With all the great options and choices WordPress can confuse people especially the beginners. Settling for a theme among thousands is a daunting task. More than often people spend countless hours in hovering through this huge marketplace full of premium and free themes. They open many tabs, examine theme pages, test demo sites and finally end there hunt with a compromise.
However, if you already know a few basics about the type of themes available in the market, then the process will become quick and smooth. One of the major categorizations between themes is niche and multi-purpose. Niche website themes are developed to complement a specific website type while versatile themes adapt as per the conditions.
In order to make beautiful websites you should consider the following things.
Multi-purpose WordPress Themes
Take multi-purpose WordPress themes as a flexible framework that adjusts to everything a developer might wish for. Such themes are mostly preferred for new sites, blogs, eCommerce stores, and portfolios. The category can be further divided into two sub-sections-: simple one-page WordPress theme and themes that come with freedom of functionality.
The most popular WP themes come from the later section like Uncode, Divi and Avada who use a complex web of functionality that are dependent on multiple sliders, drag and drop page builders and grouped premium plug-ins. On the other hand, you can also work on themes like StudioPress’s Genesis framework which apart from being flexible and powerful is also comparatively lightweight.
Niche WordPress Themes
As the name suggests, these themes have been cautiously built to support a specific website type. You will be able to find hundreds of such themes for every industry under the sun like real estate, health, consultancy, etc. For instance, a theme made to handle a yoga website is pre-designed to have a BMI calculator, a daily schedule, light colors, etc. You should choose an appropriate website theme type depending upon the below-listed points.
Design
It is the most critical aspect of choosing a better theme type. Our website is our products face, and most of us want it to be clean and tidy with a sophisticated and professional look. It should also have our style like similar colors. Generally, multi-purpose themes have a typical and corporate design suitable for beautiful websites. As it works with the “one suits all” formula, they mainly have a lot of blank white space, sans-serif fonts, blue or green accents, and tidy layouts. You have a minimalistic design that can be easily personalized as per your wish. You also have a considerable variety of elements and layouts to fit your need. The downside of a multi-purpose theme is that it will make your website look exactly like thousands of other sites on the internet. Here arises the demand for a niche based theme.
Niche themes emphasize the brand itself and provide additional value to the product due to its exclusivity. The color scheme depends on the industry the theme has been made for, and the developer put special attention on the UX of the site. For instance, a theme created for a metal band would have contrasts of black and white and a real estate website would have a search form on the home page for people to look for properties.
Complexity
It’s a fact that beginners tend to get overwhelmed by multi-purpose themes. If you have never developed a website or worked on WordPress, then the task would take more effort and time. Some of the more prominent website themes have a variety of tools and options that have to be dealt with. However, all of these options are not essential to create a website, yet some of them are crucial in the development and management of the site.
These editing tools are quite powerful, and a beginner might commit mistakes till he/she gets used to it. On the other side, a niche theme also has numerous tools and options to personalize a theme, but their number and capabilities are not as astounding as a multi-purpose theme.
If you are a beginner then experimenting before serious work will help you especially in case of a multi-purpose theme. So, sometimes it is better to go with simple wordpress themes rather than using large complex website templates.
Functionality
Coming to the technical aspects the collection of tools and plug-ins in a theme is significant. If the design looks great and you are about to set up the theme, it is better to have a closure look at the technicalities.
Typically, multi-purpose themes have a lot of tools in them. They can easily confuse a person or put a smile on their face depending upon their love for technology. Eventually, you will get used to the tools and plug-ins, but your website should not suffer in the meantime.
Whereas, the learning curve in a niche theme is comparatively short. Niche themes are mostly user-friendly, and the few tools they have might be good enough to develop a great website.
Speed
One major problem that jaunts multi-purpose users is its speed. Large themes tend to load pretty slow because of the massive amount of data it sends to the server. Plus, plug-ins, options, styles, and other elements waste a lot of time which can annoy many users. As per our experts, the shared hosting environment limits some of the themes even quite simple wordpress themes.
You must use an individual plan for better performance as using shared, and cheap hosting is a restraint on your speed. You will have to buy a caching plug-in, and a CDN to quick fix the problem. Generally, niche themes load faster than huge multi-purpose themes. Again, they too will work if you tweak them up with a CDN and caching plug-in.
