It’s been said there’s never too much of a good thing. But in selecting the right WordPress theme, too many options can lead to ‘analysis paralysis’. Rather than overwhelm yourself with options and face uncertainty, it pays to know exactly what you need.
Put in another way how easy is it to buy a pair of shoes when you know you prefer comfort over class. To narrow it down, say you like the feel of loafers. With this small preference alone, you’ve cut your choices down by the hundreds. Thus, knowing what you want and with most important factors considered drains the pool of your WebPress options, leaving the hunt an easy task.
Free Vs. Premium Themes
While price is generally a good indicator of value, it’s not always true with WebPress. Admittedly, free themes used to laughable displays at code and user’s data was practically broadcasted to malicious hackers. But with a serious community under its belt, free WordPress Themes have created thousands of great options that can compete with the pricey premium ones.
While the question remains inconclusive, both have pros and cons.
Premium Themes usually have more updates, unique designs, no attribution link, and ongoing support. However, they’re expensive (anywhere from $50-200), require more configuration, and have a lot of unwanted features that bloat the design.
As safe measure, read reviews. This will tell you about the quality and care that went into a theme’s design, and if it’s worth your investment.
Lightweight Vs. Heavy Themes
Your site has an average of 15 seconds to grab a user’s attention before they click out. That being said, optimizing website speed is important. Fast page-loading speed pays dividends for not only user experience, but this adds up to improved search engine rankings, lead generating, and conversion captures.
Ideally, you want to avoid any slothful themes that drag your site’s speed into the gutter. Here are things to avoid.
- Feature Heavy – avoid themes with too many plugins, sliders, and a lot of JavaScript animations
- Large Formats – don’t choose themes the believe more is better, and features full-width images, background videos, etc.
- Terrible Coding – not only does this create issues in functionality, it also makes your data more vulnerable. While, the design may be great, ensure it’s been recently updated for security and browser adaptability.
One way to test the speed of any theme is to go here, and track the numbers. As a rule of thumb, quicker is better.
Design
There are a lot of great looking themes out there for a very fair price. While taste is subjective, you want to choose something that really makes your Brand shine.
One place to start is ThemeForest. They’re quire possible the best designers on the web, but there are a number of others just as good. After you pick a theme, give it for a spin and see how you like the drive. This step is ultimately to your taste and how you want to show off your business.
While installing and customizing your own WordPress theme from scratch sounds ideal, the creative freedom comes with a huge learning curve and time expenditure. Fortunately, there are literally thousands of themes ready to go. To learn more about finding the right theme for your business, contact us and talk with one of our professionals.
