Choosing a WordPress theme for a website is a crucial part when you are starting a business website/blog. It’s important to choose the relevant theme for your business or personal website/blog.  It does not only affect your website appearance but there are lots of hidden pitfalls which impacts the overall user interface and ultimately your business (Do I need to mention – retention rate, bounce rate, UI and UE).

No matter whether you are choosing a free WordPress theme or choosing a premium WordPress theme, you need help choosing a WordPress theme because the market is flooded with varieties and most of the newbies get distracted and get overwhelmed with fancy themes which do not suit their business/website.

Here are tips on how to pick a WordPress theme for your business,

1 – Understand Your Site Requirement and Have a Clear Vision

You must know what to look for when choosing a WordPress theme. Your website vision helps you to stay focused on your theme hunt and cut down the list.  You need to understand your business needs. Make a list of features you want in your theme like social media, sidebar, responsiveness, footers et cetera.  Divide the list into must-have and nice to have, it will make you to concentrate on a few but important elements of your site.

  • User Experience and Interface:

You are designing your site for your visitors so put yourself in their shoe and think about the things you would like to see on anyone’s website. Everyone likes simple user interface and

  • Responsiveness

About 30% of all website visits now come from mobile and tablet devices.So make sure you site is mobile friendly (responsive).  You don’t want to make your mobile visitors leave your site just because just because your content is not readable or clumsy interface. So always find out a responsive website which is easier nowadays.

Your content should readable on all devices. Check your website mobility on Google mobility check

  • Put Yourself in Your Audiences’ Shoes

You have to think from your audiences’ perspective. For example, If you are building a site for photography learners, you would need a theme which showcases your photography skill by its visual elements. Your audience wants to see your work, your skills and your expertise in photographs you have taken.

  • Colour Schemes and Combinations

A colours harmony guide or colour scheme guide will help you to get a perfect colour combination for your website. Your website colours impacts your audience behaviour, for example Orange = warmth and ambition, pink = femininity, love and romance that’s why most of the girly sites have pink colour combinations.

Your text colour should be in contrast to your website background colour which makes it readable.

  • Easier Navigation Options

Your site navigation has to be easier, all of your website pages should be easily accessible and your visitors should be able understand how to reach to specific pages.

  • Usability of Sidebars

Sidebar is an important part of any website you can run your ads, webinar invitation, popular posts, social media feeds to engage your audience and convert them into your lifetime customer or visitor.

2 – Don’t Get Distracted (content is not going to be same as demo)

The theme market is flooded with visually attractive themes which don’t suite your business. You should avoid themes which is not a fit for your business requirement. For example, a Photo Grid theme looks attractive but it is not a perfect fit for news website or technical blogger. Your content is not going to be as you see on these attractive themes.

Remember the point number one – Have a Clear Vision.  It reduces your search hours and helps to stay focused in the process.  You should always choose the template you need not the one you just visually like.

  • Think Out Of the Box  – Be Unique

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

Your uniqueness sets you apart from your competition. If you are going to copy a website/blog or business without a distinctive value, you need to give a second thought on why you are doing this?

By having a unique website/blog theme you can approach your visitors differently so think out of the box try out things which no one is doing.  Your unique theme would add a unique user experience and interface which impresses your audience and make them visit your site again and again.

Here is a video  which focuses on what kind of color your blog or site should have.

Free or Premium Pros and Cons of Free and Premium WordPress Themes

You need to consider theme rating, reviews and support before choosing a theme on WordPress.  This data gives us insights on whether users are happy with the theme or not. There are many pros and cons of free and premium themes but it is one of the decisions you have to take at the beginning.

Premium Themes

Pros   

With  Premium theme you get support from theme developers/providers. These developers also update the themes for various reasons (security, bugs etc). It’s easier to check update history by changelog .

Cons

Premium themes are not free.

Premium themes are loaded with CSS, PHP and other codes which are harder for customization especially for non-programmers/non-coders.

Free Themes

Pros

Free themes are free and they are easily available on wordpress.org and other resources.

Cons

Free theme providers do offer very little to no support.

No updates – free themes rarely get updates and that can cause security and compatibility issues.

SEO-Friendly or Ready Themes

Everyone wants to be on the first page of Google but it would be harder if you don’t choose SEO-friendly theme. There are many factors which you need to consider while choosing a theme on WordPress

  • Website Speed and Basic Load Time

No one likes the slow site and you have only few seconds to grab your visitor’s attention.  Slow site results in increased bounce rate which affects your search engine ranking. Your theme should be light weight and easy to crawl for search engines. Check your website/theme’s speed on Google Page Speed Insight

  • Cross Browser Compatibility

You have visitors from Chrome, Firefox, UcBrowser, Opera and many other browsers so it has to be cross browser compatible. Here is a free solution to check any theme’s cross browser compatibility.

  • Advertisement Space

If you want to run advertisements (Google Adsense, affiliate marketing etc) on your website you need to understand where it should be and it should merge seamlessly so choose your theme wisely.

So here is a short check list of how do I choose a wordpress themes

  • Understand Your Site Requirement and Have a Clear Vision
  • Don’t Get Distracted
  • SEO-Friendly or SEO-Ready Themes
  • Put Yourself in Your Audiences’ Shoes
  • Colour Schemes and Combinations
  • Website Speed and Basic Load Time

Conclusion

What Type of Website Are You Building? It’s a business website, personal blog, an eCommerce site or any other What is the purpose of your website? You want to earn money, run a personal blog, influence people, share knowledge or any other

What would be the MUST have elements? Social media integration, slider, sidebar or any other.