5 Things to Keep in Mind While Selecting WordPress Designs
When humans are provided with too much information, we often enter a troubled phase of information overload, where, making a decision seems impossible. In fact, we can be driven to make the wrong decision entirely. This applies to various scenarios throughout our life; whether you’re deciding where to eat or what car to buy. There are simply too many choices and choosing the ideal one can be a tiring and confusing process.
Now, just when you thought you’d be free from this problem when choosing a design for WordPress, you find out that it’s the same situation here too. The number of WordPress theme options out there is practically infinite and spotting the one that suits your website the best can seem futile. However, we’d like to tell you that things aren’t as hard as they might seem. In fact, we’ve used a bit of our own expertise to come up with a list of considerations to be made when searching for an appropriate WordPress design.
Hopefully, you’ll find this useful.
Keep the WordPress design as simple as possible
When it comes to WordPress design, your safest bet would be to keep things simple, especially when you’re not sure about things. There are WordPress themes out there that are designed to look fantastic. However, these very same themes also turn out to be too flashy and complicated, which, obviously, isn’t a good thing.
So, instead of focusing on appearance, seek out a theme that helps you meet your desired result. Don’t get us wrong. We aren’t asking you to compromise on looks. All we are saying is that you need to prioritize usability over appearance. Appearance is useful, but, usability is far more important. If your theme isn’t contributing to better traffic and conversion, there is no point in it being the best-looking theme out there.
Choose a WordPress theme that’s reactive/receptive
A flexible theme allows your website to alter its layout according to the device and display it’s being viewed on.
One thing businesses need to drive home is the fact that mobile is the future and more than half the traffic that comes to the average website originates from hand-held devices. Plus, Google ranks mobile-friendly sites higher in the search results. So make sure your WordPress theme is responsive and mobile ready – it’s the only way to remain visible in an increasingly mobile world.
Now, the good news is that a majority of the themes out there are responsive. However, there are a few that are fixed. So, careful research and even testing will be required to make sure the chosen theme is responsive. One easy way to test responsiveness is by resizing your browser screen when looking at the themes. Does the theme you’re looking at adjusting to the change in layout? If not, it obviously isn’t a responsive theme.
The other method is to copy the theme’s URL and paste it into Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool. However, the tool can be a little too critical, so, you will need to use your better judgment. Just watch out for major web design issues. You can ignore the rest unless they specifically matter to you.
Make sure the WordPress design is Search Engine Optimized
Themes can have an impact on your SEO as well because of how they alter layouts. There have been cases where some themes have completely omitted key SEO components such as website alt tags, dynamic URLs, duplicate content, and headers.
So, when theme shopping, make sure you’re looking at the ones that are SEO optimized, but, don’t just stop there. Make sure the theme is SEO optimized by testing it. Many developers simply tick the “SEO Optimized” box to ensure a sale. In order to test, you can install an extension such as SEO Site Tools or MozBar. These extensions will conduct an SEO analysis on your demo theme.
Your WordPress theme must be compatible with all the popular browsers
Another thing that you need to assess is browser compatibility. Now, Google Chrome might be the most popular browser, but, that does not mean everybody out there is using Chrome. There are plenty of people who prefer Firefox, Safari, Opera and even, Microsoft Edge.
If you don’t have a WordPress theme that isn’t compatible with all of these browsers, you could miss out on potential subscribers or customers.
Social media presence is no longer a choice, but a necessity!
This is another major consideration to be made. Let’s face it – your business is practically non-existent without a social media presence and if your social media presence isn’t integrated into other aspects of your digital marketing efforts, you might as well shut shop.
So, find a theme that can seamlessly integrate with your social media presence through creative widgets. There are plenty of themes that offer this feature now
One final consideration that we would like to leave you with before finishing up is plugin support. Plugins allow you to carry out a wide range of functions on your site; from customization to even collecting data. So, it is necessary to find themes that work with the kind of plugins that you’re bound to use for your website.