The entire appearance, feel, and style of your website is called a theme. The color palette, layout, and styling of your site are all factors that contribute to your theme.
Your website theme, in essence, is a direct expression of your brand and has a direct impact on the user experience.
Factors to Think About When Choosing the Right Theme
Many WordPress themes include a wide range of customizing options. If these features aren’t properly coded, they can make switching themes and using other WordPress plugins difficult.
Unless you hire an expert to help you change the theme, you’ll be stuck with it.
When choosing a theme for your website, there are various elements to consider.
These elements assist you in determining what you should seek in a theme.
We’ve compiled a list of factors below to assist you in finding the appropriate theme for your website.
1. Make an effort to keep things simple.
Many WordPress themes have a variety of colors, features, layouts, and even spectacular animations. You may believe you require all of these, but you do not.
Always keep in mind that you’re building a website for your visitors. Your website’s theme should make it easy for customers to navigate.
If your theme is too conjusted, it may confuse your visitors and cause them to leave before seeing what you have to offer.
The purpose of web design is to make it easier for your website’s users to find information. As a result, you will be able to achieve your website’s purpose.
It doesn’t matter how lovely a theme looks. If it doesn’t assist you attract new consumers and email subscribers, it’s not a good theme.
2. Verify that your WordPress theme is mobile-friendly
A responsive theme adapts its layout and style to fit various screen sizes and devices. You don’t want your mobile readers to have a horrible experience, thus having a responsive theme is essential.
Another advantage of using a responsive theme is that Google favors mobile-friendly and responsive websites. If you want to rank higher on Google, you must have a website that is fully mobile responsive.
Mobile device traffic has been steadily increasing year after year. Mobile devices account for more than 60% of all traffic this year. You will be losing a lot of traffic and business if you don’t have a mobile-responsive theme.
Thankfully, most WordPress themes are responsive by default, but many free themes still use fixed-width layouts that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Make sure your theme is responsive when making your selection.
By using Google’s mobile-friendly test tool, you can immediately see if the theme is mobile-ready.
3. Examine the Theme Speed
Now, one of the most important things to look for in a WordPress theme is that it doesn’t slow down your website owing to the way it’s coded.
Some WordPress themes are coded in such a way that they load quickly and with few requests. Others, unfortunately, use image-heavy designs and a variety of code and script requests that slow down your blog.
You can use a site like IsItWP to evaluate the WordPress theme’s demo (nearly all themes include one). When you obtain the results, read over all of the information to see how many bad requests, bad codes, and other issues you can uncover.
These issues can be fixed if you discover a great theme that you like, but they may also be very annoying, therefore it’s best to start with a well-coded theme.
4. Make sure your plugins are supported.
Make sure the WordPress theme you select is compatible with popular plugins. You can accomplish anything with your WordPress website thanks to plugins. You can change the look of your blog, add a feature, and improve the performance of your site, among other things.
You might want to reconsider your theme if it doesn’t support popular plugins like WPForms, OptinMonster, AIOSEO, Yoast SEO, or W3 Cache.
If you’re not sure if a plugin you want to utilize is supported by your theme, ask the creator.
You can also see if the theme you choose comes with the plugins you want already installed. WPForms, for example, is pre-installed with StudioPress Revolution Pro.
5. Make sure your browser is compatible.
Your readers utilize a variety of browsers.
It’s possible that a theme will work wonderfully in your browser, but that doesn’t mean it will work in the browsers of your readers.
Make sure that the theme you choose is compatible with your browser before you choose it.
Although most WordPress theme authors utilize various tools to test browser compatibility, many do not.
Assume they don’t indicate browser compatibility on their website. In this case, you may quickly test the theme by running it in a variety of browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
If the theme you choose is cross-browser compatible, you’ve struck gold.
6. Page Builder compatibility
One of our favorite WordPress tools is page builders. Customizing a WordPress theme might be challenging at times. Page builders, on the other hand, allow you to design website pages by dragging and dropping objects.
The majority of WordPress themes come with page builders pre-installed. Some of them are only used by the theme’s designer.
Using these lesser-known page builders can add a lot of unneeded code to your site, slowing it down. It’s best to choose a WordPress theme that works with all major page builders and won’t mess with your coding.
In conjunction with your selected WordPress theme, we recommend using a page builder like SeedProd.
7. Customer service
While some free WordPress themes provide excellent support, the majority of free themes do not. If you mix up your website, this can lead to a slew of issues.
You will have to figure it out on your own or engage a third-party developer to do it for you because there are no supporting documents.
As a result, make sure you select a WordPress theme with adequate documentation and support.
Many premium themes include comprehensive documentation as well as up to a year of email support.
8. Check theme updates and reviews
Whenever you are choosing a theme, check its date: when it was recently updated. It is necessary for theme to get frequent necessary updates as per time. If a theme is updated like a year ago, it’s better not to choose such a theme.
You can even check the reviews on that theme given by users as it will give you insights on user experience using that theme. Looking at the ratings and reviews, you can decide if the theme is good to use or not.
Conclusion
Finding a perfect theme is not an easy job to do. It takes time to research and find out the best theme that suits your dream website.
Thus, make sure you follow the above important factors that you need to consider before choosing a WordPress theme. Check our WordPress Hosting