It is not easy to select a WordPress store theme for your business website. Beginners especially feel overwhelmed during this selection process. In the midst of thousands of free and paid options, confusion is quite inevitable. How do you pick the best WordPress theme for your online WordPress store theme ? This question is the theme of this article.
Why Wise Selection of WordPress Store Theme Matters?
WordPress has an immense power to create all kinds of websites. Every theme caters to a different industry. The theme has to complement the content of your website.
Thousands of WordPress themes and WooCommerce WordPress themes are available in the market. Not every theme is okay for your store. There are two kinds of malicious WordPress themes.
Poorly Coded
They have tons of customization options. But bad code makes it difficult to change the theme or use other WordPress plugins. No wonder, if you have to pay some developer for helping you switch.
Increased Loading Time
The website that takes time to load, can make no revenue. There are WordPress themes that make your website look great, but slows down its speed. These websites never get ranked on search engines.
So How To Select the Best WordPress Theme?
You should consider nine factors in this process.
Simplicity
There are WordPress themes with many colors and complex layouts. Many themes even have pre-built flashy animations. Sometimes you may need those things, but most of the time, you will not. Be clear about your requirements.
The best choice would be a theme whose design layout helps you achieve your goals. Usability and simplicity are two things you cannot afford to compromise on.
Over complex presentation style scares the visitor. The Purpose of web design is to help users and not confuse them. The theme that looks great but does not drive sales and increase conversions is not the perfect match.
Responsiveness
Themes that adjust their layout across different screen sizes are responsive themes. Ideal WooCommerce WordPress themes are always responsive.
The majority of web traffic comes through mobile and handheld devices. The stats may go higher than 50%, depending on the niche of your website. Mobile-friendly websites are shown at the top of Google search results because Google knows the importance of responsiveness. All websites have to be responsive and fully mobile-ready.
By default, most of the WordPress themes are responsive. Yet, there are sellers who sell fixed-width layouts which are not mobile-friendly at all. Ensure that the one you have selected is completely responsive.
Browser Compatibility
Not all your customers will be using the same browser to check your online store. There are WordPress themes that look great on one browser and bad on the other.
That is the point where browser compatibility comes in. Professional WordPress theme developers always test their themes rigorously. There are sophisticated browser compatibility testing tools for that.
Often they clearly mention this on their website. In case they don’t, you can run some basic tests to check the theme on different browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.
Remember to test on different browsers on mobile as well.
Supported Plugins
WordPress plugins are the real power of WordPress. Keep this in mind, when you select the WordPress store theme for your online store. These plugins allow you to do almost anything with your WordPress website.
Among hundreds of WordPress plugins, there are some must-have WordPress plugins. They are more than necessary for every website, regardless of the niche. For example, Gravity Forms, Yoast SEO, W3 Total Cache, etc. Before finalizing any WordPress theme, confirm that it has no compatibility issue with any of the popular plugins. If you have doubts, consult a theme developer.
Multilingual Ready + Translation
The majority of WordPress websites are not in the English language. You may also need a website in any other language. You may plan a multilingual WordPress site in the future. Most of the WooCommerce WordPress themes are translation ready. Make sure that the one you have picked up is translation ready and supports multilingual WordPress plugins.
Page Builders
Beautiful page layouts you create using drag and drop user interface are possible because of Page Builders. They are the WordPress plugins that let you do it. Many WordPress themes come with preinstalled page builders.
A lot of unwanted code is generated during building landing pages with these page builders. Switching theme requires cleaning this up. So choose a WordPress store theme that is shipping with one of the most used page builder plugins. It is also possible to purchase these page-builders separately and use them with other themes.
Level of Support
No guaranteed support is one drawback of using a free WordPress theme. Yes, some developers provide good support, but a lot of free themes come with zero support.
Messing up with your WordPress theme can get you into trouble. You will have to figure it out on your own. You may end up paying a third-party developer to resolve the minute issues.
Pick up the WordPress theme that has good documentation and support options. Many premium WordPress themes offer detailed documentation with 1-year email support.
Search Engine Friendly
The WordPress theme you pick plays a critical role in search engine optimization. It is quite possible that a good-looking theme generates poor HTML. That would affect your ranking in search engines.
Beginners cannot analyze the theme’s source code on their own. Many premium WordPress theme developers will let you know that their pages are optimized for SEO.
The best is to take a look to see if the page generates proper HTML5 by checking it with the W3C Markup Validation service. However, be informed that the W3C tool will generate many warnings. There is nothing to worry about.
Reviews & Ratings
This is one of the most solid indicators of a WordPress theme’s quality. The ratings and reviews provided by their users. If the theme is sold on a third-party marketplace, you can see customer reviews.
For free WordPress themes, the rating section lies just below the download button. It will display the number of reviews and stars given by users. Clicking on 5 stars will show you all the reviews that gave the theme 5 stars.
Wrapping itup
It is now your call to select a WordPress store theme for your online store that fulfills all these criteria. Be very careful, as the impacts are long lasting.
