Selecting a theme for your WordPress website can be a confusing task owing to the large number of WordPress themes, both free and premium, available on WordPress and other selling websites like Themeforest. The thing is, when you think you already made up your mind, you will see another even better looking theme. Then, how to choose the theme that suits your website most? The answer will be discussed in our WordPress Guide today: “8 Things to Consider Before Choosing a WordPress Theme”.
However, before that, I feel the need to give you some other reasons why you should think carefully before deciding to buy, or go for, a WordPress theme. As we all know, WordPress is used to create websites of all types, including business, art, studio, construction, agency, etc. Therefore, each theme could be designed for a specific purpose, and the theme you too must respond perfectly to your website’s content. For example, if your website is going to display artistic works from famous authors for sale, then it should be compatible with an ecommerce platform while having the elegant look a website of its type should have. Meanwhile, there are many themes which are coded complicatedly for other uses. It would be both a waste and a burden on your website if they are unnecessary.
Because of all I’ve stated above, it is a must that you are in your right mind when it comes to choosing a theme for your website. These tips below will help, and they are:
Now, let’s go deeper and analyze each point, shall we?
A lot of WordPress themes offer a wide range of color, complicated layouts, fancy animations, etc. In some cases, you might need it for your websites, but in most cases, you don’t. Only look for a theme that helps you reach your goal, not a theme that will complicate it. For example, your website is about formal education but has so many unnecessary and irrelevant options, then potential customers won’t be taking it seriously. Furthermore, your visitors could be driven away from your website if it bedazzles them.
Therefore, if you see a theme that looks so stunning but will not help much in terms of features, let it go and find something else. A good theme should be the one that generates new money, new business and new subscribers for you, not the one that even you yourself can hardly control.
You may know about responsive themes already. In short words, they are themes that enable your website to adjust themselves accordingly with the size of whatever screens it is being displayed on.
In the modern world, when more and more people are using mobile phones for their businesses, a large amount of website’s traffic is contributed by this small item of handheld device. Depending on your type of website, it could be up to half of the traffic, actually – for example, if your website serves reading purposes. If you haven’t heard of this yet, Google has shown mobile friendly websites on top in their mobile search results. Thus, it is clear that your website has to be fully responsive if you insist on making it known among the WordPress community and far beyond.
However, you don’t have to worry too much about this, because most themes created in the recent years are all fully responsive to cater for the varying needs of purchasers!
Let’s not forget the very main purpose of a WordPress theme – making your website look outstanding to such extent that it can steal all the spotlight of other rivals. Here I have some steps to help you find the most amazing theme possible in the ocean of million themes:
The point above has just brought me to another important point, that is browser compatibility. Remember that your website should be looking good on as many browsers as possible, not just the one you’re using. Why? Because the ultimate goal of any website is to satisfy the visitors, not its creator, isn’t it? Most WordPress themes are featured with a wide browser compatibility by their developers who test their themes widely by using sophisticated browser compatibility testing tools. Usually, they will say about this feature on the selling site, but in case they don’t, feel free to test its demo on different browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.
Moreover, test it on mobile browsers as well!
Many WordPress websites and users belong to other nationalities and languages besides English. In the future, you may also create websites that aim to international targets, not English users only. Therefore, translation and multilingual ready is important too, many be way more important than you originally believe.
Thus, go for a theme that ensures translation and multilingual readiness if you want no trouble in the future.
In this WordPress Guide, SEO is another essential factor that helps determine the success of a theme.
Therefore, when looking for a theme, pay attention to those that have “SEO optimized” or “SEO ready” in the theme description. However, don’t trust it immediately. These days, a lot of developers and sellers only check this box to sell their themes more easily. Don’t be scared by this, though. Because only knowing that a designer has at least accounted for SEO when developing their themes is already some kind of reassurance.
If you are afraid that the bad situation might happen to you and your theme will turn out to have no “SEO ready” feature, you can always install an extension for the Chrome browser, such as MozBar or SEO Site Tools, for some brief SEO checks on a theme’s demo.
Name one disadvantage of free themes? Obviously it would be the “No support” feature.
While this may not be true for some devoted developers who provide customers with excellent support for their free themes, the most part of developers really do not supply any support to customers who use their freebies. If this tragedy occurs to you, you will be all alone figuring out solutions if anything in your theme goes wrong. You may even have to pay for another developer to help you solve it.
Therefore, when choosing themes, remember to opt for the one that has detailed documentation and support option. Most Premium WordPress themes come with detailed documentation and one-year or so support. So if you buy premium ones, you should have it anyway.
This is yet another standard in most themes – a customization dashboard. With a customization dashboard, you will be saved from the task of making direct changes to style sheets.
Moreover, such plugins as Visual Page Editor will help you build complex page structures in easy steps, and more happily, without doing anything about coding. Although some WYSIWYG editors are restricting in some particular senses, I realize that generally they’re very advantageous to building a website that looks very nice with minimal effort. Therefore, if a developer offers a demo of their administration panel, I’d advise you to browse around it in order to make sure you are enabled to customize everything you feel the need to.
Above are the 8 measures for you to take before buying or choosing any WordPress theme. May it look good or bad, effective or will hold you down, it all depends on your careful thoughts and final decision. So, read it all through once again and go for it!
See you later in our next WordPress Guide!