Theme selection is one of the most important decisions you’ll make when designing your website. Choosing the right theme can make your website stand out and be more user-friendly. Choosing the wrong one can have a big impact on the visitor’s overall user experience.
But most people don’t know how to choose the right theme and end up picking something that just doesn’t fit their brand’s requirements. With millions of themes, both free and premium, available online, picking one isn’t easy!
Not to worry, we have a few handy tips that can help you find the perfect fit for your brand.
1. What is Your Website’s Purpose?
What is your website’s purpose? Are you selling products or services? Are you trying to build an online presence for your business? Are you creating a blog?
The answer to these questions will help you develop a foundation and create a roadmap. You know exactly what you’re creating and can then choose a theme that will fit the website’s purpose. Once you know your website’s purpose, you can start to think about the themes that would be most appropriate.
Understanding your purpose will also help you with the second step of our guide.
2. Do Competitor Research
This is very simple. Just type a keyword that describes your website’s purpose or brand’s theme and look at the first few results that pop up. That should give you a good idea of what to use when it comes to themes and designs.
For example, if you’re creating a vegan recipes blog, just type vegan recipes and look at the top 3 to 5 organic results. What kind of aesthetics do these websites use? What do you find lacking or outdated in them? What do you consider appealing?
Doing competitor research allows you to understand the though process behind creating a successful and visually-appealing website.
3. Think About your Target Audience
Who will be visiting your website? Who are your target customers? What do they want and need from a website? Once you know your target audience, you can start to narrow down the themes that would be best for your website.
Some basic market research can help. For example, if you know you’re targeting women between the ages of 25-50, make sure your theme design reflects that and will be appealing to this specific audience. If you’re targeting younger males and are in a specific industry like men’s fashion, your theme should reflect that as well.
Understanding your target audience is the key to perform well as well. The more time you spend on that, the better.
3. Take Into Account Your Website’s Design Goals
Your website’s design goals can influence your theme selection. Do you want a website that is easy to navigate? Supports multiple languages? Is accessible to people with disabilities or similar concerns? Having a clear design goal will also help find the ideal theme for your website.
Think about what kind of features you want and can benefit from. Make a list of them and explain them to your website developer. They will come up with a list of theme options for you based on your specific requirements.
You may want to look at your competitor research once again just to see what kind of features you may need to succeed in your quest. Setting design goals will help you in the long-term as well.
4. Consider Your Budget
Themes come in a wide range of price ranges, going from free to thousands of dollars. Budget is an important factor to consider while choosing themes. While you don’t need to splurge, it is a good idea to invest in a good-looking and reliable theme.
You can discuss your budget and financial goals with your website developer carefully to get a better feel of the circumstances. A good budget will help you come up with an organized plan of approach for your theme selection process.
5. Make Sure It Has Cross Browser Compatibility
One of the most important aspects of web design is cross-browser compatibility. This ensures that your website will look and function correctly in a variety of different browsers. You need to make sure the theme uses standard HTML and CSS code. This will ensure that your code is interpreted correctly by all browsers.
Making sure your website is cross-browser compatible is essential to ensure that your website can be accessed by everyone. A good theme will ensure your website is compatible with different kinds of browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and more!
Cross-browser compatibility improves overall user-experience and will help you establish a good reputation with your prospective customers. That is an important factor to consider.
6. SEO-Friendliness is Essential
As a website owner, you should care about the SEO friendliness of your site’s theme. SEO friendly themes help your site rank higher in search engines. They load faster, which helps improve your site’s user experience.
SEO friendly themes are generally more mobile-friendly, which is important since more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet. They’re also easier for Google and other search engines to crawl and index, which means your site will show up in more search results.
Overall, SEO friendly themes provide a better experience for both your site’s visitors and for search engines. If you’re not sure if your theme is SEO friendly, you can speak with our experts to know more.
7. Responsive Themes
If you’re running a website, chances are you’ve heard of responsive design. In a nutshell, responsive design is a way to build a single, unified website that can provide an optimal viewing experience. This means easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices, from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones.
Responsive themes are essential because mobile traffic is growing rapidly. And the situation has grown further during the pandemic.
Google has also stated that they favor websites that are designed for mobile devices, and will rank them higher in search results. So, if you want your website to rank well in search engines, it’s important to have a responsive design.
8. Updates
The world of information technology is very fluid and a static website can’t survive it. You need to make sure your website theme receives regular updates from the developers. These updates should be clean, reliable, and without any bugs.
You should be able to maintain a modern design and structure on your website. That’s one of the reasons why it is best to choose a theme from a reliable developer. If you’re uncertain, you can always discuss your options with one of our experts.
They will be able to provide a list of themes with a good reputation and solid performance track record.
9. Logic and Functionality
There are some truly beautiful themes available online today but not all of them are functional. They may look pretty on the screens, but they have very little logic in their layout. While having unique websites is fun, the navigation must be predictable enough for the user to move around easily.
If the user can’t find different pages, categories, and contact information where they usually are, they will click out of your website and look elsewhere.
Focus on logic and functionality to get the best possible results. Make sure your website is predictable and easy to navigate. Every element of your site should be easy to understand and comprehend.
10. Plug-In Support
Plug-in support is one of the most important features of a website theme. It allows you to easily add features to your website. If you want to add some unique features or add-ons to your website, the theme must offer some plug-in support.
With plug-in support, you can add more features and functionality to your website without needing create them from scratch, which can be expensive. Instead of asking your developers to create these plugins from scratch, you can simply choose what you need, plug it in, and run it. This allows you to customize your website to better meet your needs.
If you have a plug-in support website theme, you can easily share your website with others as well.
These are some of the tips you need to keep in mind when you are looking for a theme. Always consult with your developer to understand what your website needs and what kind of themes will suit your website well. Once you have a good idea, you can find a theme that fulfills all of your requirements effectively.
