Your website theme is vital in boosting your business or crashing it in days. Your website design is not only to showcase your online presence but to compliment your physical business and boost it through its design, features, and overall feel. Not one theme can suit all businesses. Theme colors, design, features, and images depend on the type of business you run. Remember, running a business is more art than science.
If you are searching for the right theme suitable for your business type, WordPress is one place where you should look up to. WordPress today powers up more than 60% of active websites and is responsible for the hyperbolic growth of many firms worldwide. You will get hundreds of free themes on WP.
However, if you are a business owner, you must go for a premium WP theme for better management of your small business & marketing. If you are searching for a good WP theme, here is this article to help you out.
Below we have discussed 15 tips to consider before you buy a premium WP theme.
1. Your Business Requirements:
There is a golden rule to making smart decisions in business. The SWOT analysis to find out your actual needs, strength, weaknesses, and opportunities to move further in the business field. You should conduct something similar to your online business platform too. Before putting your money into some nice-looking WP themes with hundreds of features, take a look at your business needs. Not limiting these will distract from the actual point of growth. Check on these few points. (Business Consulting WordPress Themes)
– Your business website’s purpose.
– Features that will make your website more user-friendly.
– Check the demo version before buying a theme.
2. Create a Balance between Design & Features:
Some themes score well in design but have poor features. Others have good features but lack the wow factor in design & looks. Customers revisit your website or reject it for both reasons. Not having good visuals will make a negative impression at first glance whereas not having user-friendly features will make them leave and never return.
Once you buy a premium theme, you would not have a good chance of changing the visuals of the website. Don’t take me wrong. You certainly have all control over customization but it also has a limit. This will automatically fail the overall purpose of the features available. But a website with a balance of good design, limited but useful features, and available customization will always benefit you.
3. Invest Smartly:
The average pricing for a WP theme is $50. However, WP offers several themes in the range of $20-$100. While choosing a WP premium theme, you must check the ROI of your investment. Check these following points. (Are Premium Themes worth investment it?)
– Does this theme fulfill your purpose?
– Will you achieve your financial goals?
– Can you use this on multiple websites?
– Are there other goodies with a theme?
– A full-year subscription?
– Free premium support?
4. Monetization and Ads:
Google Ads are a good source of passive income. If your focus is on earning money by giving value to your website users, you must buy a premium theme suitable for monetization & ads. AdSense-ready websites come with plenty of pre-designed spaces for advertisement banners. These ads are responsive, so users will see these on any device.
5. Check All Reviews:
The Internet has made things transparent. Like all the other online things, you should read the reviews of all the premium WP themes you want to buy. Reviews are social proofs that build trust among new consumers. If any theme has good ratings with heartwarming positive reviews, chances are in your favor.
6. Check for an SEO-Friendly Theme:
Online marketing is nothing with SEO. Any premium WP theme must be friendly to SEO factors. They are speed, design, structure, content, layout, responsiveness, rich coding, and several other factors. While you can optimize your website with your SEO skills, wouldn’t it be a good idea to buy a premium theme already optimized for the SEO factors? A premium theme must excel in on-page and technical SEO factors to support your business. (SEO WordPress themes)
7. Social Media Integration:
The world is running on social media and you must not miss this chance. Social Media attracts all generations of people but mostly youngsters use it to its full capacity. Social Media can give high engagement if only you know how to use it for your business. You can create social media accounts and post regularly on them. This will connect to a mass audience or to a specific targeted audience which will result in fame, brand recognition, and targeted influence sales. As a result, you will see an increment in your annual revenue.
But not all WP themes support it. Generally, free themes do not have integration with social media as it takes huge backend support. Premium WP themes have that advantage as their developers maintain the back-end support standards to meet this requirement. Check out a premium WP theme that supports integration with your social media handles. (Free vs Premium WordPress themes)
8. Responsive WordPress Design:
We are living in the age of smartphones. These small gadgets are supercomputers themselves. Anyone can search for anything on the internet through a phone. It is easy and accessible at all times at all points. Today over 60-70% of searches are done on mobile phones. This means a huge population who don’t use a computer or laptop can be accessed through mobile phones. 70% is a huge number and it can give you a huge breakthrough in your business.
You are going to miss a lot of your viewers, users, buyers, and genuine promoters if your website isn’t responsive. A good responsive website can change its appearance according to the devices. Your website must support mobiles, tablets, laptops, Macbooks, and other devices.
Search for the best responsive WP premium themes and you will find some very beautiful themes out there.
9. WordPress theme Framework V/S Premium WordPress Theme:
WordPress theme framework offers you base coding but gives you the liberty to design your website by yourself. The base framework gives you a base code. Then you can create your design by writing the second layer of codes in your preferred language. Here you have the liberty to design anything from your idea of a website presentation. In this way, you can design and develop a website from scratch and with full control.
WordPress Premium themes are pre-designed layouts that you can customize according to your needs. But you can’t go for major transformations. Here you don’t have complete control as the theme builder has already set up a base design. You surely can go for some changes such as images, names, color palettes, and extra widgets to ease the work.
Now it all depends on you whether you want to go with frameworks or premium themes. If you are not a developer, I would recommend going with a premium theme only if it would save your time & effort for your business. Check your needs rightfully and decide what you want to pay for.
10. Cross-Browser Compatibility:
Remember, there are other browsers as well in the market. If your website does not support a different browser, you will automatically lose a number of your prospects. Your choice of premium WP theme must consider the compatibility of the theme with all the browsers available such as Mozilla Firefox, Explorer, Chrome, and Safari. Below is a list of web browsers and their number of users.
Chrome- 63.3%
Safari- 17.7%
Edge- 5.4%
Firefox- 5.8%
You must not want to miss these people on other web browsers. So better choose a theme that is compatible with all.
11. Compatible with Updates:
WordPress is very serious about regular updates. Regular updates are the reason why people love WordPress. This makes your website secure from cyber-attacks. But what about your theme? If your theme does not support the latest update of WP, it automatically increases your chances of being hacked. Choose a WP theme that supports regular updates.
12. New V/S Old WordPress Themes:
Brand new themes come with new modern ideas. However, you may have to face bugs and inconsistency in those. As these themes are new, you don’t know what will come to you. Genuinely don’t trust the early reviews as people do give paid reviews which later will affect your business only.
Old popular WP will not have technical issues but may lack the modern touch. They may look old or over-used. Your site may look similar to many other active websites on the internet. That doesn’t mean that it would look unappealing. If you are okay with the design, be it a little old then old website themes can play a hugely supportive role in establishing your business.
It completely depends on your choice. If an old WP theme compliments your business, you can surely go with it. On the other hand, if you want a completely new website theme, try some new themes available.
13. Widget and Support:
Read the theme’s promotional materials and reviews. Many features such as extras menus, multiple posts, sidebars, sitemaps, and 404 error pages may not be available in the theme. Your website will automatically face issues if you don’t have these features. So check your requirements properly.
14. Theme Support:
Premium WP themes come with premium support. But you can’t expect such decency from this world. Many premium WP developers ask for extra money to give consultations to you. It is highly not advisable. In such a case you must not pay a single extra penny for the support. WordPress is a non-profit organization that condemns this business practice. Therefore before buying a WP theme, make sure that the developer is ready to give quick and free support to you. This works on both sides as giving the right consultation brings better ratings to the developer too.
15. Future Proofing:
A WP theme holds its value only when it stands the test of time. WordPress regularly updates its interface and asks developers to update their themes simultaneously. This makes security a good characteristic of the whole organization. Simultaneously, regularly updated websites offer better speed, features, codes, visuals, analytics, and user experience. With each update, you can expect an update in your business too.
Make sure that your WP theme is updated recently. Premium WP theme developers generally update their work regularly for being relevant among new customers and to give security to their present clients.
Conclusion:
Searching for the right WordPress theme for your business? Well, no doubt that can be a tough task when you have hundreds of options available. But you must choose one of the available WP premium themes.
Above we have discussed 15 tips to find out the best-suited WP theme for your business or blogging. Check out the RSTheme collection of premium WP themes to get exposed to authentic, SEO-friendly, and rich-coded WP themes.