Selecting a theme is one of the most important decisions that you have to take while creating a WordPress website. It could either make or break your site and helps you to achieve your brand goals. A theme holds the key to your online presence and how your site looks to visitors also depends on it.

It also controls the back end working of your business. Availability of various theme options can confuse you. To help you out in choosing a right WordPress theme for your site some useful ways are explained below.

Focus your business goals:

One of the most common mistakes that people make is the selection of theme based on design only. You should think about your business targets before getting to the theme.

To focus in a right direction, think about that what are your products and services? what are your competitors’ strategies? and how you can compel your target audience to buy your products.

While focusing on the business goals, the most important thing to consider is that what you are offering to the clients. Selecting a theme for a site by keeping in mind your services will provide a clear understanding of customers.

What your website requires is another important thing to consider. You have to look into the front and back-end functionality of a site separately. Think that what features can entice your visitors.

Keeping an eye on competitor’s approach should be the part of your business goals and plan. It will give you an idea that how you can improve your site. While making a decision on the theme, your competitors’ website will provide you with a context.

Analyzing your competitor’s websites doesn’t mean that you have to copy what they are doing. It should give you a realization that what they are not doing so you can implement it effectively.

If you own a web design agency and wants to hire a WordPress theme developer, then you should look for someone who can meet your audience demands efficiently.

You need to figure out that what are the browsing habits of your clients because not everyone follows the same approach. For example, some websites have large sliders and some don’t. So do research about your target audience and find out that what they are looking for.

All the above mentioned key points will help you to understand that what you have to do in order to achieve your business objectives.

Spend some time:

Once you are clear about your business and its goals. Take your time to make a decision about the theme. You will have plenty of theme options but it’s not an easy task to make a right choice.

People who have experience in creating and selling WordPress themes also face difficulty to make a right decision. So don’t lose hope if you can’t get it right for the first time. You have to put in all your efforts and considerable time in doing research for a theme.

Start with default theme:

When you are done working on your website. Start with a default WordPress theme and clean installation. In top WordPress development companies, developers always go for the default WordPress themes because it supports every coded plugin. It may not look great but it will give you an idea that what’s missing and how you can add it.

This method is really useful and preferred by most of the professional WordPress developers. By trying out different themes, you can be obvious that what you want in your final site.

Test your Themes:

First of all, you have to think that either you want a free theme or paid. The high-quality paid theme provides the best platform for your content. Using a paid theme for your site depends on your budget. But if you have found a paid theme that suits your services then include it immediately.

The important thing to know is that how you will know that a theme is best for your site or not?

You can use the theme demo to know that either it can fulfill your expectations or not. It’ll clear all your doubts and present you the best side of the theme.

Professional website development services make effective utilization of theme demos. Elements like plugin support, custom widgets, and shortcodes are available in theme demos. You have to spend the time to familiarize yourself with features of the demo.

After activation of theme, check out its features and then run automated tests. It can be done with different plugins. You have to install and run it on your theme from the appearance menu. It is always useful to have such plugins because it checks that all required functions are implemented or not.

Your theme should meet the necessary accessibility standards. If there are popping up issues in a theme test then it could be because of low-quality code.

Use Your Own Content:

Before testing a theme you should consider adding your own content. Make your own products and job board. It will allow you to test the workflow of the theme which is important for the theme functions. By doing this you can get the idea that how your content will look on the website.

It is possible that your theme needs changes in images or in other display feature. So by using own content, you can have a clear picture of your website in front of you.

Speed test:

When you are done setting up everything on your site, it is important to test its speed. Three seconds is an ideal time that a page takes to load. A loading time can reduce if you switch your front-end and server-side on.

If a newly installed theme takes six to eight seconds to load then it’s not good for the functionality of the site. It is essential to test all pages on the site.

Don’t rush to find a WordPress theme for your site. It takes days or even months in searching and testing procedure.

So choosing a right WordPress theme for a site is critical as it will describe your user’s experience and workflow.

What’s Next? 

Getting Started with the Control Panel on BigCommerce