As a web designer and developer, knowing where to search for online resources for tips, guidelines, tutorials, and other useful tools is pretty important. Building a website on WordPress can be one of the most rewarding things you do for your online presence or small business. Most beginners feel overwhelmed when it comes to select a theme for their WordPress site. There are thousands of free and paid options. Each theme looks better than the other.
HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE BEST THEME FOR WORDPRESS?
It’s essential to take some time to look at on the right choice for your WordPress theme and make a checklist to ensure the one you choose has all the necessary components. In this article, we will guide you with some highlights that you should consider, so you can choose the best WordPress theme for your site. Now go grab a cup of coffee and enjoy reading.
DEFINE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR YOUR WEBSITE
Before you jump into graphical and visual ideas, it is important to start with defining what success looks like for you and your future website. What are your goals and objectives? What do you need your website to produce?
- Why is it important for you to have a website?
- Who is your target market?
- What do you want those users to gain by visiting your website?
- How will you measure success?
- Do you expect to make money on your website?
Thinking conceptually about your website’s objective is crucial to making sure you choose the right look, feel, and functionality for your visitors. WordPress has many themes that are specifically catered to each of the functions so you want to make sure that you’re looking in the right direction. The first criteria you should consider is the type or category of your business.
For instance, If you have a tech company, go to wordpress.org You can find a huge repository and look for tech themes. If you have a fashion business, look for fashion themes. This helps you to narrow down your search and you end up picking the theme which matches your overall purpose.
KEEP SIMPLE AND CLEAN
Have you ever walked into a department store and felt completely lost? That is what website visitors feel like when they visit a website with poor navigation, with moving components, unoptimized images galleries can sometimes overwhelm and confuse the user.
Besides the visual elements, a theme can affect the performance of your website. Choosing a theme with a lot of extra features or useless widgets can slow down your site’s load times and cost you traffic. Here are some tips:
- Simple and super easy to use
- Responsive which is an essential feature nowadays
- Tested with cross browsers all the popular ones
- Elegant styling
- Simple WordPress theme has lots of white space
- Fully documented for ease of use in times of confusion
- Compatible with the latest WordPress version and tested
- Coded as per latest theme review standards and security standards
- Consider the Search Engines – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to your website performing well in search results. The quality and consistency of your content, as well as the optimization of your metadata, affect your page ranking.
START WITH A FREE THEME
Startup owners are flocking in their thousands to platforms like WordPress. Why? Simply because WordPress is an open-source platform upon which great things can be built. There’s no shortage of examples of how startups have used WordPress to create websites. Many themes can be download completely for free.
Do a simple search on Theme Directory and find free themes that match your website’s criteria and then check out their demos to get a sense of how the theme would look with your content.
PREMIUM THEMES
When you are finding a WordPress theme for your website, along with the look and design, you should focus on many other aspects like the support, upgrade and many more. One of the advantages of paid themes is that they often include extensive documentation and support options. This can be important if you run into an issue that you can’t resolve on your own.
SHOULD YOU GO FOR A PREMIUM OR FOR A FREE THEME?
Since there’s no such thing as a free meal, there are quite a few holdups to consider when it comes to using a free WordPress theme. Let’s say you’ve done your research, and you’ve found a theme that is 90% perfect. For instance, you like the layout of the pages, how the menus function, and the overall design of a theme, color but the fonts aren’t quite what you had in mind.
- A free theme has limited features and no extra functionality, which many larger and more professional websites require.
- The quality is generally high since theme authors must check bugs to prevent theme returns and unsatisfied customers.
- Some free themes have over 1 million downloads! Free themes are not unique when compared with premium themes
- A portion of the themes on the WordPress repository site isn’t updated, which might render them incompatible with frequent version updates of WordPress.
BEST SOURCES FOR PREMIUM THEMES
Not sure where to start your search for the perfect premium WordPress theme? Fortunately, you have many companies to choose for your WordPress theme search. We’ve compiled a few of trusted theme marketplaces.
A free or premium WordPress theme has its advantages and disadvantages, but choosing which one to install ultimately depends on your website’s needs and the website owner’s budget and aesthetic preferences.
Know that it’s completely OK to start with a free WordPress theme and upgrade down the road as the need arises. Why? Because only you will know which one will serve as the best reflection of the business you’re building the site for your objectives.
Hopefully, this guide can get you started in deciding which WordPress theme will work best for your needs in terms of quality, convenience, cost, support, etc. What questions do you still have about WordPress right choice? Contact us and we’ll help you make a decision!