You’ve done it. You’ve successfully launched your WooCommerce store, your products look fantastic, and your payment gateway is ready to go. But you’re quickly discovering the hardest part of e-commerce: getting those first few sales, and then figuring out how to grow them consistently. Just having a great-looking store isn’t enough; you need to actively guide and encourage your visitors to become customers.
The biggest e-commerce giants like Amazon are absolute masters of this. They use a powerful toolkit of proven marketing strategies—personalized recommendations, limited-time offers, and abandoned cart reminders—to maximize the value of every single visitor. You might think these advanced tactics are out of reach for a small business running on WordPress.
The good news is, they’re not. The true power of WooCommerce lies in its incredible ecosystem of plugins. With the right set of tools, you can implement the very same high-converting sales strategies on your own store. This guide will reveal the 10 best WooCommerce plugins, chosen specifically to help you stop leaving money on the table, increase your revenue, and turn your store into a sales machine.
Table of Contents
Thinking Like a Marketer: The “Why” Behind the Plugins
Before we get to the list, let’s understand the core sales strategies these plugins will help you execute.
- Strategy 1: Recover Lost Sales (Cart Abandonment): Did you know that around 70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned? These are visitors who wanted to buy but got distracted. Reminding them is the easiest and most profitable sale you can ever make.
- Strategy 2: Increase Average Order Value (AOV): This is about encouraging each customer to spend a little bit more. The two key tactics are Upsells (“Would you like to supersize that?”) and Cross-sells (“Would you like fries with that?”).
- Strategy 3: Build Trust and Urgency: People buy from stores they trust, and they buy faster when they fear missing out (FOMO). We’ll use Social Proof (like reviews and sales notifications) to build trust and Scarcity (like countdown timers) to create urgency.
- Strategy 4: Foster Loyalty and Repeat Business: The easiest person to sell to is a happy existing customer. We’ll look at tools to build your email list and create smart coupon strategies that encourage loyalty.
Now, let’s look at the best plugins to implement these strategies.
The 10 Best WooCommerce Plugins to Execute These Strategies
Category: Recovering Lost Sales
1. FunnelKit Automations (formerly Autonami) – Best for Abandoned Cart Recovery
This plugin is your secret weapon for recovering lost sales. It’s a powerful marketing automation engine that works right inside your WordPress dashboard.
- Why It Increases Sales: FunnelKit Automations automatically detects when a shopper adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. After a set time, it can automatically send a series of perfectly timed emails to the customer, reminding them of the items they left behind and providing a convenient, one-click link to return and complete their checkout. This single feature can instantly boost your revenue.
- Key Features:
- Automated abandoned cart recovery email sequences.
- A visual builder to create powerful marketing automations.
- Tools for post-purchase follow-ups and winning back old customers.
- Pricing: A powerful Free version is available. The Pro version unlocks more advanced features.
Category: Increasing Average Order Value (AOV)
2. FunnelKit Funnel Builder (formerly WooFunnels) – Best for Sales Funnels & One-Click Upsells
This is the gold standard for maximizing the value of every single transaction. It allows you to create optimized, high-converting checkout pages and, most importantly, add post-purchase upsells.
- Why It Increases Sales: Instead of distracting customers with offers before they buy, FunnelKit lets you present a special offer after they’ve already entered their payment details. With a single click, they can add the upsell item to their order without having to re-enter any information. This is the highest-converting way to increase your average order value.
- Key Features:
- Optimized, conversion-focused checkout page designs.
- One-click post-purchase upsell and downsell offers.
- The ability to create entire sales funnels.
- Pricing: This is a Premium plugin.
3. YITH WooCommerce Frequently Bought Together – Best for Amazon-Style Cross-Sells
This simple but highly effective plugin brings one of Amazon’s most powerful cross-selling features to your store.
- Why It Increases Sales: Directly on your product page, this plugin adds a “Frequently Bought Together” section. It allows you to bundle your main product with related, complementary items that customers can add to their cart with a single click. It’s a natural and helpful way to show customers other products they might need, increasing the size of their order.
- Key Features:
- Create bundles of related products.
- Customize the titles and position of the widget.
- An easy way to offer a discount on the entire bundle.
- Pricing: This is a Premium plugin.
Category: Building Trust & Urgency
4. TrustPulse – Best for Social Proof Popups
TrustPulse leverages the power of social proof to build instant trust and create a sense of a busy, popular store.
- Why It Increases Sales: It displays small, non-intrusive popups on your site showing real-time activity, like “Jane from California just purchased this item!” When visitors see that other real people are buying from you, it validates their own purchase decision, reduces hesitation, and creates a fear of missing out.
- Key Features:
- Real-time tracking of purchases and sign-ups.
- Smart targeting to show the right message to the right person.
- Simple setup and elegant, customizable popups.
- Pricing: A Free plan is available for up to 500 sessions per month.
5. OptinMonster – Best for Exit-Intent Popups & Scarcity
OptinMonster is a complete conversion optimization toolkit, but its most powerful feature for e-commerce is its signature Exit-Intent® technology.
- Why It Increases Sales: It can detect when a visitor is about to leave your website and, at that exact moment, present them with a targeted campaign. You can show a popup offering a last-minute 15% off coupon, inviting them to join your email list for a special offer, or redirecting them to a related product. It’s an incredibly powerful tool for saving otherwise lost sales. You can also use it to add countdown timers to your offers to create urgency.
- Key Features:
- Signature Exit-Intent® technology.
- A huge library of campaign templates (popups, floating bars, etc.).
- Powerful targeting and segmentation rules.
- Pricing: This is a Premium service.
6. YITH WooCommerce Wishlist – Best for Capturing Future Sales Intent
Not every visitor is ready to buy today. A wishlist gives them a no-pressure way to save products they’re interested in for later.
- Why It Increases Sales: A wishlist is a goldmine of customer data. It tells you exactly what your audience wants to buy. You can use this data to send targeted emails, like “An item on your wishlist is now on sale!” or “A popular item on your wishlist is almost out of stock!” This brings them back to your store when they are ready to buy.
- Key Features:
- Allows customers to save their favorite products.
- Lets users create and manage multiple wishlists.
- Provides you with valuable data on your most-wanted products.
- Pricing: A solid Free version is available. The Pro version adds more advanced features.
Category: Fostering Loyalty & Repeat Business
7. Advanced Coupons – Best for Smart Coupon Strategies
The default WooCommerce coupon system is basic. Advanced Coupons transforms it into a powerful marketing tool.
- Why It Increases Sales: It allows you to create far more compelling offers than a simple percentage discount. You can create BOGO (“Buy One, Get One”) deals, offer a free product with a certain purchase, or create coupons that automatically add a product to the cart. These types of deals are proven to increase conversions and order value.
- Key Features:
- BOGO deals, URL coupons, and shipping discounts.
- A loyalty program feature to reward repeat customers.
- Advanced cart conditions for coupons.
- Pricing: A great Free version is available. The Pro version is a must-have for serious stores.
8. Mailchimp for WooCommerce – Best for Email Marketing Integration
This free, official plugin is the easiest way to connect your store’s data to Mailchimp, one of the most popular email marketing platforms.
- Why It Increases Sales: It automatically syncs your customers and their purchase data to your email list. This allows you to send highly targeted email campaigns. For example, you can send a follow-up email to customers who purchased a specific product, suggesting a related item, or send a special offer to your most loyal, high-spending customers.
- Key Features:
- Syncs your audience, products, and orders.
- Tracks a customer’s purchase history.
- Allows you to create targeted marketing automations in Mailchimp.
- Pricing: The plugin is Free.
Category: Enhancing the User Experience
9. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search – Best for a Faster Search Experience
If a customer can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they will leave. A fast, smart search function is a crucial, and often overlooked, conversion tool.
- Why It Increases Sales: This plugin replaces the basic WooCommerce search with a powerful live search engine. As a customer starts typing in the search bar, product results, images, and prices appear instantly in a dropdown. This helps them find the exact product they want in seconds, dramatically reducing friction and improving the shopping experience.
- Key Features:
- Live search results appear as you type.
- Shows product images and prices directly in the search results.
- Customizable and works on mobile devices.
- Pricing: The core plugin is Free.
10. WPForms – Best for Custom Product Inquiries & Forms
Sometimes a customer has a question before they’re ready to click “Add to Cart,” especially for complex, customizable, or high-ticket items.
- Why It Increases Sales: WPForms is the most beginner-friendly form builder, and it can be used as a powerful sales tool. You can create a “Request a Quote” form for custom services or add a simple “Ask a Question” tab to your product pages. This allows you to capture leads and engage with potential customers who might otherwise have abandoned your site.
- Key Features:
- Simple drag-and-drop form builder.
- A huge library of pre-built templates.
- Advanced features like conditional logic and file uploads.
- Pricing: A Free version is available. The Pro versions unlock more powerful features.
Conclusion: From Store Owner to Growth Marketer
A successful WooCommerce store isn’t just a collection of great products; it’s a finely tuned engine designed to guide visitors through the buying process.
You don’t need to install all ten of these plugins today. Start with one from each category that addresses your biggest weakness. Is it abandoned carts? Start with FunnelKit Automations. Do you need to build trust? Start with TrustPulse.
These plugins are your new, automated marketing team. They will work for you 24/7 to recover lost sales, increase the value of every order, and build a loyal customer base. With these tools in your arsenal, you now have the power to grow your store and compete with the biggest names in e-commerce.