Once you’ve made up your mind that you need to build your debut website on WordPress, it’s time to resolve which kind of WP theme you would like to use for your site. Depending on the purpose of your resource, you should browse the themes belonging to a certain category as well as learn the inventory of design types offered out there.
After that you should also decide whether you want to use a free or a premium WordPress template for your website. If you’ve got no idea which one is better, please read our comparison post on free VS premium WP themes – their pros and cons.
And now it’s time to select a single theme from a vast variety of items available on the market. So what are the things to consider at the very beginning?
Today I will speak on the compulsory attributes that should be available for a perfect WordPress theme you should choose for your business or personal website. Let’s see!
1. Simple and Clean
Trends in web design are changing from time to time, and sometimes they can be completely opposite. If minimalism was popular in 2017, then the 2018 was the year of maximalism which was in trend together with some periodical hints of clean design.
Today there are lots of WP themes with complex navigation, heavy animations, bright colors and much more complicated elements that distract the attention of users from the essence of a website.
When choosing a WordPress theme for business, it’s better to prefer a clean and minimal one. The usability and ease-of-use should be high-priority attributes to pay attention at. If your theme is simple enough to perceive, your target users are going to find any information much easier than it could be if they were browsing more complex website.
The purpose of every business website is to transform visitors into customers and encourage users subscribe for getting new updates to learn information about products and services they will probably need. So choose a theme to make your website as simple and clear for a user as possible.
2. Responsive is Compulsory
The epoch of mobile has come a few years ago and all design trends are tending to “be more mobile” day after day. Hamburger menus, easy-to-tap buttons, huge interface elements – mobile responsive designs are still widely used and stay on demand.
Responsiveness is not optional today; this is a compulsory attribute to be available for every WordPress theme if it claims to be considered the best one among others. Flexible design which adapts to every screen no matter the desktop, tablet or mobile one – this is what you need when choosing a WP theme.
All WP templates come with demo previews where it is possible to try the theme in different display sizes and observe how different screens change the position of elements on a page when the design is being stretched or squeezed.
3. Item Rating
You can buy a WP theme on any marketplaces you prefer, or you can download a free template right from WordPress.org directory. No matter where you want to get your theme, it would be always great if you pay attention at its average rating.
If you prefer Themeforest, you’ll find the item’s rating under the number of sales and comments displayed at the right on every product page. The newest items often don’t have this rating, but you can read a few reviews in the correspondent section near the Item Details.
Sometimes the information you get while browsing the reviews is really useful to learn before you buy a certain item.
4. Premium Plugins and Page Builders Integrated
I’ve recently shared a few ideas on the attributes of the best selling WordPress theme I personally consider to be the most frequent. Page builders I admit to be the must-have for every modern WordPress template.
The latest WordPress 5.0 comes together with Gutenberg visual content manager integrated in its core, so this should compensate the lack of native WP page builder users were always tending to have.
However, if you’ve got used to something more habitual like WPBakery page builder or Elementor, you should select a WordPress theme which comes with one of those popular page composers in its pack.
5. Dedicated Support
Every theme you purchase at a marketplace should come with dedicated support. This means that right after you buy a theme, you become a customer who has the right to be supported by the developer’s team every time you get a question concerning usability or functionality of the product.
A customer can receive lifetime support from the team of developers, so you should feel confident when purchasing a product. If you face any errors while installing, activating or customizing a theme, you can feel free to address a support agent to get consultation concerning your problem and then get it fixed.
Final Thoughts:
These are only several attributes that every modern WordPress theme should have, for more information, please see my ‘Key Attributes of Best-Selling WordPress Theme’ post and learn more.
Leave your concerns in the comments. Thanks.
Melany H.
