Congratulations for your interest in WordPress! However, choosing the perfect theme from the thousands of Free WordPress Themes can quickly become overwhelming. Here are a few tips to aid in your choice for your best free WordPress theme:
Graphics Affect Conversions
Never forget that the whole point of the website is conversions, whether product sales, newsletter signups or leads. The chosen theme should include a few basic design elements with every aspect of the page carefully chosen.
- Videos must tell a clear, relevant story
- Flashy or distracting elements will annoy users and cost you money
- Placement matters – people first look at images, followed by headlines and finally copy
- Captions under images are read by 300% more readers than the body text itself
- The left margin is critical for reading ease and should be unbroken
Choose a Theme that Supports Your Goals
Define the type of website you are building. The clearer your goals, the easier it will be to find the perfect theme. Don’t get sidetracked by a beautiful but inappropriate theme.
- Compile a checklist of required features
- Best practice for theme design generally separates functionality from design by using plugins. However, the theme design should include responsive design, a broad selection of page templates and retina display support
- Ensure compatibility between the theme and plugins
- Unless you’re a designer, choose a theme that only allows a few options for changes or use restraint if there are many change options to limit future problems
Simple is Better
The more complicated a theme is, the more can go wrong. Too many colors, animations and complexity will confuse the eye, causing visitors to abandon the site. Website navigation should be intuitive, clear and simple.
Responsiveness to Mobile
Responsiveness to MobileThe number of mobile users surpassed desktop users in 2014 and has continued to increase. The chosen theme must be responsive. In fact, responsiveness is so important that it has become an website ranking factor.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Effective SEO techniques can raise your website’s ranking with Google and the other search engines. If your website doesn’t appear on page 1 of the search engine results page for your most important keywords, it will result in a lot of lost traffic and conversions. One of the reasons that WordPress is such a great CMS (content management system) is the large number of very good SEO plugins.
Design and User Experience
Providing a good user experience is crucial. Unhappy visitors will abandon a website in 10 seconds or less. All of the above elements and the following contribute to a good user experience.
- The website theme should be suited to the target demographics (age, gender, income, location, operating system, browser etc.)
- The webdesign is appealing to the target audience (professional, fun, sophisticated etc.)
- Each video, image and some Free WordPress Themes increase page loading time, decreasing user experience and conversions – choose wisely
- Thoroughly test the website and theme
Two Examples of The Best Free WordPress Themes
- You are looking for a WordPress Theme for your small business? If it should appear creative as well as elegant and should be used as compact one page website, Zerif Lite may be the best Theme for you. The design is responsive, integrates with WooCommerce, has a theme options panel and is easy to use.
- ColorMag resembles many magazine and news websites, possessing a clean, attractive look in primary colors. It has responsive design, colorful buttons, boxed and wide layout options, a featured slider, 6 social icons, a custom menu and several custom widgets and widget areas
Don’t rush your theme choice as changing to a new theme later could be problematic. Instead, take the time upfront to narrow your choice to a few themes and then make a final selection. You’ll love your completed WordPress website.
