If you’re in the process of developing a WordPress website and you’re extremely careful about how you spend your money, then you’ll definitely want to read this article.
Setting up a website with WordPress is not difficult. But, it still involves making some important decisions. Like choosing a great web hosting company you trust to host your website and selecting a great theme for the website design.
Almost all those steps to setting up a WordPress website comes with a price. That’s exactly why you need to be very careful when taking each step in that process. But. don’t worry, we’re here to help.
In this article, we’ll give you a few helpful tips and tricks on how to find and test a great WordPress theme for your website before buying. Let’s get started, shall we?
#1 A Clean Uncluttered Design
When looking for a theme, you need to look for a theme with a design that fits in with the type of a website you’re building. For example, a technology blog requires a theme with a homepage that supports multiple categories while a personal blog theme requires a design to show your personality.
Example: Urban WordPress theme
Consider the design aesthetics of your theme before buying one. Make sure it’s not stuffed with too many features, content, and animations that it distracts your visitors from the important content on the website.
#2 Follow Modern Design Standards
You don’t have to be a web designer to follow the latest design standards. The flat design trend, material design, and minimalist designs are quite popular these days. There are also certain design trends that involve specific elements of the web pages, like the mega menus and background video trend.
Example: Struct WordPress theme
Read up on these trends to pick a theme with a relevant and an attractive design.
#3 How Far Can You Customize It?
Obviously, you’ll want to customize your WordPress theme to fit your website branding. This means the theme should be able to be customized with different fonts, colors, page layouts, background styles, etc.
How much you can customize the design of the theme will depend on the quality of the theme you’re buying. Carefully read the theme product page or contact the seller to learn more about the features of the theme.
#4 Run A Page Loading Speed Test
Google now considers your website loading speed as a signal for website search engine rankings. The faster your website loads, the higher chance you have at ranking your website at top search results on Google.
You can find out how fast a theme loads before you buy it. First, go to the theme page and copy the URL for the theme’s live preview page.
Now go to Pingdom Speed Test tool and paste the URL to run the test. We used the Anissa WordPress Theme for the test. See how fast it loads. Barely took a second to load the homepage.
#5 Check For Mobile Responsiveness
Just recently, the mobile internet use surpassed the desktop internet use. Do you know what that means? More people are now using their phones to browse the web than laptops.
Checking to see how your theme looks like on a mobile device is the first thing you should do. Use your own mobile device or load the theme preview on your browser and resize the window to see the responsiveness of the theme.
Also, run it through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test as well.
#6 Is It Compatible With Popular Plugins?
If you plan on turning your website into an online store or setting up a membership site, you will want to ensure the theme supports popular plugins like WooCommerce and Paid Memberships Pro.
Example: Seese WordPress theme
Contact the seller of the theme you’re buying before making the purchase to learn about plugin compatibility.
#7 Support And Updates For The Theme
WordPress gets updated quite often. And with it, your theme should also be updated to fit the latest technologies. Check the description on the theme page to find out how often the theme has been updated since its release. Also, see if the theme lets you download future improvements and easily update your theme for free.
More importantly, you’ll need to buy from a seller who provides great customer support. Because who knows what kind of trouble you might run into when working on your website theme.
Where Can You Find A Theme Like That?
There are over 4600 themes on the WordPress themes database alone. You’ll also be able to find thousands of themes on other third-party marketplaces as well. Finding a theme with clean code and a proper design in this ocean of themes is not going to be an easy task.
However, you can’t go wrong with the themes on ILoveWP. Each item in our WordPress themes collection is carefully handpicked by our team after reviewing them for quality and effectiveness. Go browse our collection of themes and decide for yourself.
1 Comment
The other really important thing to look at is typography. Avoid themes that use ALL CAPITALS in titles, headings or links.
Why?
Firstly, some screen readers read capitalised text letter-by-letter. The second problem is that capital letters are harder to read for everyone, but especially people with reading disabilities, dyslexia or autism. It is important to be aware that up to 10% of your readers may have dyslexia.
The use of ALL CAPITALS or Title Case can reduce the readability of your text. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has found that reading on screen can be around 25% slower than reading from paper, and reading All Caps can be a further 10% slower. When we read, we don’t actually look at every letter in a sentence, but actually the shapes of the words. When text is in All Caps, the height of every letter is identical making every word an even rectangular shape, forcing us to read letter-by-letter, reducing our reading speed.