Choosing the Right WordPress Template

WordPress has an overwhelming number of themes to choose from. You can spend a couple of weeks just looking though thousands of themes, only to select one and later figure out that it doesn’t work or look the way you want it to. This checklist is for you to not spend so much time on picking a theme.

Mobile-First

Make sure the theme is responsive. With people now spending around 69% of their time on mobile just browsing the internet, optimizing for mobile should be your number one priority. In fact, in a study done in 2018, Google says that 61% of people that had trouble getting on a non-mobile friendly website are unlikely to ever return. Google also won’t be sending your traffic to your website.

WordPress Plugins

Make sure the theme is supported by plugins. Sometimes themes don’t come with everything that you want, like a calendar, or even a contact form. This is where plugins come in and save you many hours of hard coding something that might not even work.

Function Over Fashion

Is the theme up to date? There are many beautiful themes to choose from, but if the theme has not been updated in a while, stay away from it. Throughout the year, WordPress is constantly updating. If themes do not keep up with these updates, you’ll end up spending your money on something that doesn’t even work.

Don’t choose a bloated theme. Having cool features on your site might seem like a good idea, but it could eventually hurt your site. It could slow down your site, which lowers your rank on Google, and could potentially cause a security breach since most of the code for these fancy features are found online.

Why Do You Need a Website?

Make sure your theme matches your website’s purpose. People get distracted with the way a theme looks and think of the functionally of the theme after it has been chosen. Every website has a different purpose. It can be for a simple blog or an e-commerce website. You would want a theme that has a good selection of fonts for a blog site. Same with the e-commerce site, you would want a that would make it easier for customers to buy something.

If you need help finding the right WordPress template or want to explore custom web design, please give us a call at (239) 362-1271 or contact us online today.