When we set up your website using WordPress technology, you’ll soon realise that comments on your site play a very powerful part in encouraging people to continue visiting your site, and when they do arrive, comments are great at getting visitors to stick around.  People love to be part of a community, and comments allow visitors to interact with others who are visiting the site.

The longer that site visitors spend on your site, the more time you have to build a stronger relationship with them.  Stronger relationships result in greater awareness, and certainly better sales conversions.

Here are a selection of WordPress plugins that will encourage more comments to be placed on your site.

1. The Subscribe To Comments plugin allows a commentator to check a box, which then notifies them by email any time someone else comments on the same post.  This encourages them to return to the site and stay immersed in the conversation.
2. The Show Top Commentators plugin displays a list of top commentators (their names and number of comments) in the site sidebar, and it encourages discussion by the site readers.  This is a terrific simple way to show recognition to those who are contributing to your website community.
3. The Comment Relish plugin makes you appear polite!  It sends a thank you email to those who comment on your site for the first time, making them feel good about coming back to comment regularly.  This is a more private form of recognition, but equally as effective as the Show Top Commentators plugin.
4. The Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin places a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment on the page.  What happens is that whenever this reply link is used, the new comment is placed directly below the comment being replied to, rather than at the end of the page.  This makes it easier for people to reply to comments rather than having to quote or refer to another comment, and prevents readers having to search all the way down the page when looking for answers to their question.
5. The Get Recent Comments plugin displays the most recent comments in the sidebar.  This plugin can be set up to link the recent commenter’s site as well as an excerpt of their comment – the link to their site obviously encourages them to leave more comments!
6. The Live Comment Preview plugin displays a live preview of the visitor’s comments as they type.

Get in touch and have us install any of these six plugins to have you build stronger relationships with your site visitors and truly tap into the magic of comments!