Are you looking to choose a theme for your new WordPress site and don’t know where to start?
There are thousands of free and premium WordPress themes that can help you set up your site’s design in minutes.
Choosing the best WordPress theme depends mainly on the purpose of your site. Since design is mostly subjective, we’re going to focus less on your site’s looks and more on the niche your site will serve.
In this article, I’ll talk about why your WordPress theme matters and then share 10 practical tips for choosing a theme.
But before we do that, we’ll take a closer look at how WordPress themes work.
What Are WordPress Themes and How Do They Work?
A WordPress theme is a collection of files that contain design templates used to set up your WordPress site’s appearance. These theme files will include graphics (images, GIFs, icons), style sheets, and the code necessary to make everything work.
A WordPress theme is different (and better) than any popular website builder on the market because these themes are an extension of WordPress and allow for complete customization. In contrast, many of the website builders have limitations.
Themes are an integral part of WordPress. They make it easy to design a fully functional website quickly and without writing a single line of code. All you need to do is install and activate them.
Once you activate a WordPress theme, it takes over your site’s appearance. The theme controls everything from the layout to the buttons, fonts, and even hyperlink colors.
But don’t worry, you can customize the theme to meet your specific requirements and still control everything about the look and feel of your site.
You can download free WordPress themes from the WordPress.org theme directory. The directory is available either through the web or your WordPress admin dashboard.
Otherwise, you can get premium themes directly from popular vendors like Astra, StudioPress, TemplateMonster, and Elegant Themes.
Why You Should Choose WordPress Theme Carefully
Though initially designed for blogging, WordPress has grown into a platform that allows users to build virtually any type of website.
This means there are also different themes designed to match the content and purpose of each website type.
One of the first factors to watch out for when choosing a WordPress theme is whether the theme complements your site’s purpose.
For example, if you own a blog or online magazine, your theme’s design should be optimized for readability. At the same time, an eCommerce site should use a theme that supports all the required eCommerce features.
Choosing a suitable WordPress theme is not all about design and appearance. Some good-looking themes may hide a lot of technical issues.
If your theme is not coded correctly, it can make your site incredibly slow. This means you’ll get higher bounce rates and eventually rank lower on Google. You’ll also annoy your visitors, which is even worse.
Poorly coded themes can also make it difficult for you to change themes or use plugins. You’ll then either be stuck with this theme or be required to pay a developer to help you switch.
To help you avoid this, I’ve compiled a list of 10 easy-to-follow tips for choosing the ideal WordPress theme for your project.
10 Tips to Consider When Choosing a WordPress Theme
It might be challenging for WordPress newbies with no coding experience to identify the technical elements that make a good WordPress theme. But with a bit of research, you can quickly discover what differentiates a clean, professional theme from the rest of the pack.
When doing your research, here are some of the key factors you should pay close attention to:
WordPress theme must be responsive
A responsive theme adjusts your site layout for almost any type of screen size or device. This factor comes first because navigation and appearance are some of the key factors that determine whether your site visitors remain or not.
Over 54.8% of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices. If your site doesn’t look good on these devices, you’re already losing a significant portion of your readers and potential customers.
Most WordPress theme developers recognize how important this is. So, they always add a “Responsive” tag to their feature list. But you need to test things out yourself.
One easy way to do this is to resize your browser window when customizing your web pages continually. Your page layout and content should also adjust automatically.
You can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool or add AMP to your site for optimum mobile-friendliness.
Theme should be lightweight and optimized
Next, you need to ensure that your theme’s code is light and well-optimized for a stellar user experience. A poorly coded WordPress theme will impact your website’s database and eventually slow your pages or even expose it to security threats.
A well-optimized theme prioritizes user-friendliness by combining elegant design and excellent site navigation.
Since you’re probably not a WordPress expert, how can you tell whether a theme’s code meets the standards?
For starters, you may want to stick with trusted WordPress theme developers who have been around for a while.
You can also use the free Theme Check plugin to get feedback on the quality of any theme’s code. After creating your pages and posts, run some tests using performance tools like GTMetrix.
Keep the design simple
Granted, the concept of aesthetics is mostly subjective. Depending on the purpose of your site and your target audience, you may choose to adopt a minimalist or colorful look. But irrespective of the use case, it’s always best to keep things as simple as possible.
Many WordPress themes come loaded with customization options, including multiple colors, layouts, animations, and buttons. You might be tempted to try out each option and use them all on your pages.
But the ultimate rule of web design is that form follows function. That means only using enough on a page to communicate your message and convert the reader to the desired goal.
Keeping your site’s design simple ensures that it effectively conveys all the necessary information about your business. This way, your site users will find information faster and improve your chances of turning visitors into buyers or subscribers.
Prioritize your site’s purpose
Many components of your WordPress theme will limit the functionality of your site.
For example, if you want to build an online store, the suitable theme for this type of site must be compatible with eCommerce plugins like WooCommerce. It should also include demos that support a shop, products, and product category pages.
On the other hand, a theme like Astra will be a good choice for a blog. It comes with 50 stylish blog page layouts, and you also get a lot of flexibility with the easily customizable single post page layouts. It also has lots of ready-made WooCommerce widgets.
You’ll need to select between multipurpose and niche themes when choosing a theme. A multi-purpose theme will offer different templates for multiple use cases like eCommerce, blogging, corporate enterprises, and forums.
On the other hand, niche themes are specifically tailored to an industry or topic, for example, appointment WordPress themes. They can also be customized, but not as many as multipurpose themes.
In general, you should choose a theme that meets the majority, if not all, of your site’s requirements.
Look out for plugin compatibility
In line with the previous tip, you also need to ensure that your WordPress theme is compatible with the plugins your site requires to function properly.
What themes are for WordPress design, plugins are for functionality. They help you deliver specific features to your site visitors.
These plugins could be for SEO optimization, adding layers of security, providing email marketing tools enhance or customer management. It’s essential to ensure that your theme is compatible with the needed WordPress plugins like JetFormBuilder, Yoast SEO, and Convert Pro.
Some themes like Astra and Kava also come with built-in integrations that make it easy to deliver essential features in a single click.
They either recommend plugins or automatically download them when you import niche-specific templates.
Pick a theme that’s easy to customize
WordPress themes come with ready-made templates that help you set up your site’s design in minutes. But you’ll still need to tweak these templates to get a unique design.
This is why you need to choose a theme that corresponds with your WordPress skills. Since you’re probably not a web designer or developer, you’ll need a theme that does all the HTML and CSS heavy lifting for you.
Page builders turn once complex design tasks into a case of dragging and dropping elements into place. Most WordPress themes support a lot of popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Brizy. Other premium themes like Divi also have their page builders pre-installed. They are an excellent development in web design.
Otherwise, you can use the default WordPress Block (Gutenberg) Editor to create and edit your pages, posts, and widgets.
SEO-friendliness is highly important
Page design is an essential ranking factor determining your website’s SEO performance. Your WordPress theme’s source code decides your page layout. If not well-written, it will affect how search engines rank your website.
A WordPress theme may look elegant but generate poorly-formatted HTML code.
When choosing your theme, make sure the developer emphasizes SEO friendliness for starters. You can also test your pages’ HTML5 code yourself online.
To do this, run it through the W3C Markup Validation tool. The web tool allows you to validate URLs, upload files, or input the HTML code directly.
Aside from technical elements, changing your WordPress theme (in turn, your site’s appearance) can affect other SEO elements like UI/UX design, bounce rates, and search functionality.
Consider multilingual functionality
Do you have clients, readers, and customers in different parts of the world? Choosing a translation-ready WordPress theme saves you the trouble of having to build different versions of your site.
Specific WordPress themes allow you to create a site in languages other than English. Better still, you can build a multilingual site.
If your theme doesn’t support multilingual functionality right off the bat, it should be compatible with multilingual plugins. Some of the most popular options include WPML, Polylang, and Weglot.
Pricing matters
Another important factor to consider when choosing your WordPress theme is your budget. For many new WordPress users, a completely free theme might be an excellent place to start.
The good news is many of these free themes contain clean code and support a good number of the features your website needs.
The major benefit of using a premium theme is customizability and compatibility with specialized plugins. If you want this type of flexibility, then a premium theme might be your best bet.
However, it’s important to ensure that you’re getting your money’s worth.
Freemium themes offer a reliable way to assess value for money. They let you use a basic version of the theme at no cost. This allows you to make an informed purchase decision if you upgrade to a premium version of the theme.
If the free version works, the premium version is also likely to work. It’s the web equivalent of ‘try before you buy!’
Check the Developer’s support, updates, and reviews
Finally, you don’t want to end up with a theme that’s hardly updated or plagued with security issues. One easy way to avoid this is to check the theme’s reviews and ratings.
If the theme is free or has a free version, you can easily look at the ratings in the WordPress theme directory.
Other third-party theme developers also include ratings and reviews on their sites.
If you’re paying for a theme, then they’d better have a good support policy. Between 6-12 months of support and updates are the market standard. But you also need to check the reviews to ensure that the support is both fast and helpful.
Building a Successful WordPress Site With the Right Theme
Themes are one of the important components that make it possible to build a website on WordPress quickly. Your choice of a theme can either make or break your project; they are that important.
Not sure what to look out for?
I’ve compiled a list of 10 important tips for you. From responsiveness to simplicity and SEO friendliness, these factors form the basics of every reliable and well-optimized WordPress theme.
