Most website owners and bloggers nowadays find it quite challenging to select the right WordPress theme for their site. Presently, WordPress offers countless options to designers and site owners to choose from. WordPress can now be easily used to develop sites of every niche and genre and that’s the main factor behind its popularity as it has a theme available for every type of business and its website.
Whether you are a congruent newbie, pro designer, developer or simply a blogging enthusiast or even a social media agency, you must surely consider the fact that your site’s theme and layout should be congruent with the overall content and niche of your site. Based on the niche of your site, you need to keep certain goals and purposes in mind. If you are working on a site based on trending or viral news, then you need to concentrate more on the social sharing buttons to make sure that your readers can instantly share your content on various social media apps and pages.
Also, WordPress offers various options for customization for altering and modifying your theme according to the niche of your site. Therefore, whether you are working on a medical blog, an e-commerce site or real estate listings, you can make your site look unique and stand out from other sites working within a similar niche, by using various built-in tools offered by WordPress. However, if you fail to code them correctly, you can have problems while switching to other WordPress themes or plugins.
With so many paid and free themes out there, we have compiled some useful tips and strategies that you need to keep in mind when selecting a WordPress theme for your website.
Keep Your Theme Simple and Minimalistic
As WordPress caters to a broad spectrum of individuals with different needs and requirements, you may come across various WordPress themes of different colors, headers, layouts, graphics, and animations. Some themes may be too ostentatious and loud for your niche, while some might be too simplistic or uninspirational. Less is more sometimes and therefore, you need to find a theme that can help your site stand out and doesn’t overpower your content, but complement it instead.
Moreover, while choosing a niche-related website theme, try to keep your theme as simple as possible. Your main priority should be to help your readers find the relevant information that they are looking for, easily. Therefore, if your theme is too complex and makes it challenging for users to navigator search the required information, then your theme will probably make you lose your online readers or customers.
Compatibility with Different Browsers and Mobile Devices
In order to increase your online traffic and ratings, making it a point to go for responsive themes that auto-adjust according to the screen size of various devices such as tablets and smartphones. Since Google prefers those sites for its top search results that can be easily viewed on handheld gadgets and devices, therefore, make sure to check your site’s demo page in a Mobile Friendliness Test Tool. You can simply insert your site’s URL and check whether it is compatible with various gadgets and phones or not.
Similarly, your site may appear differently on different browsers. Therefore, make sure to view your theme on different browsers or use appropriate tools to check its compatibility with different browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera, etc. Your users will most certainly be using different browsers; hence, your theme may look perfect on the browser you use, but there might be something compromised on, in other browsers.
WordPress Plugins Page Builders
With the help of WordPress plugins on one hand, you can customize any WordPress theme according to the niche of your site. Some popular plugins that are suitable for almost all websites include Yoast SEO, A kismet, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Forms Lite, etc.
Page builders, on the other hand, allow users to customize page layouts. Using page builders for creating your site’s landing pages may lead to unforeseen problems including unwanted codes. Therefore, try to opt for those WordPress themes that can be easily customized with a variety of different plugins. Many developers prefer to buy page-builders for their WordPress sites separately in order to use those with different types of WordPress themes.
Customer Support
In case you do not want a paid WordPress, theme and wish to opt for a free one instead, chances are that you may receive a limited or no customer support at all. Although, many developers do offer complete support for their WordPress themes; however, not every theme comes with this option. Therefore, if you are developing your site independently without hiring a professional WordPress developer, then you may have to ultimately acquire the help of a professional developer in order to solve any technical errors or problems related to your free WordPress theme.
Online Traffic and SEO
Themes can also affect the SEO performance of your site to a great extent. A theme, whether it is free or paid, may or may not generate bad coded HTML. Therefore, it is highly recommended to opt for premium WordPress themes, especially if you are not familiar with coding.
Online Reviews and Recommendations
If the selected niche of your site is relatively new or perhaps based on something that is currently trending or viral such as online cryptocurrency, influencer marketing, power food, fitness, etc., then it is quite possible to get a clear idea about the quality of your desired theme by the feedback and ratings given by other WordPress users on the same theme.
Conclusion
There are hundreds of free and premium WordPress themes available for various niches and businesses. Also, information about new and upcoming themes is uploaded on our site on a regular basis. Nevertheless, online support and compatibility with various browsers and varied gadgets are the most important areas to consider while choosing a theme for any specific niche. If you are new to WordPress, then it is recommended to go for premium WordPress themes instead of free ones.