Design and User Experience
Surely your reason for choosing a specific theme is to make sure your website looks impressive and your brand is represented in the best possible way. You can find a theme that suits your business by following a series of steps.
First, look for the sites that sell the best designed themes. While this may be obvious, I think it’s worth mentioning. My personal favorite is Theme Forest, but there are also many good themes in Elegant Themes and Studio Press.
Next, take the time to browse the demo. Check if the website looks easy to use. Is there enough white space? Does it feel exciting or does it give you a headache? Your gut feeling plays a crucial role in your decisions.
Finally, choose a cross-browser compatible theme that is also designed to be accessible.
responsiveness
Mobile traffic varies from industry to industry, but many reports conclude that on average 30% of people use their mobile phones and tablets to visit websites. Whether this is true or not, there are more than enough reasons to use a responsive design.
Almost all reputable themes are compatible with mobile devices. So, if a theme lacks responsiveness, that’s a cause for concern. Many theme sellers allow you to filter out unresponsive themes. An additional option is to browse a curated, responsive list of topics. One of the most effective ways to determine if a responsive design is good enough is to try running the demo through Google’s latest mobile optimization tool.
SEO
When WordPress comes with one of the many great SEO plugins, it could be among the most SEO-friendly CMS out there. However, many themes make all kinds of on-site SEO mistakes like omitting header and alt tags, duplicating content, and committing dynamic URL errors.
When choosing a theme, go for one that mentions “SEO ready” or “SEO optimized” in its description, but don’t trust it blindly. Many developers add this so they can sell their theme. Knowing that a designer has at least considered SEO when developing their theme gives you a kind of reassurance.
You can install an extension like SEO Site Tools or Mozbar for the Chrome browser to run some quick SEO checks on a theme’s demo.
Easy to customize
Several themes come with a customization dashboard by default. This way, you don’t have to make direct changes to style sheets. In addition, plugins like Visual Page Editor make it easy to create complicated page structures without having to touch any code. Some of these WYSIWYG editors are quite limiting, but overall I find them very beneficial for making a website look impressive without much effort. If there is a demo of the developer admin panel available, I’d recommend trying it out so you can customize things you need.
