Many beginners face anxiety when it comes to choosing a suitable theme for their WordPress website. The biggest reason for that is the presence of thousands of free and paid theme options. As every option has its own pros and cons.
The question here is: How to Choose the Best Theme for Your Website?
In this article, we’ll share some of the best advice that you should consider when choosing the most suitable theme for your website.
Why Should You Be Careful when Choosing Your WordPress Theme?
Every WordPress theme fulfills certain needs or has a certain purpose. While themes can be used for more than one purpose. Other themes are more suited for a specific field.
For instance, if you’re starting a blog that features articles about your views, The most well-suited WordPress theme is the one that’s going to help you showcase your articles in the best way.
And if you’re a photographer who would like to start a website, showcasing your best work, the best WordPress theme for you is the one that’ll provide you with different eye-catching options to showcase your photos.
So, it’s best to pick a WordPress theme that is most suited for your needs, which meets the nature of your work.
Many WordPress Themes Come with Plenty of Different Options
These options, if not programmed correctly, can cause some damage. Such as changes in the themes, or using some plugins. In that case, you need to pay a web developer to help you edit this theme.
On the other side, a WordPress theme can look great but it might slow down your website. Nobody likes slow websites, and especially not Google! Since Google ranks fast website higher on the SERPs
An attractive appearance is the interface of your website. Which plays an important role in attracting visitors to your website. However, you need to be careful not to choose appearance over your website’s speed.
After this introduction, let’s take a look at the steps which you can take to make sure you’ll pick the most suitable WordPress theme for your website.
- Strive for Simplicity and Easy Use
A lot of WordPress themes come in plenty of colors, complicated shapes, shiny animations, etc. At times, you might need all those things, but it’s not always essential. This is why you need to prioritize your needs first, while staying conscious of the user’s needs.
Find a Theme That Includes Features Which Will Support Your Goals
A polished appearance is important, but not at the cost of the theme’s simplicity and how easy it is for the user to navigate. Make sure that the display isn’t overly complicated.
Afterall, the purpose of web design is to help the user find the information they need, as well as to help the owners of the websites accomplish their goals.
If the appearance looks great, but it doesn’t help in getting new customers or clients, then it’s not a good theme. Furthermore, if it doesn’t help visitors get to where they’d like easily, it leaves them with a bad experience within the website. Thus, leading to some step backs with your business.
- Suitability for All Devices
Currently used WordPress themes are reprogrammed to be suitably used across different devices and screens. That’s because a huge portion of your website visitors come via mobile devices.
If your website is suitable for different devices, this will be a good indicator with Google. And therefore, your website ranks higher in search engines.
As we’ve previously mentioned, most WordPress themes are programmed to do so. However, some sellers sell themes that have a constant width, which isn’t suitable for phones. Which is why you need to try out the WordPress theme on your phone before buying it.
How to Test the Theme’s Response to Different Mobile Devices
The easiest way to check the way a WordPress theme is viewed on mobile phones is by changing the size of the screen in the browser. When you’re changing the size of the screen, you’ll notice that the display of the theme is changing in order to be suitable for the size.
Another way to test it is copying the link of the theme’s experimental page and pasting it in Google’s compatibility test page
- Compatibility with Other Browsers
Not everyone uses the same browser. The theme could look perfect when viewed from your own browser, but it might look distorted in other browsers.
The same way it is with mobile device compatibility, the WordPress theme you plan on choosing needs to be compatible with different browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
Developers make sure that the theme is compatible with all browsers, but you need to test this for yourself. There are two websites that you can use to test your preferred WordPress theme, and learn the way it responds to different browsers.
- Plugins
The true power of WordPress comes from its extra plugins. Such plugins give you the opportunity to do a lot more with your website.
Since there’s a lot of WordPress plugins, some of them are essential for all WordPress websites. Such as: Yoast SEO , Elementor, Astra Theme, etc. You need to make sure that your WordPress theme supports all the popular plugins.
If you’re not sure, you can always ask the person or company that’s responsible for the development of your theme.
- Translation and Multilingualism
A large portion of WordPress websites aren’t in English. You might be starting a website in a language other than English. You could even be planning to build a website which supports more than one language in the future.
Make sure that your WordPress theme is ready for translation. It should also support plugins of multiple languages.
- Page Builders
Page builders are basically WordPress plugins that allow you to create pages using the user interface. A lot of excellent WordPress themes come with pre-installed page builders. Some of which are only used by the developer of the theme.
Using page builders can result in the presence of some pages, which contains a lot of unwanted codes. If you change the theme at any given time, you’re going to have to do extra programming.
Thus, you have to choose WordPress themes that include popular and broadly used page builders. Additionally, you can buy these page builders separately, in order to use them with your own theme.
- Support Options When You Need Help
One of the negative sides of using free WordPress themes is not having stable support. Although some developers provide support for their own free themes, it’s still very rare to find it.
Which is why more often than not, if a problem arises with the free WordPress theme, you need to identify and solve it yourself. Either that, or you could pay a developer to fix it for you. Unlike paid themes, which give excellent support for its buyers.
You can end up having to pay a developer everytime a minor problem occurs. So, before settling on a certain WordPress theme, make sure it includes a great support system.
Most of the premium WordPress themes offer detailed documentation as well as one year email based support.
- Compatibility with Search Engines
Your WordPress theme plays an important part when it comes to your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A good appearance, as previously mentioned, is an important factor, but an attractive theme could include some bad coding which might get you to rank lower in the SERPs.
Beginners might find it hard to analyze the codes of the themes themselves. That’s why a lot of premium WordPress theme developers will make sure to tell you that their themes are compatible with search engines.
Would you like to test the theme yourself? You can use this tool which will tell you the extent of suitability of your theme with search engines. And whether or not there is unwanted coding.
- Ratings and Reviews
A very good indicator of the quality of a WordPress theme is the ratings and reviews written by the users. When it comes to WordPress themes, you’ll find the classification section directly underneath the install button.
It displays the number of reviews and stars that are given to this theme by the users. If you click on 5 stars, you’ll see all the reviews that have given the theme 5 stars.
Even the good themes can get some bad reviews. However, if there’s a lot of negative reviews, then you need to read them carefully beforehand.
Building a WordPress website can be tricky, but with these tips on how to choose a WordPress theme that is most suitable for all your needs, we hope that you’ll find it easier to build your presence online.
