Have you ever installed a plugin on your Divi Theme that not only doesn’t work but breaks your entire site? Do you want something that will add functionality as well as a bit of a wow factor?

What if you knew that the plugin your about to install will work 100% and add beauty and functionality to your new Divi website – and make your visitors anxious to come back again and again?

Lucky for you, I have been in the WordPress development arena for close to 20+ years. I have tested thousands of plugins and I know which ones are good – and which ones should be left on the shelf. These 4 plugins are not only tested but have been shown to improve visitor retention.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with the makers of these plugins. All logos and images are the property of their prospective companies.

Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin

The Divi Full-Width Slider and Header modules are okay. They work well in most situations right out of the box – but – What if you are looking for something more? Enter Slider Revolution.

Slider Revolution is an innovative, responsive WordPress Slider Plugin that allows you complete control over everything in your slider. Whether it’s a Slider, Carousel, Hero Scene or even a full-width, full-height Front Page, the visual editor will have you telling your own stories in no time! That’s what a slider is for anyway – right?

Intuitive Visual Slider:

Even if you are a beginner, you will find the intuitive workflow so easy that you will be building beautiful sliders in no time. Don’t let the number of options daunt you.

Responsive:

One thing that Slider Revolution does better than other slider plugins is its responsive design. It looks great on desktop, laptop, tablets, and smartphones. You even have total control over how slider appears on various devices.

Social Media Support:

Slider Revolution 5.0 fully supports WordPress postings, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.

Optimized Performance:

What’s the use of having a beautiful slider if it takes 3 minutes to load? No use at all – that’s what. Slider Revolution loads lightning fast. With its built-in Lazy Loading options, the core file size scales automatically.

Free Updates and Support:

Slider Revolution was released in 2012. They have been around for many years. As of this posting, they are the #1 selling Slider Plugin on the Envato Marketplace.  Once you purchase the plugin you have access to their Ticket Support. Their team is very responsive.

Conclusion:

I’ve been using Slider Revolution since its release. True, there were some bugs a few years ago but ThemePunch, the creators of Slider Revolution, have taken the plugin to new heights. It’s not just a great slider plugin – you get tons of free stuff once you activate your license. You get access to Slider Revolution’s library of pre-made sliders. This is an awesome resource and a great way to see how they are made and create your own. There is also a library of free objects and backgrounds to use in your slider. With almost 500K sales of the plugin – Slider Revolution is here to stay. I said it before, and I will say it again – the Divi Slider module is fine for simple sliders – but if you want complete control over EVERY aspect of your story, its time to buy this plugin. One of the best divi plugins 2017. $25 bucks last time I checked. Well worth the price.

Ninja Popups – Popup Plugin for WordPress

This next entry will cement in your minds what a control freak I am. Popups are cool, they are fun to design. But most popup plugins lack in one area – COMPLETE CONTROL!

That’s where Ninja Popups comes in. As of this post, with over 31,000 sales, Ninja Popups is now the most popular popup plugin on the Envato Market. In my opinion, the best WordPress popup plugin

The main reason we use popups is to get your visitors to take an action. We entice them with an offer. Offer them a discount for joining a mailing list. Special content for members only. The popup has to be clear in its intentions – and a very well crafted popup will do that for you. That’s why I like NinjaPopups – it allows you to not only put in the name fields, buttons and other criteria you might want – it also allows you to design the popup from scratch. You can add as many design elements that you want. The drag-and-drop Popup Builder is a little nitpicky at times – but the ability to design down to the pixel makes it perfect in my book. 

NinjaPopups integrates with all of the major mailing systems through the use of API. The following is the latest listing of mailer systems NinjaPopups is compatible with (new listings may have been added after this post was made):

Mailster

Ontraport

Salesforce

SendInBlue

Once you install your license code, you get immediate access to over 70 pre-made popup themes. These give you a great head-start on designing your own custom popups.

Conclusion:

In my opinion, no other popup plugin comes close to NinjaPopups. Being in complete control of every design aspect of my popups makes me very happy. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but you can always use one of their premade setups (which are awesome) to get yourself started. And for $25? You can’t go wrong.

Divi Bars

Divi Bars is just plain fun to use. With just this one plugin I solved my GDPR notification issue, and I can have as many promo bars as I want. And at $15 for a single site, it’s a no-brainer. A very well thought out Divi Plugin that gives your site a bit of a WOW factor.

Divi Bars helps you create beautiful slide-in promo bars, notification bars, Email optins, and much more. Best thing about is that you do not have to learn a whole new system – Divi Bars works right in your Divi Builder. This means you can use this functionality to build ANYTHING (within reason) you want to promote in your Divi Bars.

Divi Bars can be triggered on any page of your website. Different triggers can be applied such as: on page load, timed delay, scroll delay or Exit Intent. Keep your visitors engaged AND on your site. You also get your choice of placements: top, bottom, fixed, unfixed. You also get control over cookie expiration if you don’t want to bother your visitors on every visit.

My favorite thing? Divi Bars gave me customization control of the Close Button. Big deal you say? For control freaks such as myself, it is a big deal. It’s great to see a company think of even the smallest things that will keep Divi developers happy.

Once you purchase Divi Bars, you get access to over a dozen, premade Divi Bars that you can use or learn from to create your own stellar Divi Bars. You get access to video tutorials on how to use divi overlays

Since Divi Bars uses Divi’s built-in Email Optin, it integrates with 20 of the leading email platforms. As of this post – the following mailing systems are supported:

ActiveCampaign

SalesForce

Campaign Monitor

Mailpoet

Conclusion:

Divi Bars is worth every penny. If you want to get away from the same old boring, static websites – go Divi Bars and add a little pizazz to your sites. Your clients will be glad you did!

AdRotate is my go-to plugin for placing ads or other banners on my clients websites. It’s simple, easy to use – and best of all it’s free. They do have a Pro version, but the free version was all I needed.

With AdRotate, I can pretty much have ads wherever I want with the use of shortcodes. It works well with banners, images, products, whatever you want to show your visitors. You just have to make sure that the image sizes you use for your ads fit well in the area you are going to install it.

The plugin itself looks and feels similar to the WordPress dashboard – so you’re already familiar with AdRotate before you even start using the plugin. See below:

Even with the free version, your clients have access to a variety of different data such as being able to see how many impressions adverts have. They can monitor ad groups to see those that are effective and those that are not.

There are many aspects of AdRotate that I do not use. As a designer, my focus is on design – not stats. And that’s why it works great for me. I can add product rotators, notifications, images and more again, pretty much wherever I want.

Conclusion:

For a great ad, banner and image rotator and free? AdRotate is the way to go. If you are into stats – you will love this plugin.