How To Choose a WordPress Theme, Dos and Don’ts

When working on a WordPress website, you will need to pay attention to a few important factors. The theme of the WordPress website holds a prominent place. No matter what, it is important to pick the right theme for the website at all times. From this article, we will share some valuable tips with you on how to choose a WordPress theme. Make sure that you adhere to all these when choosing the right WordPress theme, and you will never be disappointed with the results.

How to choose a WordPress theme?

How to pick the right WordPress theme? Selecting a WordPress theme may be a challenging undertaking. There are dozens of different themes to choose from, both free and paid, so picking which one is ideal for you might be difficult. After all, it’s your theme that matters. It determines how the WordPress website would seem to consumers and how you will represent the brand to the millions of internet users that may visit it. Your website should be seen as the shopfront for your company; therefore, it must be attractive and consistent with your brand.

While you may change your theme later, it’s not the simplest operation and will take a significant amount of time and work and possibly cause some outage for your website. As a result, it’s critical to choose the proper one from the start. Continue to read, and we will share some valuable tips with you on how to pick the right WordPress theme.

What are Your Requirements?

The first step in choosing the right WordPress theme is to figure out what your requirement is. Take some time to consider the goals of your WordPress site. Do you, for instance, need a blog? Do you include videos in your post? Are you going to provide sign-ups or collect client information?

You may begin shortlisting future possibilities after determining what you want from your theme. After all, there’s no use in looking at WordPress themes if you don’t know what you want from yours.

It’s also an excellent time to consider what type of budget you’re dealing with. Many free theme alternatives are available, and if your needs are simple, you may discover that your perfect theme is entirely free. Paid themes, on either hand, range in cost, and the price of functionality WordPress theme alternatives may rapidly rise.

An excellent piece of advice is to assess the themes of current WordPress sites that are comparable to what you want to build – and that function inside your area. What do you enjoy doing? What do you believe might be made better? This will assist you in creating a ‘checklist’ for your theme and working from there.

Free or premium theme?

While free themes are an excellent alternative for individuals on a budget, they have some drawbacks. Aside from the danger of poor coding, choosing a free theme exposes you to the risk of the theme not even being updated on a constant schedule and insufficient support, and the chance that the theme creator may leave the theme entirely.

Premium themes are more dynamic and often include more functionality than free themes, making you stand out. Premium WordPress themes typically need a one-time purchase rather than a monthly subscription, except WordPress premium themes, which you need to pay monthly.

Find a Lightweight WordPress Theme

Because your theme is an essential component of your site’s structure, it will significantly impact its speed and site load times. When you move from an ordinary WordPress theme to a performance-optimized theme, you can see a massive reduction in the load time. This would offer numerous benefits to you in the long run. For example, you can see how your search engine rankings go up. In the meantime, you can also see a significant increase in conversion rates.

Find a theme that can be customized

You need to select a WordPress theme that you can customize. If you are lucky enough, you will be able to find a theme that doesn’t require any customizations. However, it is not an easy thing to do at all times. This is where you need to check and see how easy it is for you to go ahead and customize the theme. Then you can use it as the base and end up getting a unique and a one of a kind website with ease.

Find Responsive Theme

Mobile traffic currently accounts for roughly half of all Web traffic, and it’s just going up. Responsive web design’s principle is that your site adjusts to the user’s browser seamlessly. As a result, whether someone goes on a laptop, Android, or an iPhone, they should have a positive experience.

As of now, every WordPress theme you find will be responsive; thus, checking for “Responsive” on the feature is meaningless. However, even if a theme is responsive doesn’t imply it uses fully responsive well. You can open the sample site on your phone and play around. On mobile, many themes offer smooth drop-down menus, while others are clumsy and difficult to use. You should install the theme on your WordPress website only if it is mobile responsive.

Check the Reviews of the theme

Before getting hold of a WordPress theme, it is important to look at the reviews. Reviews will help you get a better overall idea of what you can get out of the theme. Therefore, you will need to look at the reviews associated with themes and see how good they are. If you are looking for a theme available on WordPress.org, you can find reviews on the listing page itself. Make sure you have enough time to go through reviews to make an informed decision on what you can get.
Reviews provide comprehensive insights into the theme. Based on the reviews, you can decide whether you are going to use the theme or not.

Theme Last Update Date is important

You will need to look at the theme’s last update date. WordPress themes are continuously getting updated. However, this does not apply to all themes. Few themes don’t get updated quite often. You should keep your hands away from such themes as much as possible. Then you can ensure that you are getting a perfect theme that is updated regularly.
Along with time, security vulnerabilities take place in WordPress themes. It would help if you did not allow such security vulnerabilities to impact your website negatively. However, regular updates will come with patches. You need to upgrade the theme, and you will be able to keep peace of mind.

Find the compatible theme with plugins

It’s tempting to search for a WordPress theme that accomplishes everything you want straight out of the box when choosing a theme. For instance, if you’re going to make an events site, you may opt for a theme with a constructed events calendar. However, it would help if you were not tempted to go ahead and do it immediately.

There is meant to be a clear distinction between plugins and themes in WordPress. You choose a theme for its appearance and add functionality using plugins. A theme must not be able to dictate your look and offer functionality simultaneously. The most important factor is portability. If you choose a design that governs design and performance, you’ll be stuck with it for the rest of your life. Separating the two, on either hand, allows you to swap between themes as required.

But it doesn’t rule out the possibility of an off-the-shelf solution. Rather than searching for a theme that does everything, seek one intended to work with such a plugin that provides the features you want. You may not want to select a theme with such a built-in builder if you’re going to drag and drop design capabilities, for example, since it will lock you in. Instead, you might go for a theme built to work with a third-party website builder like Elementor.

Similarly, if you want to establish an online shop, you may pick a theme designed to work with the WooCommerce plugin. If you wish to start an online course, the Astra theme comes with built-in connectors for LMS. Many themes now come pre-installed with a list of suggested plugins, which is a terrific way to have the best of all worlds. You’ll still receive the features you desire out of the box, but you’ll also be able to modify your theme later if necessary.

   

Browser Compatibility is important

People are accessing your website through different web browsers. When choosing a WordPress theme, you will need to pay special attention to browser compatibility. The theme you select would look perfect on the web browser that you are using. However, you need to double-check and ensure that the website is compatible with all browsers. There are some tools that you can use to determine browser compatibility.

Browser compatibility information will be available when you download WordPress themes on the website. It is important to go through those facts and ensure you use the suitable theme. Make sure that you check on different web browsers such as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. You can also test on other mobile browsers.

Don’t forget SEO Friendliness

No matter what, securing better rankings on search engines is one of the most significant objectives you are looking forward to achieving. This is where you need to focus on the SEO friendliness of the WordPress theme. A good-looking theme is not SEO friendly at all. That’s because it can have poorly coded HTML, which will make it difficult for search engine crawlers to index your website. To overcome such situations, you will need to check on the SEO friendliness of your WordPress theme.

If you are a complete beginner, it might not be possible for you to understand SEO friendliness on your own. However, you should get the help of a developer and inspect the HTML code. Then you can ensure that the pages are properly optimized for search engines.

 
Conclusion

Now you know how to go ahead and select the best WordPress theme for your website. Make sure you adhere to these tips, and you will get the best results.