08 Effective Tips to Pick the Right WordPress Theme for your Website

WordPress has thousands of smart and useful themes to choose from. According to reports, under the COVID-19 lockdown, most businesses have gone online and are planning to expand their operations virtually for at least the upcoming few months. As a result, digital entrepreneurs are investing in the add-ons and WordPress plug-ins to make their websites visually more appealing and user-friendly from every single aspect.

From assignment help sites to small scale traders selling T-shirts, junk jewelry, and other accessories online, they all are focused on making their websites the go-to destination for their target group of customers. This is where the application of WordPress themes gets a special mention. While you may choose a plethora of themes to fuel your online ventures; picking the right one isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There are several facets associated with it and points to remember and prioritize.

So, how about taking note of the following 08 incredibly useful tips to choose the best WordPress themes in 2020? Here you go.

1. Opt for a lightweight theme

Website themes certainly play a crucial role in streamlining the site’s performance, overall speed, and other metrics. So, it would always be effective if you pick a lightweight WordPress theme for your site. The loading speed of your website matters the most if you want to gauge user experience.

No visitors would really like to wait for long and watch the site crashing and re-loading due to heavyweight applications. As a result, it will bring an impact on your business as most visitors are likely to leave a website if they need to wait for more than a minute for the site to operate seamlessly.

So, the idea is to run a website performance test using tools like GTmetrix and deduce the performance status of your site prior to installing a theme. Once you are done with it, install lightweight themes such as GeneratePress, Zakra, Astra, and OceanWp.

2. Make it a point to choose responsive designs

Yes, this is absolutely important. Unless the website design is responsive, it will not create an impact on your audience. The concept of the responsive design indicates the functionality where the website automatically adopts the design and format based on the user’s device.

The formula is mainly applicable to the ones who would target mobile audience, alongside their regular visitors via laptops and desktops. In a world where the mobile data traffic is expected to reach 77.5 Exabytes per month by 2022, you got to prioritize the aspect of mobile-responsive website designs.

You can check the responsiveness of the website theme by simply opening the demo site on your Smartphone device and go about it. If you are gauging responsiveness of the theme on your mobile device, check and confirm whether the add-on shows a blog post’s title above the fold.

Website theme responsiveness depends on both aspects of aesthetics and performance at the end of the day. So, you need to be quite careful here. Opt for themes such as Atmosphere Pro, Divi, and Hestia Pro to give your site the slickness and a responsive look and feel it deserves.

3. Check the website developer’s support policy

No matter how good and responsive your WordPress theme is, there will a time when you may need technical assistance and support from the developer’s end.

For example, if you install a lightweight, well-performing theme and it starts lagging after six months due to bugs and cache errors, you will need the developer’s support to fix the problem.

Now, in case, the support policy turns out to be shady, unavailable, or non-cooperative by nature, then you might be in the soup down the road.

4. Never opt for a theme without checking its reviews

You cannot afford to install a theme straight away, without checking out its reviews, ratings, and user feedback. One must never miss out on the aspect of checking website reviews and tallying each of these features with at least 3-4 other similar themes and styles.

a). Responsiveness

b). User-friendly features

c). Loading speed

d). Pricing

e). Premium facilities

f). Design and built

Once you have the best name in your search query that matches each of the criteria mentioned above, you can opt for the theme and install it for your website to fetch the coveted traffic.

5. Do not get into the debate over free and premium sites

Believe me, all that would matter at the end of the day is the fact of how efficiently the theme performs. Users won’t be interested to learn whether the theme came for premium or free. All they would consider is the fact whether the website theme suits their preferences, user-experience criteria, and performance. There’s no such compulsion that only the premium sites will deliver high performance. There are ample free website themes such as Neve Vintage, Sydney, and Shopper that offer some of the best E-Commerce themes. On the other hand, there are many premium website themes that were reported of creating potential lags and other major performance issues down the road.

So, it is advised to look for themes that suit your requirements (irrespective of free or premium versions).  There is no point holding on to the notions that free themes are equivalent to trial versions, offer incomplete range features and the likes.

6. Check the “last updated” notification

This is yet another crucial point of concern that will help you to choose the right WP theme for your website. Every website developer should be dedicated to updating their themes and in-built features at regular intervals.

Unless the person releases the latest version of the website theme, you cannot stay on the same page and compete with other contemporary sites.

7. Look for features-exclusive themes

Different trades have different requirements, goals, and productions. For example, if you associated with the academics industry, then you would like to install a theme that offers well-built segments to list out academic blogs, samples, research materials, and the likes. Likewise, an E-commerce dealer will look for themes that offer unique shopping cart templates, vectors, and more.

Don’t just pick themes blindly. Always check whether the design would fit best for your business or the type of functionality you would like to define for your customers.

8. Always opt for a demo first

Before you decide to set up a theme, make it a point to run a demo first. It will give you insights into crucial website components like visual content display, useful indicators, readability, font shapes and styles, color contrasts, and the likes.

It is any day better to test and run the theme under real-time conditions and decide whether the add-on is at par with your specifications.

So, refer to the points as discussed above and look for the perfect website that fulfills the criteria. Adhering to these guidelines will allow you to take smart. And quick decisions over setting up a website theme that monetizes your effort successfully.