How I choose themes for my websites

Choosing a theme for your site is both fun and annoying. To me the search used to be fun, but every time I found a theme, another one turned up that seemed better.

So now I have stopped searching and I almost without exceptions use paid professional themes. I concentrate on choosing themes from a selected few reliable authors. Then I know what overall quality I will get, how the support works, and I am most likely familiar with the admin panel and design possibilities. And from these few themes, I can build almost any type of website.

But even if you use free themes, there are authors that make better themes than others, and I would look for themes where you can assume that the author will keep the theme updated to follow the changing Wordpress requirements. If not, you may end up having to change the theme at some point up the road.

Choice of design and features

I choose a theme that supports a design that will match my niche and can present my products or message in a good way. There are lots of pre-made niche themes, and many professional themes have demo sites that can easily be adapted to fit your niche and product.

There are two things to think about when choosing a design. One is your own visual preferences. You should like the look of your website.

The other is the purpose of the site. If your site is mainly for making money, there are certain features that the theme should have to make it more suitable for generating revenue.

Sometimes the features needed for the purpose of the site will outrank my own design preferences, and in those cases, I have to live with that.

When surfing the net, I notice good looking websites and check out what theme is used. (See another blog post of mine on how to do that). Then I ruthlessly steal ideas and copy design solutions, color combinations, and layouts, and put it together to make my own design. It's called inspiration, I think.

Plugin compatibility

I make sure it is compatible with essential plugins I plan to use on my site, such as WooCommerce and others. I look for themes that are feature rich so I don't have to install extra plugins for social sharing, visual editing and so on.

Some say that feature rich themes are slow but installing lots of plugins will also slow down your speed. And I claim (without any exact proof) that integrated, customized, and well-tuned plugins are quicker in performance than a combination of plugins from a bunch of authors.

Down-building

I look for themes that come with pre-installed demo sites. It is often easier and less time-consuming to "build down" a demo site to fit your needs than to build up a site from zero. Sometimes the demo site is relevant to the niche in question, and I can just edit pictures and colors to create a site unique to me.

Test, and test again - before installing or buying.

I go to the author's test version of the theme and I test every possible function of the theme. How it looks and feels, how the menus appear and how the overall layout is.

When this is done, I do the same tests from my phone. I especially look for how the menus appear on the phone and if there are any issues on how it renders the content of pages and posts on a small screen. I make sure to test both horizontally and vertically.

When I'm done testing on the phone I do the same tests on my tablet.

I also look for how the header, header image, and logo or page title renders on mobile and tablet. Many themes leaves you with a small and unreadable page title or logo on mobile. I prefer themes that let you set separate logos for different screen sizes.

Close to 50% of your visitors comes from mobile units, so never forget to test how your theme's responsiveness really performs. A theme can claim to be responsive, and may actually be so, but it will give your visitors a crappy experience, so make sure to find out that it will perform well on mobile units.

(This is also valid if you sit and fiddle with your page or post to make it look good. 50% of your visitors will not see what you see, so all that image and text adjustment is most likely a waste of time).

Play in the sandbox

For the themes I use the most I have a sandbox installed on a server here in Norway where I can play around and test out features and design changes. I like to fiddle with the look of my websites, and sometimes that does not turn out good at all, both technically and visually. Then it's good to know that nobody ever saw what I did.

Here at WA, you can easily set up a test site of your own on Siterubix.

Time is money

I see a lot of questions here at WA regarding people wanting to do this and that with their theme, just to find out that it's not possible, require work and coding, or needs an array of plugins to make happen.

When you build your website, your time is valuable. Although you work "for free", the longer you fiddle with your theme, the longer it takes until you are up and running and ready to generate revenue.

So to burn $50 on a professional theme that most likely will make you able to tweak all parts of your site may be a good investment when you think of it.