Thursday, October 31, 2019

Add Engagement With Interactive Media Plugins for WordPress

Visual engagement is an indispensable part of any website. Without it users won't engage with your content. It also means that you are not reaching any audience or grabbing attention, which in turn means you have no conversions and no revenue. 

You need to create visual engagement that leads to satisfying user experiences that in turn create high conversions and high revenue. 

But managing the large amount of images, audio, and videos you need to make your website function effective requires a lot of space and organization. You need plugins to save you time. 

WordPress media is an umbrella term a large number of plugins including media library management plugins to interactive media plugins like audio, video, flipbooks, galleries, maps, countdown clocks, notifications, timelines, popups, and forms. 

In this article I will show you some different types of WordPress media plugins available on CodeCanyon.  

Understanding WordPress Media Plugins

Visuals are the best way to optimize your pages and content. Visual elements are called media. Media includes but is not limited to images, audio, video, animation, and so on. 

Countdown clocks, contact forms, timelines, buttons, maps, notifications, icons, avatars, popups are also all media and are crucial to the success of a website. 

When it comes to understanding WordPress media you have to start from the Media Library where you manage images, audio, video, and documents. The media library allows you to upload and manage media files, add images to posts, and even do quick edits to your images. You can also create galleries and subfolders. 

But Media Library has a limit. If you run a website that requires few images then the built-in WordPress Media Library is enough. However, if you run large websites that require a lot of images, videos, audio, and more then you will need to use a media library management plugin.You will also need to use plugins specific to each different media element, for example gallery plugins for images, audio plugins for audio, video plugins for video and so on. 

Types of WordPress Media Plugins

WordPress media plugins help you create, upload, store, manage, and display different kinds of media. In short, provide tools for managing and displaying your media. 

The list below is not exhaustive but it shows what is included under the umbrella of WordPress media plugins: 

  • media library management plugins: organizing and processing images, video or other media
  • interactive media plugins: for creating interactive experiences on your site
  • image builder plugins: for designing and creating new images using layers and effects
  • map plugins: for creating and displaying maps
  • galleries plugins: for displaying images
  • audio or video plugins: for adding audio or video players to your site
  • iframe plugins: for embedding other content on your site in an iframe
  • social media plugins: for embedding content from social media
  • avatar plugins: for displaying or creating user avatars
  • icons plugins: make it easy to add icons to your site
  • button plugins: for creating eye-catching buttons like CTAs (call to actions) 
  • countdown plugins: for showing a countdown to some important event 

What Do WordPress Media Management Plugins Do?

Different WordPress plugins work differently and what they do varies.  But in general they help you:

  • categorize items according to theme, size, and more
  • add, delete, arrange, and sort items in the media library
  • add titles to media
  • do batch upload and add many images quickly
  • provide external storage for your media
  • manage how users interact with your media for example users can click on images and open them in separate pages. 

Why Should You Use WordPress Media plugins?

  • They extend the functionality of your website back-end so it can handle large volumes of media.
  • They make your website more attractive to bring in users.
  • They allow users to easily navigate images and media on your website.
  • They increase user engagement and as a result conversions and profits. 
  • They improve the SEO ranking of your website on search engines. 

Things to Consider When Choosing a Media Plugin

  • Speed: You want a lightweight plugin that won’t slow down your website.
  • Features: Think about storage, integration with social networks, email marketing platforms, and payment gateways
  • Responsiveness and mobile-friendliness: More than 70% of traffic to websites comes from mobile devices. Does your media plugin work on mobile browsers?
  • Ease of use: You shouldn't require coding knowledge to be able to use Media plugins. They should be easy to use and customize. 
  • Security: Users trust you with their personal and financial data. Choose media plugins that have a great track record when it comes to security. 
  • Regular Updates: Regular updates solve security vulnerabilities. Choose a plugin with a track record of updates and maintenance.   
  • Cost: Compare the prices of other plugins and see what fits your budget. 
  • Ratings and reviews: What other users say is proof of quality of the plugin and the trustworthiness of the developer. 
  • Downloads: The number of downloads is proof of popularity of the plugin among users. It shows they trust the provider. 
  • Support: You may run into some issues. Make sure that the seller offers support. See what other users say about the quality of support from the provider. 

WordPress Media Plugins on CodeCanyon

On CodeCanyon, will find many popular and best-selling WordPress media plugins that will make your website engaging to visitors. To help with your selection, I’ve classified them according to the categories below. 

Media Library Management Plugins

The Media Library is where you can manage your images, audio, videos, and documents all in one place. The default WordPress Media Library is sufficient to manage a limited number of images. But business, magazine, and large blogging websites that regularly upload large numbers of images need plugins for efficient management of media files. 

These top media management plugins will help you manage your media library. 

WordPress Gallery and Slider Plugins

Gallery plugins have been covered extensively in other Envato Tuts+ posts. The articles below will lead you to an overview of gallery plugins available on CodeCanyon. 

Image Builders and Virtual Tour Builders

Image and virtual tour building plugins make it easy to create new visual content for your site by combining other images. 

WordPress Interactive Map Plugins

These plugins will help you add interactive map features to your website so users can learn geography or find directions for locations where they need to be! 

Quiz, Survey, and Poll Plugins for WordPress

Surveys, quizzes, and polls are interactive forms. There are plugins that are specifically built to allow you to create your own engaging surveys, polls, and quizzes—all kinds of content that have been shown to be very popular with website visitors. 

Flipbook and PDF Viewer Plugins

Digital flipbooks look and feel like printed publications. Their pages can be flipped and turned. They’re a perfect way to show reports, presentations, magazines, catalogs, brochures, books, photo essays, and portfolios. They offer a great interactive experience. Try the following plugins and find out for yourself. 

WordPress Video Plugins 

These plugins are essential if you want to add video players to your website.

WordPress Audio Plugins 

Similarly, these plugins are essential if you want to add audio players to your website. 

Social Media Plugins for WordPress

There are many media plugins and each fulfills a specific function like counting likes, creating posters, embedding carousels of content from social media, streaming, and so on. 

Visual Timeline Plugins for WordPress 

These timeline plugins will help connect events together to visually tell a story that is engaging.

Avatar and Icon Plugins 

Avatars are used for user profile images and creating a connection with the audience. Avatar plugins allow users to upload custom avatar images and showcase additional information about content authors. 

Icons are symbols that represent particular information. Icon plugins come with collections of symbols that help you choose the relevant icon for particular information. 

These plugins will help you add avatars and icons to your pages. 

Button Plugins for WordPress

Buttons are the most effective tools to get your users to take action. You can use buttons to redirect users to a desired action like buy now, sign up now, purchase, or to a promotions link. These button plugins will get your users to take action.  

iframe Plugins

These plugins allow you to display content from external sites and sources on your website, so users don't have to leave your site.

Popups and Opt-in Plugins 

How to convert your visitors to subscribers is an ongoing question. Popup opt-ins have the highest conversion rate of all opt-ins. But for popups to be effective they have to well designed and used thoughtfully. These popup and opt-in plugins will help you gain more conversions. 

Hover Effects Plugins 

These plugins allow you to create engaging effects for images on your website. Effects like transitions, transforms, flips, animations and more. 

Weather Plugins

For event planners and venue managers the weather is part of their planning. Bad weather can mean low attendance. These weather plugins help planning. 

Countdown and Timer Plugins

If you have a sale, product launch, or event to sell tickets for, these countdown times plugins will create a sense of urgency for users on your website and increase your conversions. 

Notification Plugins 

Notifications have a greater rate of opt-in than emails. They grab attention by appearing directly on the browser. This results in increased engagement, high rate of return audience, increased conversions and revenues. If you're serious about engaging an audience you already have, these notification plugins will bring users back to your website for more. 

Some Useful Bonus Plugins

Even though they don't fit into any category, these plugins are very useful for your website. 

Conclusion

I hope the WordPress media plugins highlighted in this article will help you in your journey build a dynamic WordPress website for your business. 

If you want to improve your skills building WordPress sites, check out our free WordPress tutorials.

Also the following articles will help you learn more about the WordPress media plugins available on CodeCanyon.



by Lorca Lokassa Sa via Envato Tuts+ Code
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