually add the reading time on your post with the help of a shortcode. Use the free Read Meter plugin to add estimated reading time and a reading bar. 

3. Dark Mode with WP Blackout Plugin

Is your website too bright? Yes, it can be hard for the visitor's eye to browse it at night. Viewing too much bright light may strain your eyes and can be difficult for you to sleep, that's the reason why some websites are built in the dark mode.  Say, for example, an iPhone with iOS13 and above has the option of dark mode.

By using the free Blackout plugin, you can bring the dark mode option to your WordPress website. This plugin gives users the option to choose their site mode, and the Blackout plugin works perfectly fine with all WordPress themes. The feature to save the user preference or automatically matching your site's mode to the mode of the operating system is a blessing to the users.

4. Use WP Rocket Plugin to Improve the WordPress Performance

One of the most crucial factors of the user experience is how fast your website loads. If your website is taking longer to load, then visitors will ditch your site.

Using the WP caching and performance plugin will speed up your site and the page caching, but you need to use the plugin that can enhance other performance.

Use the premium plugin WP Rocket to implement all the crucial practices to speed your website load time. This plugin's cost starts from $49, but you can look for other free quality plugins like WP Fastest Cache and Swift Performance Lite.

5. Add Image Preview Plugin

If your website has breathtaking images, then visitors may want to zoom in for seeing more detail. Use the free WP Simple Lightbox plugin, to let viewers see the full resolution of the image when they click on it. The image will load in the popup as a full-resolution without taking you away from the page.

6. Use Broken Link Checker Plugin to find the Broken Links

Having broken links and that too broken internal links can be a frustrating experience for your website visitors. Suppose your site visitor clicks on any link to view the content, but you will be redirected to the error page due to the broken link.

For finding and fixing the broken links, you can use the WP free Broken Link Checker plugin. This plugin will automatically detect the website's broken links and give you the chance to fix these. You can use Ahref's free tool, a cloud has a broken link checker if your website's performance is the issue.

7. Use WPFront Scroll Top to Add Back to the Top Button

If your website has long-form content, then manually scrolling back to your site's top can be irritating to the visitors. Having a "back to top" button will let you easily jump back to the top of the website with only one click. You can see the exact button at the bottom of our site.

Use the free WPFront Scroll Top plugin for adding buttons of "back to top" to all the WordPress themes.

8. Add SearchWP to Improve WordPress Search

The default search system of WordPress is not strong and can end up making you frustrated while searching for something on your site. For fixing this, you can use the SearchWP plugin for offering relevant and more accurate results.

By adding a few bucks, you can get this plugin that can help you improve your website's search function. The feature of Ajax live search will show the live search suggestion just like Google.

Conclusion

These plugins mentioned above don't make a huge difference to your WordPress website as they are used to improve your website's user experience.

The time taken by your site to load is crucial for the user experience, so speeding up your website will create a much better experience for the users visiting.