How To Evaluate The Web Theme So It Contributes To Your Business

Here comes the moment when you finally need to decide how your web will look like. This is it, now it is the time! This is one of the defining moments.

I know that until now I have been telling all the time “do not jump too quickly to this phase!”.

You can compare it to the selecting of the wedding dress. It has to be elegant, but not too flashy, comfortable so that you can dance and sit with ease. You would expect it to highlight your advantages and cover some flaws. It should present your best side and remain close to your personal values. Your website should be more than a wedding dress. In a way, you will be asking your clients to marry you. It would be great if it could display your nature, the way you want to stay in touch with your clients, the vibes you want to share with your audience. Hence the look and feel of the website create a far-reaching foundation of your business.

Many business owners are presented the layout of the website by their graphic designer or web developer with an expectation to give their approval relatively quickly so that the theme could start to be filled with the content. Usually, already on this stage, there is a time pressure to finalize the project to a specific date. It is also a common knowledge that professionals specializing in CMS (like WordPress) will demonstrate either the themes they feel the best in or the ones which are typical for your business category that could be easily found in the search directory of WordPress. That is why most medical services websites look alike! If you anything like me and decide to select WordPress as the leading environment with prominent popularity, your choice of design motives becomes almost limitless. On the official WordPress web, there are over two hundred themes to choose from. In the shop with themes specializing in WordPress, you can choose from over eleven thousand options! How one can select from this and be sure it is a right business decision? The trick is to pick wisely using smart denominators so that your choice supports your business and have a long term impact. To make this super easy and 100% doable I have prepared Free checklist, “How To Evaluate Web Themes Before Purchase.”With the steps described on this list, you can evaluate each theme really quickly. Let me share just a few points and I will let you do the job later.

Prepare List Of Your Required Functionalities

The theme needs to fit your needs perfectly. Is it a shop that you plan building? Or perhaps you have a multi-regional business that requires several language versions? Maybe your service demands lots of demonstrative videos embedded into your web? Or you will have a long list of products with complicated presentation scheme.  It would be smart to look again at your functional scheme and make a list of all features your web needs to have.

Your theme must respond in 100% to all of them and support them effectively. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money.

You need a web which is fast and dynamic to enhance the professionalism and trustworthiness, but if the theme does not support specific functionality you require, or it is not optimized there your site will be loading for ages and will only confuse visitors instead of giving them right answers quickly.

Select Only Responsive Layouts

Currently, more than half of web traffic is accessed via mobile equipment. In some business categories like gambling or pets & animals, the numbers go really high to reach 80%. You cannot ignore the fact that your clients and web users will be trying to contact your company through mobile sources. It means that your website to be perceived as fully professional and trustworthy will require a so-called responsive layout. It will adjust the design of your web automatically to the size of the screen your web visitor uses. Not all themes that you might feel attracted to will be responsive. It is a feature typical for new themes, but if you select some older one, you might have to double check on this. These days it does not make sense to build any web which is not based on responsive layout.

Check Carefully Demo Version

The trustworthy theme needs to have a demo so that you can touch and feel all the elements and make an informed decision on that version. It really pays off to go through the demo version of the preselected theme. You will see precisely how particular sections look like, how the animations move, and how do the whole things behave. Based on the demo version, you can decide which elements will work for you, which will be redundant and which might be “nice to have” features. If you find yourself in a situation when the theme, you are recommended to approve, or you simply like but unfortunately it does not have a demo version – step away and look for other options.

Ensure Simplicity And Clarity

The famous saying “less is more” applies beautifully in this case big time.  It is the role of the theme, and you as an architect of the process, to lead your web visitor by hand to the expected action. The less cluttered and less complicated and overloaded is the theme, the better for you and your business. You need to balance the features required for your business with features that your competitors have with what is best for your web visitor. All the steps that he or she is expected to make on your web need to be crystal clear and straightforward. There is a bit more about this in my other post 3 Quick Tips To Improve Your Website Performance that you might want to read later.

Decide On Free Or Paid Variant

There are multiple, great, free themes that you can choose from and customize them to your company needs. I know some big companies using complimentary motives with confidence. I’m sure you can find at least twenty options, and once their performance is confirmed by my free checklist “How To Evaluate Web Themes Before Purchase,”you can start filling them with content. Deciding on the theme for Maggie’s Hub some time ago, I was really close to go on with the free motive myself. Eventually, I selected Avada – paid theme for its versatility and rich page builder options. Sixty dollar investment was really worth it taking into consideration that I have built this web alone with no experience in web coding, which brings us to the next area.

Plugins compatibility

Plugins help you extend the functionality of your web.  They add features that are not available in the theme in the first place or you would need to code these functionalities. They allow you to install things on your website without coding experience. I have over 20 plugins installed on my web.While selecting your theme, it would be smart to confirm if the plugins are compatible and if they are regularly updated.

They help me with my SEO, speed of my website, contact forms, managing the discussions under the posts. They do really a great job!

Web theme evaluation process could be really uncomplicated experience, once you know what to expect and where to look for support. Just click here to get your Free checklist “How To Evaluate Web Themes Before Purchase,” to make sure you choose wisely and avoid changing the theme in 6 months from now or stress related to the one which is not optimal for you and your company. Enjoy the process!