WordPress is the most popular CMS. It hosts almost 9 out of 10 blogs on the internet. After buying your domain, selecting a hosting provider, and choosing the niche, the next important thing is selecting a theme.

With hundreds of options available, it sometimes gets difficult to choose the right theme for you. This article is the complete guide on how to select the best WordPress theme for your site.

After reading it, you will know the essential factors behind a successful WordPress blog theme. Before investing your money or time in buying a theme or creating one on your own, be sure to consider these critical points.

How to choose the best theme for your WordPress blog?

Selecting a perfect theme is very important for the growth and success of your WordPress blog. The right theme will make your content look prominent. Easy to read. it will have good typography. It will make your blog load faster. It will make your blog look good. Give an edge over competitors – everything while maintaining your site’s quality.

Following are the important factors to consider before selecting a theme.

1. Filter by feature to narrow it down

There are so many themes and every theme has unique features. Remember, not all the features are required. We might be tempted to choose a theme with maximum features, but we will be using only a few of them. Rest will be useless, just causing our blog to run slower.

But different blogs may require some additional features as well. For example, some blogs need a video player feature if there are videos to be run on the blog.

Thus, it would be better to make a list of the features you want in your blog and check which theme provides all those features. 

Or you can also use the “WordPress feature filter” to customize your search for free themes based on the specific features you want.

2. Select a fast & responsive theme

What happens when a site takes too long to load? We close it down and move to the next tab.

No matter how hard you have worked on your blog, how great your content is or how cool your graphics are – if it lags loading, even for a few seconds, you lose a big chunk of your audience.

We have to make sure that doesn’t happen, right?

So, selecting a responsive theme that loads quickly is significant. Usually, heavy themes with lots of extra features take time to load.

Before selecting a theme, note down its average response time also see how it performs on other blogs, how much time it takes to load?

3. Is the theme compatible with the latest WordPress version and updated regularly?

Today, the latest WordPress version is 5.5.1. After a few years, we’ll have 6.0 and then 7.0.

The question is whether your theme would be compatible with the then latest version?

If the answer is yes, then it’s okay, but if the answer is no, that’s probably not a good option because you will eventually have to change that theme. While changing the theme, there’ll be so much to deal with, like graphics, fonts and many other things. That would be a tedious job. It is better to make sure the theme remains there for a very long time, if not forever.

4. Is the theme from a reputable theme developer?

Selecting a theme from a reputable theme developer is essential. At times, you may face some problems with the theme, like a bug or unresponsiveness. That is when you might require their customer care support. Only well-reputed developers provide good customer care support and have more experience with problem-solving.

5. Coloring is important:

Website colors are critical. All colors on the blog should be in agreement, so they don’t look odd.

What colors does your logo have? If your logo has blue and white shades, your theme coloring should not be too different from these colors; otherwise, they will look out of place.

Choosing a theme that gives lots of color grading options would be the best idea so you can play with colors and see what works for you and what doesn’t.

Here is a quick tip: For a blog, lighter colors perform well compared to darker colors. Because lighter colors increase the readability of your blog, a dark color website is less readable.

6. Choose themes with easy-to-read fonts

We might be tempted to choose themes with fancy fonts, thinking they might look cool. But that is not true. Remember our goals? Increase the readability of your blog. The simpler fonts you choose, the easier you make for everyone to read it. When you choose fancy fonts, some people might not be able to read them and you lose a significant audience.

Make your fonts simple, sophisticated, and readable.

The most famous fonts on the internet in 2016-17 were Arvo, Open Sans, Lato, and Vollkorn Josefin Slab.

You may try one of them or select a new one that works for you. Our goal is to increase the readability of our blog.

7. It should work on all devices

Your audience will be coming from different devices. Some might be visiting your blog from a desktop computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Our goal is to make our site accessible from every device because we want most people to visit our blog.

Think for a second, if your site is not accessible with a mobile device. How many visitors do you lose? Maybe more than laptop or desktop PC. Do you want to lose them? NO!

Some themes might lag on other devices or don’t provide all functionalities. Those are the themes you should not use; instead, use themes that work well on every device.

Test your blog on multiple devices before selecting the final theme.

8. It should work on all browsers

This point is again a critical one. Not everyone surfs the internet via a chrome browser. Different people in different countries, companies, or associations use different browsers. We want our blog to run smoothly on every browser.

Again, test your blog on every browser your visitor might be using.

9. What is Your niche?

Your niche is important while choosing a theme for your blog. The theme should appeal to your niche. For example, if your niche is “men physique,” then a robust design theme would work better than a delicate design.

Consider your niche while choosing a theme of your blog; it should appeal to your niche.

10. Who is your targeted audience?

Knowing your targeted audience is essential. Ask yourself, “why do they come to my blog,” “what do they like, what they dislike,” “What’s their age group” consider everything and select a theme accordingly. Your audience must feel at home on your blog.

Summary:

So these were the top 10 factors you should consider while choosing a theme of your blog. Put them into practice and you’ll double the chances of your success.