Are you looking to start 2021 with a fresh website theme for your business?
Your website is the first impression of your brand. It acts as the first point of interaction between you and your potential customers.
A beautiful and attractive website interface can work wonders for improving your brand’s online presence.
According to research, the first impressions of a website are 94% design related. How your website looks and feels can directly be proportional to how long a visitor spends time on it or want to buy anything from there.
But this does not mean that the key to a perfect website is the most attractive website theme. If only, it was this simple.
No matter how attractive the website theme looks, slow loading time, constant crashing, unresponsiveness across mobile or tablet devices, and lack of SEO (search engine optimization) friendliness can adversely impact your website’s performance and thus your brand.
A website template should not only be stunning but easy to navigate, responsive across different digital screens, and should load faster.
Today, you can easily find thousands of ready-to-use WordPress themes, WHMCS themes, HTML templates, and various other website themes online. It can be overwhelming to pick one, especially if the decision can have a huge impact on your brand’s success online.
Here are five factors you must consider when selecting a website theme.
5 things to consider when picking a website theme
The K.I.S.S. Principle:
K.I.S.S is an acronym for Keep it Simple, Stupid – often used in terms of designing. Simplicity is the key to any design. The easier it is to understand and navigate – the more people will like it.
Simplicity should not be confused with basic or dull. Simplicity refers to having a minimalistic and flat approach to designing. Loud website templates with fancy animations and features, can put off the user immediately. Visitors’ span of attention is very short. If they are not able to understand the website’s functionality, chances are they will move on to your competitors’ site and even end up making a purchase.
A website theme should be simple-to-use and give the desired output to the user.
The same principle can be followed when picking the color for your website. Pick colors that are soothing to the eyes and match with your brand’s theme.Customization via Plugins, Apps, and Extensions:
Despite the fact that you can find a variety of website themes online, the chances to find the one that perfectly matches your business needs, are less.
You should ensure that the website theme you are picking is customizable. A lack of customization feature can make it difficult for you to fit the theme according to your requirements.
The website theme should also support all major plugins and extensions.
This will help you in personalizing your website. Without your personal inputs, you can never make your website stand out from your competitors who may also be using a similar theme.
Look for website theme providers who offer developer customization flexibility.Mobile and Desktop Responsiveness:
We now live in a multi-screen world. Hence, your site must be viewable across as many devices as possible – primarily because you don’t know what device your potential customer might use to visit your website.
A responsive website with its fluid and flexible layout can easily adjust according to screen size. Additionally, it can also help in improving the search engine ranking of your website. Websites that are mobile-friendly show up in search results above the ones that are not.
Overall, a responsive theme can help you reach more customers on smaller devices; increase lead generation, sales, and conversions; help in analytics, tracking, and reporting, and most importantly can help you stay ahead of the competition.SEO-friendliness:
Your website’s theme can have a huge impact on your search engine ranking and SEO. Many people tend to focus only on the visual aspects of the theme and overlook the technical issues.
While the main agenda of a website theme is to make your website look good, SEO-friendliness is a side product but equally important. Before you select a theme, you should consider whether it is SEO-optimized.
An SEO-optimized theme should have a well-defined structure i.e., the HTML codes in the backend. The search engine never sees what’s on the website, it reads the code behind it. The HTML tags must be tactfully used in the site content and theme. A poorly designed website theme with many complicated elements and features can slow down your whole website. We all know the feeling when we visit a website that loads chaotically.
Last but not least, the images used in the theme must be optimized.Free or Premium Website Themes:
This is one of the most important factors when selecting a website theme. You can find plenty of free, premium, and custom website themes online. But how do you choose whether to go with a free version or pick a premium website theme?
Here, you must understand that you are not only investing your money but your time and efforts as well. You should start with the basic question – ‘what is the objective of my website?
Are you starting a website just for fun or you are looking to build a business out of it? Will you spend your time customizing your website or building your service or product?
Free website themes are great if you are just starting off with blogging or have a very tight budget. It comes with its own set of troubles – technical issues, poor functionality, lack of developer support, security, etc. Security should be topmost on your mind if you are going for free WordPress themes. WordPress is a quite popular content management platform and hence is always vulnerable to hacking or other kinds of cyber-attacks.
The point is – you should never compromise quality for short-term benefits.
Premium website themes come with a lot of features, functionalities, and service provider support.
How to select the best website theme?
Selecting the best website theme is not difficult if you take care of a few factors and do some homework beforehand. The process to buy a website theme can be summed up as below:
- Start with the objective and purpose of the website.
- Depending on the objective, pick between free and premium website themes.
- Consider functionalities, customization support, available plugins, extensions, and other factors we shared above.
- Whether you go for free or a premium website theme, buy it from a trusted website theme provider.
Read client testimonials and ratings before you buy a theme from a particular vendor. When you buy a website theme from a trusted provider, you can rest assured of its security and any technical issues that might crawl up in the future.
