Starting a Business online or just want your business website? WordPress is a great choice, especially if you are a non-technical user since WordPress themes are made with your Business in mind. There is a large number of WordPress themes that are great but You need to choose the right one. This can be frustrating, but here You will read my guide for choosing the best WordPress theme for your Business.
Define the purpose of your website
First things first. You really need to define what you want from the web. Many people do get confused with so many options on the web and it can be a little cumbersome for someone to choose the right WordPress theme.
One of the key elements is to define what is the purpose of your website. How will your business benefit from your website? To define this purpose you need the know your business plan and how can your website fit in. This can look like a hard thing to do, but it shouldn`t be really.
The first purpose of your website is to get more audience for your business, to share information about your business to anyone who wants to know what you do and what you can do. That is the main purpose of each website, right? So we have defined the first purpose and that was kind of obvious (I know :)).
The type of your business and the service you provide should help you define other purposes of your website such as:
- Life Blog – “My visitor will be able to subscribe to my newsletter, share how they live, help others with positive energy”
- Shop – “I want my visitors to see all I can offer in my shop and I also want them to buy something from the web”
- Restaurant – “I want to show my visitors what is currently on the menu and I want them to reserve a table”
- Fast Food – “My visitors should be able to order the food”
- Auto mechanic – “Visitor will be able to see the process of the job done on his car by providing their Order ID on the form”
- Florist – “I want my visitors to see all the designs I can make with the flowers and also to order one by selecting it and buying it from the web”
- Web Agency – “My visitors will be able to see the services we provide, get a quote for their job request or even buy one of our pre made solutions”
Define your theme keywords
This keywords are not the keywords for your business and SEO, but if you have defined such keywords they can be used also. This keywords are the keywords that you will use when searching for the best WordPress theme. Probably the most keywords will be the same as your SEO keywords but there will be some other such as keywords for:
- color
- type
- purpose
Purpose keyword is a set of keyword that could be found in the purpose or purposes that were defined. So for a restaurant that keyword or keywords would be “table, menu, reservation”.
The more keywords you define your search for the WordPress theme will be more specific. When searching you can then create different combinations of keywords so that you can get various WordPress themes and be sure that you have different WordPress themes for your business that are made for you.
Define what you need in a WordPress theme
To define what you need a theme you need to know what you want from the web. That is way we have defined our purpose at the beginning. Our purpose helped us at defining our keywords and also will help us to define what we need in our theme.
So lets look at the restaurant business and its purpose. My WordPress theme should then have:
- Customization of colors
- Reservation form
- Contact form
- Google Map
- Table list
- Menu
This was also pretty obvious, right? But you should never skip this step because if you don`t write down what you want and look in your theme, you could forget about something. What if you did forget one or two items in your list of needs and bought the theme? You will spend money for something that does not meet all of your requirements. You will need then to hire a developer or to find a plugin that will do it for you.
What if the plugin is not compatible with your theme? What if it does not follow the guidelines of your theme? It will kind of break your website and you do not want that.
I am not saying that you should not use plugins, but I am just saying something that can be pretty common with some themes. You should use plugins, of course! But be aware that some plugins may not work with your theme. Especially in a visual way if the plugin does not have customizable options or the theme developer did not have that plugin in mind while developing the theme.
You also need to be aware that some themes will not have all the requirements for you business. Then it is up to you if you will drop the requirement or find a plugin/developer that will solve your requirement.
What to look in a theme
Since themes are the visual component of WordPress, most themes will either have a premium plugin bundled with them or use a free plugin from WordPress Plugin repository. Why? Well, it is better to divide content from theme since you do not want to lose any data if you decide to change your theme.
You should always look how are your requirements handled within the theme. Does the theme work with a separate plugin for some of your requirements?Are most requirements done within the theme or divided into several plugins?
You will need to handle this when choosing your theme carefully since some themes could be really beautiful but are handling all the requirement within the theme. Are you willing to use that theme and insert all that content again when you change the theme? If there is not much content, maybe that could do for something such as tables or maybe menu? That is up to you to decide.
Other things that are also important when looking a theme is the reviews of it, background of the author (developer) and when was the last update.
Reviews are really helpful and can give you the insight on how well this theme is done. But that is all they are, helpful as an insight. I recommend you to check the theme for yourself and see if it suits your needs. So what if a theme has a review of 3/5? How many did review it? Do read them and find out why the users have given such bad reviews. Maybe they just did not find all that they were looking for. Some reviews are just done without a good reason so be sure to read some of the reviews before trusting them fully. A theme with a review of 1/5 and with 1000 reviewers is something to consider. A theme with a general review of 3/5 where there were about 10 that gave 3/5, 2 users that gave 4/5 and 2 that gave 5/5 should be considered and the reviews should be read to find out why someone gave such review.
Author (Developer) background is also helpful when looking at a theme. If they have already few themes and/or plugins behind them that are good and successful, then you can be almost sure that the WordPress theme you are looking at is a good one. This is not of course one of the mandatory item in the checklist but it can be helpful. Be sure to follow the author on the twitter or some other social media to see on what he is doing and to get maybe some other information about the theme you are using. You can even ask them for support if they are willing to give one.
Date of the last update is something to consider. A good theme will be updated frequently with new features or some other bug fixes. If the theme is designed for a specific use, new features will be rare but bug fixes are present since we are all human and some bugs will occur only to a handful of people. This is something I would always consider when choosing a WordPress theme for my business.
Demo is something that is almost a must when looking for a theme. You want to look at the theme on a server and see how it performs. This is much better then a few of screenshots that will show you how the theme can look. On the demo site you can see how responsive it is, what can be done and how it performs. Does it fill like the one that you want to use? If there are various options, you could request an administration demo where you could change the options and see if you can handle it.
Documentation is very important. If a theme is free and does not offer a good documentation. You could spend more time with figuring out how to set some options than you would with a premium WordPress theme and an excellent documentation. That could cost you money.
So be sure when look at a theme to check:
- Requirement handling (separate plugin or not)
- Reviews
- Author (developer) background
- Date of the last update
- Demo
- Documentation
Found a great theme but without requirements?
Did you find a WordPress theme that is perfect for your business visually but does not handle any requirements? Then I would suggest you to look further for themes to see if there is a similar one. Use the keywords under which this theme is defined.
If you do not want any other theme then consider finding all the required plugins that will give you want you want. You will probably need to look for a developer to hire (some may even do it for free if interested). Start from the author of the theme since he or them will know how to quickly add your requirements that will be compatible with the guidelines.
If the author is not present or will not develop such thing you will need to look further for assistance on some other platforms such as:
You can even find them on various Facebook groups just search for WordPress developers, WordPress jobs or similar.
Where to look for best WordPress themes?
There are many websites that will offer really good WordPress themes. You could even find a repository with only a specific type of WordPress themes. I will list here some of the known websites where you can find free and premium WordPress themes.
WordPress.org is the repository of free and premium WordPress themes. This is the repository that you can search through inside the WordPress administration when looking for a theme. You can find out everything about the theme and see how active is the author of the theme.
Themeforest.net is a marketplace websites where you can find great premium WordPress themes. The reviewer team of WordPress themes is really strict and they choose and allow only the best ones. Most of these themes are bundled with plugins if some feature is needed such as your requirement. Be sure to check this website for themes.
ElegantThemes.com is another premium WordPress theme delivery website. This is a team of developers and designers who develop various WordPress themes and they offer them at a monthly fee. You can then download any theme you want without a limit. They also offer some plugins.
Hermesthemes.com develop WordPress theme only for Hotels, Appartments, Villas and similar niches.
Mojo-Themes.com is a repository of many templates and have many WordPress themes. This is a marketplace similar to themeforest.
WPExplorer.com do have great premium WordPress themes.
Example: Restaurant
Since I have used this type of business for everything in this article, I will also show you some examples of themes that could be used:
Restro from SKT Themes:
- It has a contact form, a reservation form and even a menu.
- It does have a good documentation and a demo site to see how it works. The team behind it provides some support which is also good.
- I can even change all the colors on the theme.
Restaurante from KetchupThemes.com
- It has a demo and also offers a free theme on wordpress.org
- Handles reservations with a separate plugin
- It has frequent updates and new features added
- Has Menu option
- Contact form
Gorumet from Themeforest.net
- It has several demos
- It has a reservation form and a contact form
- It has a google map
- It has a menu and can be sold with WooCommerce
- Updated frequently
- Bundled with Visual Composer to build pages with Drag and Drop builder
Conclusion
Choosing the best WordPress theme for your business is not easy. It requires time to see all the themes available that will give you want you need. You must sometimes drop some of your requirement or find another way to implement it into your websites. This can be a plugin or a developer. Either way, if its a requirement that will boost your business, it will be worth it.
I hope that I have helped you with this and that you will be able to find the best WordPress theme for you and your business.
Have you already found one? Is it great? How did you handle all your requirements? Share your experience in the comments below!
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