How to Select Your Next WordPress Theme

There are 1000’s of WordPress themes, for any industry under the sun. Everything from free themes to paid premium themes to responsive SEO-friendly themes. Even non-customizable themes, (why would you want one of those), the list goes on.

With so much variety, choosing the most appropriate theme for your website can seem like a daunting task; but it doesn’t need to be.

Let’s look at a few things you need to consider before

Selecting Your Next WordPress Theme

Your Business Requirement – What are you going to create? Are you launching an e-Commerce business or corporate website? Are you developing a blog? Do you need a portfolio? Will you provide a service? The first thing to consider when choosing a theme is the type of website you want to create.

What’s your Build Budget – WordPress offers a variety of themes. Premium and paid themes tend to offer more features and functionalities than their free counterparts.

However, I have worked on projects with free themes that worked out quit well. Add the proper plugins and tweak some code and you can’t tell the difference.

Secondly, premium WordPress themes cost between $39 and $99. If your new website build budget can’t handle $100 for a quality theme, you shouldn’t be in business.

Website Content and Personality – Commonly people tend to first choose a theme that they like and then create content around the theme’s appearance. This approach works OK for blogs and new websites of little concern.

However, creating your content and the overall vibe that you want your website to exude first then selecting the most appropriate looking theme might be better.

That is why re-branding a website’s look and feel in WordPress is so easy for an experienced website builder. You already have the common content you just need a fresh look. Add new keyword content, landing pages, images and on page SEO and you’re on the way.

“When you know what you need, it becomes a whole lot easier to choose what you want.”

Mobile Responsiveness and Speed

Face it! No One wants to wait for a website to load. Having a website that adapts seamlessly to mobile or tablet screens is mandatory. Hence, it is important to choose a theme that is responsive, or ‘mobile-ready’ and lightweight.

A website that adapts to mobile and loads fast without effecting the UX and UI is sure to have better audience engagement.

Documentation and Support – The perfect theme has proper documentation and strong support. Developers often keep making changes to their themes and come up with updates on a regular basis. A good theme records all these updates regularly in its documentation for its customers to use.

Similarly, support is very important for all WordPress users, experienced or otherwise. Even the most experienced website developer resorts to the support forum or documentation when they run into issues or difficulties while using a new WordPress theme.

WordPress SEO-friendliness

WordPress offers many themes that are SEO-ready. SEO friendly url’s, good HTML & CSS coding, built in basic optimization and plugin ready. Browsers, plugins, and extensions will differ accordingly. You need to use themes that are compatible with WordPress extensions like WooCommerce, BuddyPress, LMSs, etc..

SEO is a very important part of digital marketing, and your site’s ranking depend on the keywords and search terms that you populate it with. Choosing themes, plugins and extensions that complement and play well with each other will pay off in the long run.

• Social Media Integration – Never compromise on social media integration. Social media is at the crux of every business’s virtual marketing strategy. Hence, it is pertinent to choose a theme that either offers social media integration options built-in or is compatible with all the essential social media plugins.
• Ease of Customization – Your theme needs to be customizable. This is one of the most basic requirements when choosing a theme. Although it is unlikely that you will keep altering your entire website’s appearance, there will be times when you need to add or modify elements on the page and change their color, font, size, placement, etc. A theme that is customizable allows you to make changes to page elements easily.
• Translation Readiness – Lastly, If your website is intended towards a global audience, then it’s important to pick a theme that comes with translation-readiness. The number of languages that a theme can translate will differ according to the features and pricing.

Do Your Due Diligence

The Ball is in your court – Spend some time looking (surfs up!) around the web. Look at other websites in your industry and outside it as well. Look for color combinations, layout, style, ease of use, etc. check it on a mobile devise, does it re-size correctly?

Could you imagine your company website looking something like that? Do some basic research; Copy the URL’s of the example sites, make notes about things you would change or discard all together. Jot down your questions, and when you have your thoughts together Give Michael a Call at 281-706-9450. You can also use this contact us form.

“When you know what you need, it becomes a whole lot easier to choose what you want.”

[su_spacer size=”10″]

SERP Sniper Quick Study Guides;

Improve your Website Performance
On Page & Off Page SEO Solutions

Web SEO Houston WordPress Article Resources;

6 Important Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress for Your Website
Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS — WordPress