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The Internet is a very crowded place in this day and age. Many websites are competing with one another for users’ attention and visits, and the rivalry is fierce. Although it may appear to be a simple task, everyone is working hard to attract visitors to visit their website and engage with it. If you want a website that is not just functional but also impressive and provides an outstanding user experience, there are so many elements to take into consideration that your head will have trouble keeping up.
WordPress is therefore appealing to a large number of users. Particularly through its pre-made and changeable themes, it provides a significant amount of assistance with a number of those requirements. When it comes to selecting a WordPress theme, we will provide you with a list of things that you should and should not do in this blog post so that you can make an informed decision. There are more aspects of your WordPress website that will be determined by the theme that you select for it than just its appearance.
The loading speed of the website and the user experience can both be improved, and it can even make search bots like the website, which will raise your search engine optimization. It is a frequent misconception that a theme is designed to assist you in personalizing the front end of your website. However, a theme is capable of doing a great deal more than that.
What You Should Do Before Selecting a WordPress Theme?
It is time for us to talk about the specific things that you should seek for and the things that you should think about when you are browsing the themes library. When it comes to selecting a theme, there are a number of factors to consider that go beyond how it seems and how well it is organized.
The objective of your website, its friendliness to search engine optimization, its responsiveness, its support, its ability to be customized, and its compatibility with plugins are all factors that should be taken into consideration. It is a lot of things, so let us split them down into their component parts!
- Purpose of the Website
Right off the gate, the first thing you need to do is determine the objective of your website. This is something you need to accomplish even before you start thinking about which theme to pick. In today’s world, WordPress themes can range from being general-purpose to being really customized.
- Responsiveness
More than 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. Mobile rose sharply while desktop fell sharply for a few years, but currently the 60-40 ratio appears to be stable. As you can see, consumers prefer mobile devices for Internet browsing, which makes sense. When traveling, your phone is more convenient than a laptop. The screen size of a mobile device like that differs from a desktop monitor or laptop, hence it uses different resolutions.
Because of that, a theme that looks beautiful on a desktop computer or laptop may seem bad or broken on a mobile device with a smaller, vertical screen. Luckily, developers and designers consider those factors, and most WordPress themes are “responsive.” They will adapt to the device’s screen size and maintain the website’s coherence, readability, and usefulness without compromising the desktop experience. Thus, your website will look great on mobile and desktop. That functionality is essential today. Your theme should be responsive, or mobile-friendly.
- Coding and Customization
You’ll probably want to change or adjust your theme. Theme default layouts are nice; however, they’re not customized. So, choose a theme with strong customizability to make your website yours. However, customization goes beyond! Some themes let you customize them beautifully, but their code becomes convoluted. Don’t want that. Your theme should be lightweight and well-structured, with maximum functionality for your website and future customizability. Sounds perfect, yet themes that meet all those characteristics may surprise you.
- Compatible with Plugins
When you make a WordPress site, plugins and styles work better together. The layout and look of the site are controlled by the theme, while the plugins add the utility. But the two don’t always get along, which can lead to problems. These conflicts can cause problems with the website’s layout, look, or performance, or they can totally break it so that it can’t be accessed at all.
This is why we said the theme you pick shouldn’t have any code problems. Anyone can make themes and plugins for WordPress because it is open-source software. This means that the code quality is not always consistent. Making sure that the core of your theme is strong takes away one possible failure point that you need to worry about.
- Support
There is no doubt that the best theme for your website is one that is regularly updated and gets good help from the developers or the community. Do not choose a theme that is not being updated, even if it fits your needs perfectly. This is very important for your website. If you don’t change a theme often or at all, it poses a huge security and functionality risk to your website.
- SEO-friendly
Last but not least, we have SEO compatibility on our list of things to look for in a theme for your website. We began by talking about why SEO is so important these days. A good theme won’t directly improve your SEO and rocket your site to the top of the search results. Instead, it helps in other, less obvious ways. We already said that a good theme will have better code. So it loads faster, which is good if you want to keep people on your page.
On desktops, the average start time is about three seconds, but Google says that for first-page search results, it should be less than two seconds. You probably already know that load time is a big deal in SEO. People won’t go to your website very high if they leave before it loads. Good code makes it easy for bots to crawl your site, which is another plus.
What Not to Do When Picking a WordPress Theme-
It’s time for the other side of the advice: what not to do when picking a WordPress theme. Because the last chapter told you what not to do, we will make a short list of the most important things.
- Don’t Ignore Ratings and Reviews from Users
Everybody these days tries to make their product look as good as possible. But sometimes that looks isn’t what it seems to be, and this is also true for WordPress themes. Review the theme every time, no matter how good it looks. That’s where any flaws will show.
- Avoid Compromise
Ensure a theme meets all your needs, regardless of personal preference. That includes appearance, customization, options, coding, and responsiveness. You shouldn’t emphasize style over utility even if a theme has the look you want but lacks other features. It could have long-term effects due to faulty code, lack of mobile-friendly features, or SEO neglect.
- Beware of Unreliable Sources
By no means should you download from unreliable sources. Themes for WordPress are included in this. Is it the free one that satisfies all of your requirements but is hosted on a website that does not have an SSL certificate? Put an end to the tab, and never come back.
- Avoid Disappointment
There will be moments when your theme does not immediately live up to your expectations. That is the reason why this blog places an emphasis on its adaptability. Time and effort are required in order to create what you require. Make a fresh start or select a different topic if things do not go as to plan. Make use of a staging site if you are in the process of redesigning your live website.
- Make Sure You Don’t Do This All by Yourself
There is an infinite amount of information available on the Internet, which is the finest thing about it. It is true that it has its moments, but if you get past those, you will discover a great deal of knowledge about it. It goes without saying that you will have to go through it in order to find the one that is the most accurate and the best, but you will gain knowledge as you go!
Therefore, it is not necessary for you to select a topic or figure it out on your own. Documentation is available for a wide variety of themes, and WordPress provides forums for each of them, as was indicated earlier. Do not be hesitant to look or ask for help if you find yourself baffled.
While it is true that there are a great number of additional things that you should avoid doing when selecting a WordPress theme, the aforementioned are a solid foundation. In addition to them, anything else that goes beyond them is on a more individual level, based on the particular requirements of your website. Beginning with the ones that we mentioned, build from there in whatever manner you deem appropriate.
Conclusion-
You now have a strong guideline for what you should keep in mind while selecting a WordPress theme, thanks to the dos and don’ts guidelines that we laid out for you. We are aware that it is a lot, but we are confident that the finish will be well worth it. If you take our recommendations into consideration, you will be able to steer clear of selecting a theme that has terrible code, inadequate modification choices, disregards mobile devices, ruins your search engine optimization, or causes your website to load at a snail’s pace. There will be challenges and difficulties that you must overcome, but having a list like this should make it easier for you to be successful. Choosing the most suitable theme for your website is the only thing that is left for you to accomplish.
