WordPress Themes Buying Guide - Selecting The Best WordPress Themes
Having a WordPress website is just as intimidating as it is exciting, especially if you want to make it big in the platform. There are loads of things to consider and choosing the right theme is one of them. Your theme must match your end goals and overall aesthetics of your page. With an extensive collection of themes at your disposal, it does become a little tricky to choose the perfect theme for your business. To make a decision, you must have clarity about your business and the themes in general. Then you need to coalesce them together to find the best match.
You need to keep in mind the reason you started a WordPress website. You must jot down the goals you need to accomplish with the theme. Now, let's have an in-depth look into the WordPress themes.
List out the features
Before choosing a theme, you need to have a list of essential features for your business. The WordPress Feature Filter can help you customize your search based on the features you have listed, like having a custom background or editor style. With a large number of features, it is essential for you to not clutter your theme because of elements that do not accomplish your end goal. At this point, the list you made earlier comes handy. Reflect on what you need and keep the list small and simple.
Choose a Responsive WordPress Theme
Most of your views are generated from handheld devices like mobile phones and tablets. People usually browse blogs when they're taking a break from work, are on a commute or while they're relaxing. It is needless to say that they'd have a handheld device while looking at your business. Easy page loading, navigation, and availability of all features across all the devices is an essential point that you need to consider while selecting your theme. Search engines show mobile friendly and fast loading websites on the top of search results. You need to take that to your advantage.
WordPress Theme Reviews and Ratings
When you shop online for clothes and gadgets, you always ensure that they have good ratings and people have reviewed it well. For your WordPress theme, it should be no different. The better the reviews and ratings, the better is the theme performance. You can Google the theme name and check for its reviews before purchasing. If there is no enough information, you can check for discussions in various support forums about the theme. A lot of themes have malicious codes that can try to access your website.
Choose a Readable Font
When a person visits your website, he/she must find it visually appealing. More importantly, while reading the content, the process must be smooth and lucid. If your reader needs to stop mid-sentence to figure out the next word, even for a second, then your font needs to be improved. Use a minimalist and sophisticated font that is captivating and allures the reader to read further. You can also customize the said font to make it better. It is useful to take the opinion of another person before making the final decision.
Easy To Customize WordPress Theme
An ideal theme gives you full control over its features independently. There are times when themes are coded such that if you change functions on a particular page, it reflects on other pages. Some themes do not give you full control over the header and navigation bar. If it is difficult for you to understand the code or CSS, it is useful to choose themes that support the WordPress Theme Customizer. If you're facing issues, it is better to switch to another theme.
Choose a Theme that Supports all Web Browsers
The theme that you choose might look beautiful in your web browser but a broken mess in your user's browser. Your users will have various web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer. It is essential to test your theme across all the browsers to ensure optimal viewing and compatibility. Don't just check the overall theme layout. Add pictures, plug-ins, and other elements and see how they turn up in different browsers. After testing everything, make a final decision.
Check for SEO Friendliness
The ultimate motive of a website is to reach out to a large number of people and can be achieved with the help of SEO. The SEO of your theme plays a significant role in the overall SEO friendliness of your website. A good looking theme might have a lousy source code that affects your SEO. A lot of developers mention that their themes are SEO friendly to help you. However, you can check the SEO friendliness by looking for elements like categories and tags, title descriptions, headings, and so on.
Budget WordPress Themes
You do not want to spend too much on your theme. As much as a theme is a crucial part of website building, there are other things to look after. You might even start with a zero dollar budget for your theme, and keep a minimal and simple theme and focus on your content. Or you can make the theme choosing process a one-time thing and invest in it. Having a budget narrows down your choices and not feel overwhelmed by the sea of options you can choose.
Social Media Integration
Social media is an excellent source of web traffic and can increase the views, engage users and raise awareness of your brand. Look for a theme that supports plug-ins, and you can choose the best social media plug-ins to add their buttons to your website. A few themes have in-built social media buttons which will save you the expense of buying plug-ins. In-built plug-ins are already integrated to match the look and feel of your website, so you need not spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect fit that compliments your theme.
Keep an open mind towards adverts
Advertisements are a great source of passive income for bloggers. If you do not have a simple business website that sells a particular service or product, you can easily incorporate ads to your blog. While choosing the theme, look for a feature in the WordPress theme that optimizes monetization. There are plenty of themes that do and are compatible with all devices. However, you should keep in mind that the ads must reflect your business goals or the quality of your website decreases. You can now tweak your blog and choose the theme of your dreams.
