Are you taking your business to the next level with a professionally designed website? Congratulations! Welcome to the digital revolution. When beginners set up a website, many of them start with a bootstrapping strategy. That means that they do everything they can to keep costs low.
WordPress is a free content management system (CMS), and it’s the most-used CMS online, with over 455-million websites choosing to use this platform to connect with the internet. WordPress is easy to use, and most hosting companies will set it up for you.
When building your WordPress site, you have to choose a template or “Theme” for your site. The theme is the crux of your design, providing the visual element to your site. However, the theme also decides the type of functionality for your website.
There are plenty of free WordPress themes available, but does that mean they are a good fit for your website? Imagine the horror of spending the time and effort building your site, only to come across a competitor using the same templates? The last thing you want to do is introduce the element of confusion to your target audience.
There are thousands of options for paid WordPress themes that give your site better functionality and design appeal than free templates. So, how do you select the best WordPress theme for your new online venture?
Here are a few practical tips you can use to get the most out of your website design and functionality when choosing a theme.
Choose a Responsive, Mobile-Ready Theme
A responsive theme is critical to the success of your website. Your WordPress theme needs to adjust its layout across devices and screen sizes. Considering that more than 50% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, your templates need to cater to both desktop and mobile traffic.
The last thing you need is for a visitor to pinch and scroll through your template to find what they want. Chances are they’ll bounce back to the search results instead. Fortunately, most WordPress themes are responsive by default, but a custom theme may require developers to set it up for mobile compatibility.
Consider Browser Compatibility
While we all like to think that everyone uses the same browser, the reality is that your traffic will come from several different browsers. Your WordPress theme needs compatibility with all browsers if you want the traffic to find your site and spend time browsing it.
The theme may look great in one browser and terrible in the next. Fortunately, most WordPress developers test their templates in several browsers before launching them to the market. The developer will utilize sophisticated compatibility testing tools to determine if it works across all browsers.
Pro tip: Remember to check that the theme works across all mobile browsers as well.
Look for Supported Plugin Options
One of the reasons WordPress is such a popular CMS is the thousands of plugins available from the sizable development community on WordPress. Plugins bring additional functionality to your site. You get Yoast SEO for enhancing the SEO functionality of your content and eCommerce plugins like WooCommerce that are essential for building out online stores.
However, not all themes are compatible with all plugins. It’s a good idea to check with the developers to see if the theme supports the plugins you intend to use before making your purchase. There are plenty of dedicated WordPress design companies, such as Blue Whale Media.
SEO Friendly Design
The WordPress theme you select for your site needs an SEO-friendly design. Search Engine Optimization is a critical aspect of any web strategy, drawing attention from the search bots to get your webpages on the top of search results.
You could get a great-looking template, but that doesn’t mean that it comes optimized for SEO. Many free themes have code that looks pretty, but it’s a mess on the backend.
Choosing a paid template gets you in touch with the developer, and they can give you an overview of the functionality you can expect from installing the template on your site.
Our Top Choices for the Best WordPress Theme for Your Site
Here are our choices for the top two WordPress templates for your new website. These paid themes are aesthetically pleasing and highly functional, giving your website the backend power it needs to dominate your niche.
Blog Writer Pro
Blog Writer Pro features a clean, minimalist design built for authors and writers looking to develop a blog. The theme features subtle, simple effects that entice readers to click on your posts and consume your content.
The design concept with Blog Writer Pro features a blend of classic and modern design with a minimalist feel that makes it easy to focus on the content when readers open your blog. It’s easy to set up with minimal coding skills, and you get a well-crafted blog feature right out of the box.
Blog Writer Pro comes with 14 individual blog layouts and page templates, along with custom widgets such as the “Recent Posts” feature, including thumbnails. We like the “About Author” widget and the “Related Posts” feature with thumbnails. Give it a try.
Camer Pro
If you’re a photographic blogger, we highly recommend the “Camer Pro” paid theme for your website design. This theme features a minimalist design concept, focusing on a platform for photographic bloggers using image-based content to attract an audience.
This paid theme comes with full compatibility with the WordPress Gutenberg Editors and the Classic editor, allowing you to integrate the latest in publishing technology into your website design and functionality.
The Camer Pro theme brings you an extensive host of features, including everything you need to build an outstanding photographic blog for your site. This theme is flexible, providing the ideal platform, not just for writers but for lifestyle bloggers, fashion websites, and even tech-based sites.
Start with the intuitively designed theme customizer interface, featuring live image previews as you incorporate changes into the post. Choose a front page template, one of several blog layouts and header choices, and you get full support for the WordPress Gutenberg editor.
Blue Whale Media is a digital agency in the UK, specialising in web design and development of WordPress websites for businesses. Blue Whale Media aims to assist companies to fully optimise their potential with a full suite of web design and digital marketing services.
