Starting a website is already a daunting experience for those with a bit of know-how but when you’re a beginner, building a site can seem quite overwhelming, and you might want to jump ship before it sails. A lot of this stress comes along with choosing the right WordPress theme. You’re presented with a handful of free options plus an astounding number of paid WordPress themes to pick and select. Seems easy, however, a lot more goes into selecting a WordPress theme than you may think, which brings us to how do you choose the best theme for WordPress?
Design
You need to understand that your WordPress theme is like the entrance to a storefront. The users will base their impressions on your site within seconds of entering. It needs to coincide with the content you are displaying i.e. don’t have a WordPress theme that is flashy with complex layouts, noisy animations when the content caters to financial investments. It needs to make sense. A theme’s presentation shouldn’t be too complicated it should tell the user what they came for in minutes without having to navigate for what they need while helping the owner of the site achieve their goals. Knowing your audience is key to success!
Mobile-friendly
The popularity of any website depends on whether or not it’s responsive to other handheld devices. With so many people using smartphones, tablets, etc., to surf the Internet having a site that doesn’t convert to being mobile friendly is going to tank in the Google rankings. Over 50% of your traffic will stem from mobile users, and the almighty Google will favor mobile friendly sites over desktop ten fold. If you find a WordPress theme that makes you all excited and energetic do make sure to test it by resizing your browser screen. Google offers website owner’s the ability to test themes before purchasing. Simply copy the theme’s demo URL and paste it into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page to save you some unwarranted stress.
Theme options
When using page builders, a WordPress plugin, do keep in mind that even though it allows you to drag and drop layouts creating a user-friendly interface it will leave you a mess of codes when changing themes later on. You may have to hire a professional housekeeper (web developer) due to the plethora of codes left from the previous theme. So try and pick a page builder that is popular to carry over to the next theme such as Fusion Builder. There are a large number of premium WordPress themes that can be purchased with page builders pre-installed. Although, backup everything before switching themes.
Plugins
If a website theme is a storefront then plugins are the cash registers inside that make everything run smoothly and more efficiently. You need to make sure your WordPress theme is compatible with the most popular plugins such as Yoast SEO, W3 Total Cache, and Gravity forms that produce authoritative contact forms fast. You can always ask the theme developer if you’re not too sure it supports the plugins you want to use.
Support
I hate to repeat a cliche but “you get what you pay for, ” and that applies to a free WordPress theme. It may look great, but it will not come with the first-class support you need if you’re a newbie at “behind the scenes” technical stuff. If you can afford it, we recommend you find a theme that is sought-after and regularly updated. If you decide on a free theme at the end of the day, you can still hire a third-party developer to come to your rescue.
Conclusion
We’ve only scratched the surface, there is a whole abundance of requirements that need to be considered before you make that final decision on a theme. If you haven’t found a WordPress theme that fits your needs then we’d be happy to share our insights and experience. Simply send us a message with your website address together with high priority requirements and one of our consultants will be in contact with your shortly.
