WordPress theme determines the appearance and behavior of your WordPress website. Well, it is very intimidating for beginners to choose a theme for their WordPress website. You will come across thousands of free as well as premium themes. Each theme looks better than the other.
The intent is to make your website show up visually and aesthetically. Therefore, it is very important to consider features such as responsiveness, price, customization options, social-media friendliness, performance, SEO optimization, cross-browser compatibility, customer support, and a lot more before selecting a WordPress theme.
The content above everything plays a crucial part while deciding a theme for your WordPress website. WordPress theme should complement the content of your website. For instance, if you run a poetry or financial news website then the photo is of secondary importance as a content rule this type of website. However, if the niche of your website is travel and photography then the focus is more on the pictures.
Features to look for in a WordPress Theme
In creating a perfect WordPress website, you need to go through a lot of choices from site-level performance to fine-tuning. Although the procedure differs for everyone, finding a well-suited WordPress theme is a common challenge. The look and interactivity of your site not only impacts how people view your online presence but your entire brand. Hence, selecting the right theme for you plays an important role if you urge to stand out in the market.
How do you select the theme best-suited for your WordPress website? In this article, we will share 8 features you need to look at before implementing a WordPress theme. So, let’s get started without any further delay.
Responsive Website Design
Responsive design is one of the most essential features to consider while selecting the WordPress theme for your website because it is really important for your site to look good on devices of all screen sizes such as desktops, smartphones, tablets, etc. Since more than half of the web traffic comes from mobile phones or other handheld devices, responsiveness is considered a significant factor while choosing the right WordPress theme.
Responsive design is the idea that your website automatically adapts based on the user’s device. So, whether someone visits on their laptop or their iPhone, they should still have a good experience. In addition, the website needs to be responsive as it has a direct influence on the customers visiting your website.
You are benefitted if you are using a responsive WordPress theme as it recognizes the size of the browser window and alters the layout of the page to enhance browsing practices. And, it is a necessity. Similarly, using a responsive theme benefits the admin as he/she is not troubled with managing multiple websites, content sets, and even User Interface (UI) consistency across all modes of viewing.
Nonetheless, just because every theme is responsive does not necessarily mean that every theme carries out responsive design well. To ensure it works well, you should test it before activating it.
Cross-Browser Compatibility
It is up to the users to decide which browser they want to view on WordPress websites. The most popular web browsers used by most of the users include Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and so on. Most of the WordPress themes are designed to work perfectly across all modern browsers, and also mention as a feature on the theme description. However, you need to ensure it by opening the demo in a few different browser windows as the particular theme may look perfect on the browser you use, but there might be something broken in other browsers. Also, make sure to test them on different browsers on mobile as well.
Customization Options
There is the least chance that you will find a theme whose default layout fits your requirement exactly. This is the main reason why the customization option is a must. Well, all themes are customizable to some extent but too few choices will significantly limit your ability to brand your site and optimize the user experience, while too many will slow your site. So, it is better to test before installing the theme if it offers a customizer demo.
To make necessary modifications effortlessly, you better look for a theme that consolidates with simple drag-and-drop page builder plugins such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Themify Builder, and henceforth. In this manner, you can shift to a different theme while keeping the same builder that you’re used to.
With a WordPress version of more than 3.4, a live theme customizer is a must-have feature that lets you make modifications to the WordPress themes with ease. You can change the layout, colors, typography, background color, background image, and so on of various elements with live effect and can save a lot of time. In other words, this is a core WordPress feature that lets you customize various aspects of your theme’s looks using a beginner-friendly interface and a live preview of your site.
The main objective of theme customization is to make sure your website looks distinct as well as elegant and stands out in the crowd of several other websites that have used the same theme template.
SEO Performance
SEO, the acronym of Search Engine Optimization is an important factor if you are trying to promote your website and list it on the first page of search engine results. WordPress theme plays a significant role when it comes to rankings and optimization of SEO. Let us suppose you have set up an extraordinarily stunning website with the most exceptional design and comprehensible usability, but what if nobody comes across it? It will definitely be a failure. Your WordPress theme should be SEO-friendly as it plays a major part in the prospective success of your scheme.
The theme that you choose makes a significant difference in the SEO of your website. Your theme, after all, aids in making up the pages that search bots crawl through. A theme with messy code tells these bots that your site is low-quality, hurting your website’s ranking. It could be difficult for beginners to analyze a theme’s source code on their own. That is why; there are plenty of plugins available in WordPress.org for SEO optimization to choose from. However, the most popular SEO plugins include Yoast SEO, RankMath, All in One SEO Pack, etc.
You can go through the list of SEO-friendly themes for your WordPress website to enhance your site’s performance.
Social Media Friendliness
In the contemporary world, Social Media is the most powerful tool to improve the experience of customers. Along with that, it also helps to connect with the audiences better than ever. Keeping this in mind, it is a better idea to go for a WordPress theme that gives higher significance to social media platforms in regards to support as well as the sharing possibility.
These days, we can hardly find anyone who isn’t connected to social networking sites. So, it is very necessary that you choose a theme that is social media friendly. Some of the popular social media applications that should be integrated into your WordPress websites are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok, etc. More and more traffic will be driven to your website if you have social media share icons as it makes content sharing easier than ever.
Support and Update Feature
Support and Update is one of the most important and essential features that a WordPress theme should possess as the themes that consist of this feature are more likely to get more reviews and always stay in the coil. With this feature, your website is prone to be compatible with WordPress websites as it is updated frequently.
The widely used WordPress themes have this feature inbuilt as they don’t intend to let their themes down. It is mentioned in the description section of the theme. The problem can arise if you keep on switching to different themes as your website loses the customer appeal as it no longer looks professional enough. So, the best option is to pick out such a theme that auto-upgrades itself and provides dedicated customer support. Therefore, the support and update feature makes a theme stick out from the rest. This is an important attribute that makes a theme stand out from the rest.
Page Style
In simple terms, page style can be defined as the layout or presentation of your website. The type of theme that attracts customers is a non-cluttered, simple yet informative website. It increases the engagement rate on your website. The components such as placement of sidebars, customization of the overall page define the style of any page.
Pages and posts are two different types of post on your website which plays a major role in delivering the contents. Pages are normally placed in a hierarchical manner while posts are presented in reverse chronological order with respect to the date of publication. They both are equally important in any kind of website. Much emphasis is given to the style and customization of the page as it makes your website look attractive and elegant such that more and more users get easily engaged.
Each page can be styled depending on the content of the page, making your website look different. However, you should constantly check on it such that the page styles match with each other for the transition to look clean and flawless.
Look and Feel
WordPress theme all about looks and feel. The theme you select should visually complement the content of your website and be easy to navigate at the same time. WordPress websites for a travel blog, food blog, an online clothing store, and a real estate agent will all look different, and thus require different themes.
It doesn’t matter which theme you choose for setting up your WordPress website unless they are intuitive to use and explore especially for new audiences. Above everything, simplicity is the main as it makes users easy to navigate from one page to another without any difficulty. But, if your theme is cluttered with effects and features, it will send many users straight to the “back” button. And, it is not a good sign because trendy effects will come and go, but a great user experience is always relevant.
The goal is to give users a clean yet elegant look and feel of your site. Every quality theme comes equipped with accessibility tools so make sure to find a theme with such features.
WordPress offers a plethora of themes from free to premium, each with its pros and cons. With so many choices, it can feel a bit like choosing a needle in a haystack. However, with the above-listed features in mind, it won’t be a hassle for you. Choosing the right WordPress Theme for your website now can save your time later. Do follow these guidelines and you will not regret it later.
Check out our collection of 10+ responsive free health and medical WordPress Themes
If you have any queries regarding the features you should look for in a WordPress theme, then let us know in the comment section below.