How to Select The Best WordPress Theme? [Ultimate Guide]

A theme is the face of the website. If you are building your website on WordPress, you can choose from so many themes based on your business’s USP. In this article, we’ll discuss a detailed process on how to select the best WordPress theme for your blog.

Overview

Given that WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world, it’s only natural that it boasts a repository of more than 10,000 custom themes.

If your website runs on WordPress, you might’ve gone through a lot of themes before picking the current one. Or, if you’re just getting started, the sheer volume of high-quality themes could easily get overwhelming.

Keeping this in mind, we’ve come up with an 8 step checklist to help you select the best WordPress theme for your website.

Before we share the checklist on how to select the best WordPress theme for your blog with you, here’s a brief on why a good theme is important for your website.

Importance of a Good WordPress Theme

Without getting into extreme detail, I’d like to mention that a good theme is equal to good user experience; and good user experience means happy visitors.

There are a number of factors that go into making a good theme, which we will discuss further below. As of now, the most important thing you need to know is that the way your website looks can make or break your business.

The best thing you can do for your business is to create a website that’s easy to navigate & puts forward the best content that you have to offer. After all, you don’t want your website to be a bloated mess that the visitors (and, potential customers) can’t even browse through without getting annoyed.

Other than the looks, a good theme should also be well-coded & should play well with multiple other aspects of the website. Before moving on to the checklist, check out some of the top best WordPress themes in demand.

How to Select the Best WordPress Theme?

Know Your Budget

WordPress themes vary in prices, sometimes a lot. That’s why, before getting into theme hunting, you must decide on a budget.

A theme is priced according to the features it offers. Now, it’s not necessary that you need all the features that a theme offers. So, spending a big sum of money just by seeing the number of cool features is a strict no-no.

If the feature isn’t gonna bring you any benefit, what’s the point of even spending lavishly on it, right? Besides, running a website is not cheap by any means. You would want to make a budget for possible different expenses & try your best to stick to it.

Now, you wouldn’t want to spend 50% of your total budget on just a theme, would you?

Moreover, depending on your needs & the type of business, you could even opt for a free theme.

I know what you’re thinking – aren’t free themes badly coded? Well, not all free themes are of poor quality. If you put in some time into research, you can easily stumble upon a free theme that’s actually good & aligns with your idea.

Just make sure that the theme constantly updates & has a support community to help you out whenever needed.

WP Astra for eCommerce websites is one of the finest WordPress themes that come with a pocket-friendly budget for small business users. Do check out the plans and use our latest WP Astra discount codes during your purchase.

Choose Low-code Theme

I’ll keep this one simple, the WordPress theme you pick must have a good code. After all, bad code isn’t gonna do you any favors. How, you ask? Well, bad code means difficulty in loading the website, speed issues, crawling & indexing issues, and a lot more.

Many WordPress themes are built with a low-code approach. This means that the users don’t have to write code and can use drag and drop components and pre-built templates to design their website.

A badly coded theme can negatively affect your website’s performance & make it prone to database clog & hacking attacks.

So, make sure that the theme you pick adheres to the latest coding standards.

However, customer support should be code-intensive. They should be able to resolve any query within a fraction of minutes. Elementor Pro is one of the best low-code WordPress website builders of our time. Check out our detailed Elementor review to learn the pricing, features, pros, and cons of Elementor.

If it satisfies you and you plan to make a purchase, don’t forget to check out and apply or exclusive Elementor Pro discount codes.

Explore Each Feature

I know I said in the first point that a theme doesn’t necessarily have to have tons of features. But, it must have the basics or the bare minimums that are required for a proper day to day functioning of the website.

Now, it’s important that you make a list of all the essential features that you want in your website beforehand. These “essential features” can vary depending on your website niche.

For example, if you run a news website, you’d want to have a breaking news highlighter at the top of your page. But, the same feature is of no use to a food review website. Get my point?

Before you begin, you must have a basic design & functionality in your mind that’ll help you shape the final design of your website.

Try to strive for simplicity without compromising on functionality.

The final feature list has to be what you want. But to guide you on the right path, I’d recommend you to use the filter options in the theme store.

Moreover, make sure that the theme plays well with other aspects of your website, like plugins, page builders, cross-browser support, etc.

SEO Friendliness

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the most important factor to focus on while picking the best theme for your WordPress blog if you want to bring visitors to your website.

But, what is SEO, you ask? Well, to put it simply, SEO means optimizing your web page in a search engine friendly manner so that it can show your website when someone searches for your targeted keyword.

Now, I know it can be difficult for a beginner to conclude whether the theme they are interested in is SEO friendly or not? After all, you’re not gonna go through the code line by line, are you?

Theme developers know this, that’s why they mention it on the theme buying page. If a developer says that their theme is SEO friendly, there’s a high chance that they aren’t lying.

WP Ocean is one of the best SEO Friendly WordPress themes. It is compatible with popular page builders like Divi, Beaver Builder and Elementor and has multiple layout choices to pick from. The pricing ranges from $59 – $ 129. Don’t worry! We do have the latest WP Ocean promo codes to get you multipurpose website production-ready at a low cost.

Good Responsiveness

It’s 2020 and there’s no excuse for having an unresponsive website.

It’s widely believed in the internet community that Google puts a lot of emphasis on the responsiveness of the website & if your website isn’t responsive, you might have a difficult time ranking on the search pages.

Did you know that 63% of Google’s US organic search traffic originates from mobile devices? With such a staggering number, the search engine pays a lot more attention to mobile users.

But wait, what is the responsiveness of a website? In simple terms, responsiveness means that the website must be usable on any type of screen, i.e. desktop, smartphone or tablet.

If your website works fine on a desktop but gets all dismantled on a smartphone, you are gonna have a hard time getting & retaining customers.

Choose and install Cyberchimps responsive WordPress theme as it offers the users a good experience on mobile, tablet and laptops.

Easy to Use & Customize

When I say “easy to use”, I mean easy for you. Allow me to help you understand this better.

Once you get a theme & apply it on your website, you’re not gonna keep it like that, untouched, forever. You’d like to experiment with it; make some changes; move things around to make sure your users get the best experience possible.

If every time you wanna make some minor changes to your website, like changing the color, font, spacing, page width, or widgets; & you run to the developer for help, you’re only wasting his as well as your time.

Most of the themes come with enough customization options right out of the box. By changing minor things, you can make the theme unique & truly yours.

However, some themes come with too few or too many customization options. Make sure & select the best WordPress theme that you find a balance of features that let you customize the front end of your website without going overboard.

Ease of use is one of the most important factors to keep in mind while picking the best WordPress theme for your blog.

24X7 Support & Updates

The WordPress CMS is constantly changing, that’s why you would want to invest in a theme with long term support & updates. You must select the best WordPress website based on its customer support.

This way, you can count on the developer for any help you need. Plus, regular updates will make sure that the theme is compatible with the latest changes. If not, you might end up with a broken website in the future.

It goes without saying, but you don’t get long term support with free themes. That’s why it’s always better to go with a premium theme if you are serious about your website.

In terms of support, no other WordPress theme can surpass StudioPress. Customer support available 24×7 across multiple locations and geographies. If you are planning to choose StudioPress as your next WordPress theme, apply our exclusive StudioPress coupon codes which we’ve curated after an official collaboration with StudioPress.

Customer Ratings & Reviews

Ratings & reviews from existing customers are your ultimate tool in deciding the quality of a theme.

Is the theme suitable for a specific niche? Does the developer resolve queries? How’s the after-sale service? All of these questions (and much more) can be answered by going through the user reviews.

It’s possible for a good theme to have a few bad reviews, but if the count is really high, you would want to avoid buying it.

Keeping all the above-mentioned points in mind, you can easily select the best WordPress theme for your blog without much difficulty.

Final Thoughts

Depending on your budget, a WordPress theme could be quite expensive. That’s why you shouldn’t rush through the decision & must take your time juggling through the various factors mentioned above.

Almost all the developers offer preview options for their theme, so you can play around with them in real-time before making the purchase. That’s a plus.

Picking a WordPress theme for your website is an important decision. So, put in efforts & thorough research before deciding on one as it will define your user’s experience as well as your growth.