9 Things to Think About When Choosing the Perfect WordPress Theme
When choosing a theme for their WordPress blog, most newcomers are overwhelmed.
There are thousands of possibilities available, both free and paid. Each theme appears to be superior to the others. How do you pick the best WordPress theme?
This article will go over the nine factors you should think about when choosing a WordPress theme for your website.
Why Should You Be Wary When Purchasing a WordPress Theme?
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that can be used to create several different types of websites. As a result, each theme targets a specific demographic.
Your WordPress theme should suit the information on your website. You’ll want a theme that makes it easy to read if you’re starting a blog on politics or social issues.
Many WordPress themes offer a wide range of customization options. If not coded correctly, these options can make switching themes and using other WordPress plugins impossible. Either you’ll have to live with that theme or pay a developer to assist you to alter it.
On the other hand, certain aesthetically pleasing WordPress themes can slow down your site. Everyone dislikes slow websites, including Google, which prefers to rank faster websites higher.
Your WordPress theme is your website’s public face, and it has a big influence on how users and search engines see it.
You’ve probably heard the expression “everything that glitters isn’t gold.”
After that, let’s look at some of the measures you can take to ensure you pick the ideal theme for your WordPress site.
Many WordPress themes have vibrant colours, intricate layouts, and spectacular animations, among other features. You may require those items on occasion, but you do not need all of them in most circumstances.
Look for a theme with a design layout that will help you accomplish your goal. It should be visually appealing, but not at the expense of functionality and simplicity.
Make sure the theme’s presentation style isn’t too complicated. The goal of web design is to assist site owners in achieving their goals while also assisting users in finding the information they require.
If a theme looks great but doesn’t assist you in attracting new consumers or subscribers, it’s not a good theme. It’s also not a good theme if your visitors can’t find their way around your site.
Mobile and other handheld devices generate a large amount of online traffic, and this percentage could exceed 50% of your traffic, depending on the contents of your website.
Mobile-friendly websites come first in Google’s mobile search results. Regardless of the content or demographic, all websites must be responsive and mobile-friendly.
By default, most WordPress themes are responsive. However, some dealers continue to sell fixed-width layouts that are not mobile-friendly. Make sure the theme you choose for your website is compatible with mobile devices.
Your users will utilize a variety of browsers. Your theme may appear excellent in the browser you’re using, but it could be broken in other browsers.
This is when browser compatibility comes into play. Most WordPress theme developers use extensive browser compatibility testing tools to examine their themes completely.
On their website, they should make this clear. If they don’t, you may always do simple tests to see if the theme works in different browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.
WordPress plugins are what make the platform truly powerful. Thanks to these plugins, you can do anything with your WordPress site.
While there are several WordPress plugins to choose from, some are required for all websites. Examples are gravity Forms, Yoast SEO, W3 Total Cache, and more plugins.
Check if your WordPress theme works with all of the most popular plugins. If you’re unsure, contact the theme’s creator.
A huge percentage of WordPress sites are not in English. You may be building a website in a language other than English. Perhaps you have future intentions to construct a multilingual WordPress site.
Ensure your WordPress theme is ready for translation and that multilingual WordPress plugins are supported.
WordPress plugins that allow you to drag & drop page layouts are page builders.
Many premium WordPress themes come with page builders pre-installed, and only the theme’s creator has access to some of these page builders.
Creating landing pages with a page builder like this can result in extra code. You’ll have a lot of work to do to clean up those pages if you ever alter the theme.
Choose themes that include one of the most popular page builder plugins pre-installed. These page builders can also be used independently with other themes.
One disadvantage of using a free WordPress theme is that no support is promised. While some developers offer good support for their free themes, most free themes do not.
You’ll have to work it out on your own if you mess up your WordPress theme. You can also find up paying a third-party developer to fix minor issues.
Choose a WordPress theme that comes with enough documentation and support. The majority of commercial WordPress themes provide detailed documentation and a year of email-based support.
Your WordPress theme is crucial to your site’s SEO friendliness. Even a beautiful theme might result in sloppy HTML, harming your site’s search engine rankings.
Beginners may find evaluating a theme’s source code on their own difficult. As a result, many premium WordPress theme developers will claim that their sites are optimized for search engines.
You can also check whether the page generates proper HTML5 using the W3C Markup Validation service. Please remember that the W3C tool will create a slew of warnings, none of which should be taken seriously.
Another important indicator of a WordPress theme’s quality is user ratings and reviews. Customer reviews will appear if the theme is available on a third-party marketplace.
The rating area for free WordPress themes may be found just below the download button. The number of reviews and stars supplied by users will be displayed. If you click on five stars, it will take you to a page with all of the 5-star reviews for the theme.