10 Things You Need to Know about Choosing a WordPress Theme
When designing a website in WordPress, there are a ton of decisions you'll need to make. Choosing a WordPress theme is one of the most important. Here are 10 pro tips to help you get started.
One of the most important decisions you'll make while building a website is choosing a WordPress theme.
Your theme will reflect your brand and be the first thing a visitor notices about your site. But, with so many different WordPress themes to choose from, how do you decide?
Fortunately, you don't have to go in blind. We put together this guide so you know exactly what you need to consider while choosing a theme for your WordPress site.
Keep reading to find out more!
1. Free Versus Premium Themes
The first question you need to consider when picking a theme is whether to go with a free theme or a premium one. While a free theme sounds like it'll save you money, it could end up costing you more in the long run.
Considering how expensive custom web design is, the cost of a premium theme is minimal.
Besides that, most premium themes meet all of the rest of the criteria on this list.
2. Your Theme Should Be Easy to Customize
Whatever type of theme you choose, you want to make sure that you can quickly and easily change things, whether it's an image or a color scheme. After all, you don't want your website to look exactly like everybody else's.
3. It Should Load Quickly
Since most people aren't willing to wait around for a website to load for more than ten seconds, it's crucial that the theme you choose loads fast enough to get your message to the reader to show them it's worth spending some more time there.
4. Always Check for Features
Before you pick your WordPress theme, you want to make sure that it's going to be compatible with the features that you want for it.
Not every feature will work with every theme, so you don't want to pick out a theme only to discover that it won't work with a feature that you want or need for your website.
Luckily, this is incredibly easy to do. You can search for themes based on features which will allow you to quickly narrow down your options. Simply choose the features you want and filter search results.
5. Make Sure the Theme is Mobile-Friendly
With more and more people accessing websites from mobile devices, it's vital to your website's success to ensure that the theme you choose is mobile-friendly. If not, you risk losing a lot of leads because of incompatibilities.
Some industry experts even suggest designing your website's mobile version first, to ensure 100% compatibility between mobile and desktop versions. While this may not work for you, it is necessary to check on this before choosing a theme.
6. Choose a Theme that Matches Your Brand Colors
The colors you choose to use for your logo and your brand should work well with your WordPress theme. If they don't, your website will end up looking disjointed and will lack harmony.
If you pick a theme that's not customizable, then you'll either need to pick one that is neutral so your brand colors can stand out or one that matches them.
Alternatively, if you are starting a new online business, then you may be able to plan your logo and brand colors around the theme you choose. If you go this route, then you'll want to be completely certain that the theme colors you choose accurately represent your brand.
7. The Best Themes are Updated Regularly
There are several reasons that you need to pick a theme that's updated regularly. First and foremost, this can help keep your website and therefore your business safe from cyber attacks.
Older themes may also have bugs or glitches that show up over time. If there's not someone working to fix those and update them, then your website will have issues. These problems could create bad user experiences which will end up hurting your bottom line.
8. See if You'll Have Support if You Need It
You're likely to run into a problem with your theme at some point, which is why it's nice to know that there's going to be someone to talk to about it. A lack of support is more common in free themes since they're often made by individuals who don't put a lot of effort into helping users of that theme.
Most premium themes are created by companies and will have a team of agents ready to answer any questions you may have.
If you're facing a huge problem, it will get your website back up and running fast. And, if you're just having a minor issue, you can avoid hours of research and frustration to solve it.
9. The Font Must Be Easy to Read
This is a small detail, but no less important to the success of your website. Would you stick around to read more on a website that you had trouble reading? Probably not.
Some themes won't allow you to make changes to the font. Or if they do, they offer limited font choices. Either way, you need to make sure if you're choosing a WordPress theme that doesn't give you a choice with fonts, it's one your visitors can read.
10. Pick a Theme Based on the Purpose of Your Website
Although most themes can be customized enough to work for nearly any purpose, it can be an enormous help to use one that was designed with your industry in mind.
For example, if you're running a restaurant, a theme designed for the food and hospitality industry will likely be much easier to make work for your business than one created for a law office.
Taking an extra minute to find a WordPress theme that was made with your business in mind will help save you a ton of time and trouble making a different theme work.
For restaurants or those in the food industry, you can read more here.
Learn More About Choosing a WordPress Theme
Hopefully, you've learned everything you need to know about choosing a WordPress theme.
Although it may seem like a lot, taking some time to make the right decision will end up saving you a ton of time, money, and energy in the future.
To learn more or to get some ideas by checking out how others have designed their web page, you can check out our gallery.
