Whether you are looking forward to picking a WordPress theme suiting your business needs or improvising the current website by changing your existing theme, this article will provide you essential insights to consider while choosing a WordPress theme.
You might be confused about which theme to download for your website and unaware of what to look for in a WordPress theme. This article will provide the idea you need to know before finding the perfect WordPress theme for your website. The theme determines the aesthetic and feel of your WordPress website. So, it is crucial to choose WordPress themes appropriately.
As for introducing the content management system (CMS), WordPress development has gone a long way. And there’s no better way to evaluate how far WordPress has progressed than by looking at the number of themes available to users. Users are privileged with choices because there are so many high-quality WordPress themes available. There are several themes to select from, whether to create a personal or business website.
The Purpose of your website and content type is one of the most important aspects of choosing the theme. For example, suppose you operate a photography website. In that case, the emphasis is on the images, but if your specialization is poetry or financial news, the emphasis is on the text, and visuals are secondary. If you run a home service business, the focus is on lead generation, services showcase, and trust factors. Your goal is to make your website visually and aesthetically appealing along with the essential features that your website demands. And this all comes down to your ability to pick a WordPress theme that meets your needs.
Choose WordPress theme with these 9 Generic features
Here’s the list of the most important features to consider before selecting a WordPress theme for your website. This article will walk you through the significance of each feature and help you with ways to pick a WordPress theme for your personal and business website.
Theme Responsiveness
A responsive WordPress theme looks like a regular theme, but it has the ability to adapt to different screen sizes and devices. When picking a theme for your website, one of the most essential factors to consider is responsiveness. People are increasingly using their mobile phones and tablets to access the website nowadays.
When a site is viewed on a desktop computer, the website may seem as intended but when viewing the same layout on a tablet, you may be forced to scroll horizontally which consumers despise. Websites might be much more difficult to see on a small smartphone screen.
Large pictures may cause the layout to break on smartphones. If a website has a lot of graphics, it may take a long time to load on a smartphone. If a site adopts a responsive design, the tablet version automatically changes to show two columns. and on smartphones, the material will display as a single vertically stacked column. As a result, the text is readable and navigable. Instead of breaking the layout or distorting, images will resize themselves for a better user experience. The point is that with responsive design, the website adapts to the device on which the visitor is seeing it.
How to check Responsiveness of WordPress Theme
How do I check if the theme is responsive? To know if the theme is responsive or not, simply you can go through the theme’s description and its features and check for yourself that it works fine on different devices. Or, most of the themes have an inbuilt responsiveness checker that allows you to preview the theme on different screens.
The easiest way for the test would be resizing the browser screen; check how well the theme’s layout will adjust itself to the screen width.
There are different tools as well that can help you find how responsive your website is. A responsive design checker is an easy tool you can use to check your website responsiveness.
Another way of testing would be through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Simply copy the theme’s demo page and paste it.
Note: There will be some warnings regardless of how good a given theme is. Give attention to any red flags like incompatible plugins, text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, content wider than the screen, viewport, etc.
Compatibility with Major Browsers
You put the URL into the address bar, hit Enter, and wait for it to load. None of the images are loading. The website is littered with buttons and content. You double-check your connection and reload, only to be greeted by the same screen.
In the end, you’ll probably think the site has a problem and leave to return later or assume the site is broken and leave to locate a replacement. It can be because of the fault of web developers for abstracting browser differences.
There are millions of users online that use different browsers and no one can be fully sure of what browser their targeted customer uses but you can check the Web Browser Market Share to know the statistics of different browser users. This implies that the site should work well in a variety of web browsers. Every website owner should guarantee that their website or apps are cross-browser compatible. To obtain the most return on your investment, make sure your selected theme runs fine on different browsers. Checking cross-browser compatibility while you choose a WordPress theme is the most.
Many people in today’s society prefer to open Web pages using different browsers. For instance, if a particular user uses Firefox on a computer, they might use safari on the iPhone and use chrome for the kids on their tablet. Cross-browser compatibility ensures that your website functions properly regardless of the browser a visitor uses. There are cross-browser testing tools where you can check if your website is cross-browser compatible. You can also check manually by running your website on different browsers firefox, chrome, safari, etc.
Plugin Compatibility
Plugins allow a theme’s functionality to be expanded. A theme can be further modified to fit specific needs with the plugins. Make sure the theme supports website niche-specific plugins so that using that particular theme business/website-specific features can be added.
At some point when you are developing your WordPress website, you would want to add some features, for that you will need to install a plugin and activate it. Usually, most WordPress themes try to cover niche-specific features, and most of them develop and provide necessary plugins to meet and expand website needs, if they haven’t they will recommend you to install the required plugins. The theme you choose needs to be plugins compatible so that you can install plugins and add useful features for the conversion.
For Example:
- If you want to sell your products from your website you need to install plugins like WooCommerce.
- If you want to add a calendar, online booking feature, and other event features you will need to install plugins like The Event Calendar.
So, before you choose WordPress theme, be sure it can fit essential plugins. Some themes come with their own set of plugins. They should, however, be compatible with the most popular third-party plugins. So you should know what plugins do and when to install the plugin. Check out the 10 popular WordPress plugins so you will have an idea of what you might need on your website.
Security
A secure WordPress theme is one that has minimum security vulnerabilities, follows the correct code standards, is regularly updated, and is compatible with both your WordPress version and the rest of your site’s elements (such as its plugins).
At every level of the WordPress development process, this is something that should not be neglected while picking a theme. Checking online reviews is one of the ways to determine how secure a theme is. However, getting a safe theme from a trustworthy source is the best way to go.
With a secured theme you will prevent unneeded bugs, compatibility errors, and other problems. Because there will be fewer security vulnerabilities for hackers, viruses, and other negative influences to exploit, it will be far more difficult for them to have an impact on your site.
You can always install plugins like Sucuri Security, Wordfence Security to add security to your website. You can also use tools like; Sucuri SiteCheck, Mozilla Observatory, Detectify, SSLTrust, WPScan to see if your website is secured. Some platforms put a lot of effort into vetting the themes they upload, and you should utilize them whenever possible.
Note: Using nulled WordPress themes increases the security vulnerability of your website. Avoid using crack themes and plugins altogether.
Customer Support and Theme Updates
Theme customer support is there so that you don’t get stalled while designing your website. The Support and Update function is one of the most important features that a theme should have. Themes with this functionality tend to receive more reviews and are constantly up to date.
You can check out the theme changelog on the theme’s website, WordPress theme page, theme forest page, website sales pages, and more. You better research more and understand if the theme provides proper customer support and update or not. Because WordPress changes on a frequent basis, having this functionality ensures that your website will always be compatible with your WordPress website.
Picking a WordPress theme that provides frequent updates and customer support is the greatest approach to move forward. This is a key characteristic that differentiates a theme from others.
SEO Friendly
With better SEO your site will rank well on Google search engine result pages. Everyone is aware that search engines such as Google determine the future success of a website. Organic reach helps provide potential followers a better idea of what your page is about and what kind of material they can expect from you. Users can see what others are saying about your business, which might help with word-of-mouth promotion.
So, before you choose wordpress theme, make sure it’s compatible with SEO plugins. Make sure that SEO is mentioned in the theme’s feature list. You may also check this during the live preview of the demo. Look for SEO features such as quick theme loading, HTML tags, and SEO plugin support.
Customization Option
While every theme supports the basic customizer options to some extent, many themes add extra tabs and options to the WordPress theme customizer, allowing you to quickly customize your theme without having to know how to code. WordPress themes, whether free or premium, should allow for theme customization. It’s simple to use a pre-designed theme template. Consider customization options while you choose WordPress theme.
The major objective of theme customization is to make your website seem unique, attractive, and distinct from others that have utilized the same theme template. It also helps the users who are new to WordPress to design and develop a fully functioning website with less effort.
Documentation
Tip 8 on Choosing WordPress theme: Proper Documentation of theme features and functionalityFor you to never get stuck on the website development process, themes should provide full documentation that guides you on how to run the website. Documentation provides step by step guide to set up a website, a guide to access theme-specific features, guides you to set up plugins, and helps make fixes with a quick reference to the problems and their solution. Documentation isn’t available in every theme. Furthermore, most of the themes have a demo version that may be used to learn about the key features. In a WordPress theme, it is hard to tell whether a feature is a free or paid version. That is one of the reasons why documentation is important.
To not get stalled while making your website you’ll need to study the documentation. It has the directions of usage on it. As a result, by reading the documentation, you’ll be able to figure out which function is included in the theme and how to utilize it. So, documentation is an important aspect you need to consider while you choose WordPress themes.
Layout Builder
Layout builders are not required for many websites; a traditional editor and theme templates would do; nevertheless, those who do use them can simply create unique pages and articles using drag and drop capabilities or existing section templates. If you’re going to utilize layout builders, go with themes that integrate the layout builders you’re used to.
You need to understand what layout builder the theme provides because that builder is what you will be using for your website. So you need to consider if the theme contains a good layout builder. It simplifies the work, and the WordPress community can’t get enough of them, with many of the most popular page builder plugins leading the sales rankings.
There are various layout builders plugins you can install to easily build your layout if there are no layout builders included in the theme. With just drag and drop you can design your website without any coding knowledge. Layout builder plugins make it simple for WordPress users to create unique layouts for their websites, and they bundle a lot of useful features and functions in one place.
Wrapping Up
WordPress has a wide range of themes, from free to premium, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. And picking the perfect theme among the variety of WordPress themes available might be a difficult process. However, if you keep the above-mentioned qualities in mind while choosing a wordpress theme, it won’t be as difficult. All of this may appear to be a lot at first. But with a little patience and the help of a good WordPress site development guide, you’ll be able to find the right WordPress theme in no time.
Despite the fact that no two themes are the same, each theme functions differently for each website. What may be great on someone else’s website may be a complete flop on yours. So, while choosing a WordPress theme, do your study and don’t just go with the flow. After all, the theme you pick will be the face of your website to visitors; it is your online identity, so make it count!
We have published the list of best WordPress themes comparing, contrasting, and highlighting them.