Anyone can build a beautiful website with the WordPress CMS platform.
Yes! You can use it to create any website be it dynamic or static with no technical knowledge.
Choosing a best WordPress theme that perfectly fits into your site is a crucial task as the design plays an essential role in branding, user experience, and search engine rankings.
Vulnerably coded themes could affect your site in an unhealthy manner!
When I entered the blogging field, before starting my career as a theme designer, I have spent countless hours in choosing and changing the theme for my blog.
I’ve realized that the WordPress child theme selection is an overwhelming process and thus I would like to share some tips to have it in mind while you select a theme for your WordPress website.
Useful Tips To Select Ideal Theme For WordPress Site
Tons of both free, paid and top-rated WordPress themes are available, and each one may fascinate you with a lot of features and alluring colors.
So, picking a perfect WordPress theme for your blog/site would be a tedious task. That’s why you are reading this piece of content, Am I right?
Let me list some effective tips so that you will be able to pick an ideal theme for your WordPress business website.
1. List out the Features You Want
The very first thing that you should do before choosing a perfect WordPress theme is to list out every function that you wish.
Just have your niche in mind! You must choose a theme that can highlight your skills, product or service on the homepage.
In case you are a Photography or Fashion blogger, words must not be used much on the homepage. You may choose a good WordPress theme that most show your snapshots.
Similarly, have an idea about
- How many columns that you need (Check whether you could add or remove them after installing the theme)
- Type of the header (Header with social profile links, Header that allows to include ad, full-length header and much more)
- Kind of Navigation Menu (both at Theme Header & Footer or above & below the header)
- Number of sidebars, layout options and Site width (Some WordPress child themes offer multiple sidebars & no sidebar, several attractive design options and allow you to modify the site width)
Besides, if your primary purpose is to collect the leads, then you should use a theme with a landing page as homepage.
Likewise, your major aim is to make the visitors sign-up your subscription newsletter, it would be good to pick a beautiful WordPress theme with noticeable subscription widget at the top or even on the big width header.
Therefore, listing out the features will help you a lot in selecting a great WordPress theme for your website.
2. Check Mobile Responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness is not an optional feature anymore for any internet site. Google started counting the responsive feature as a ranking factor of websites.
If you already have a website/blog, I am sure that more than 50% of its traffic comes from mobile devices. That’s the power of mobiles.
Nowadays, most of the theme developers pay attention to the mobile responsive feature, but I have seen some third-party developers who still sell fixed-width WordPress themes that are not at all mobile friendly.
If you want to make conversions from every single visit you get, open your eyes wide towards the mobile traffic.
Do you like a website that is not perfectly optimized for mobile devices? Probably, your answer should be “NO.”
How to Check Mobile Responsiveness of any Website?
Google has given us a dedicated tool to check whether a website is mobile-friendly or not. There, you will get a text field to insert the URL of the theme you want to check for mobile responsiveness.
3. Verify Search Engine Optimization Features
SEO – A word that the digital marketer/online publisher can never forget
If you follow the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies, you can hold the top search engine page rankings and make a good profit with your web business.
But along with the best SEO tactics, you need to have the best WordPress theme in SEO point of view. If your theme is poorly coded with illegitimate HTML tags, you will never get search engine paybacks.
So, you have to make sure to opt the WordPress child theme optimized for search engines. And, according to my experience, all the themes coming from reputed platforms like Genesis Framework of StudioPress, Elegant Themes, and MyThemeShop Themes contain codes that are well optimized for search engines.
You need to be extra cautious when it comes to purchasing or downloading themes from pretty new developers.
Just like Google’s mobile responsiveness checker, you can use W3C Markup Validation tool to check the legibility of the codes used in a theme.
Copy the theme demo web page URL and paste the same into the field given. You have to care only about the critical warnings. Don’t worry to see other cautions.
4. Have Eye On Browser Plugin & Platform Compatibility
Your visitors may use different kinds of the browser to access your site and thus you should pick a perfect WordPress theme that is compatible with all types of browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and so on.
The WordPress child theme that you wish to purchase may look good on your browser. But that doesn’t mean it will be displayed well in every other browser. Hence, check for the cross-browser compatibility indication on the developer’s website.
If you don’t see it, visit the demo page from multiple browsers. Never ignore any browser because it has got a minority of user base because no one can tell you when a golden moment can happen.
BrowserShots is an online tool to help you with browser compatibility. You can check on it for the different versions of multiple browsers.
Like browser compatibility, be sure to choose a great WordPress theme well-matched for the latest version of WordPress.
Besides, if your website is related to e-commerce or membership type site, don’t forget to choose an enhanced WordPress theme that supports Woocommerce, BuddyPress, BBPress and few more essential WordPress plugins.
5. Ensure Easy Customization
I would suggest you opt an easy to customize WordPress theme even if you don’t want to play with its HTML, CSS and PHP code.
As I’m a Genesis Child Theme and WordPress theme developer, I always prefer launching the minimal themes with user-friendly features so that my clients would be able to install and customize the theme without any hassle.
Not only me, most of the WordPress theme creators pay attention in introducing highly customizable themes for the users.
They use drag & drop builders, a vast store of shortcodes and easy to choose the font, style & color options to offer a great simplicity in customizing a tailored theme according to the requirements of the theme user.
Other Factors To Consider While Choosing The Best WordPress Theme
1. Pre-Made Widgets
The latest WordPress themes incorporate pre-made widgets to add Instagram, popular posts, Newsletter subscription, featured posts in slider format and much more. You may choose a good WordPress theme with these useful features.
2. Social Media Integration
Social media is an excellent source of medium to improve the brand awareness, and thus, the WordPress theme developers show a keen interest in adding the customized social media addition in the form of social media profiles and sharing buttons to give a great site look & feel which gives good user experience. It would be good to get such a theme that support social media.
3. Site Speed
Site speed has a significant impact on user experience and ranking factor as well. Thus, you should consider getting a fast loading WordPress theme to please your visitors and search engines. You may use the tools GTMetrix or Pingdom to check the speed of the WordPress Themes.
4. Improved Features
You may get a friendly WordPress theme with some advanced features like the personalized dashboard, customized error pages, the optimized theme for monetization, unique comment system.
5. Support, Updates, and Documentation
A cool WordPress theme should have excellent support to help you in troubleshooting, fix the bugs and to customize a particular feature.
Also, it should have regular updates to sync with the recent WordPress version and complex WP plugins. Out of all, look for the detailed documentation so that you can do the WordPress theme installation and set up at your ease.
Final Words
“Minimalistic and Clean WordPress Design Gives Charm To Every Eye”
I hope that you’ve understood the critical factors to be remembered while choosing a perfect WordPress theme.
If you follow these tips carefully, you will be able to choose a perfect WordPress theme for sure. Along with these tips, I guess you won’t go for over colored themes.
So, follow the advice that I have given and end your quest for the fantastic WordPress child theme that exactly fits your niche website.
If you are specifically looking for an attractive premium WP layouts for your Adsense niche sites, consider getting Admania, the recently introduced theme on the #1 marketplace ThemeForest.
If you are looking for a page builder type WordPress theme, then have a look at the features of Elementor Pro with which you can make your site appearenace an amazing one!
How do you select an ideal WordPress theme for your site/blog? Did any miss mention any important aspect to be considered while choosing the best WordPress Theme? If yes, list it/those in the comment section.
Excellent read, very informative.
I would, however, add it’s important to ensure Support is available for any theme you purchase (or download) as in some cases technical difficulties may arise whereby you need support from the developers themselves.
Finally, avoid “nulled” themes! Nulled themes can be very tempting to download, you are essentially getting a premium product for free – however, there are many security risks. The themes themselves are usually outdated, unsupported and littered with security loopholes, it’s most certainly worth spending the money on the real thing!