AND WHICH ONES I USE FOR MY ONLINE RESERVATION NEEDS

How do you choose a theme for your website?

Are you going to create a website for your business? WordPress has ready-to-go solutions covering different niches! But the flip side of the medal is the difficult choice of the best theme. This article will tell you how to choose a theme for your WordPress website and what features to search for. 

5 Reasons to Choose WordPress

First of all, let’s discuss the WordPress CMS platform. It’s one of the most popular website-building platforms. We’ve singled out 5 main reasons in favor of wordpress.org:

1. It’s an open-source platform where you can find a large collection of themes and plugins for different project types.

2. WordPress makes it easy to manage your website and its content. 

3. This CMS is completely secure. 

4. Many hosting providers offer multiple plans for WordPress websites. 

5. There is a huge WordPress community. So, if you have a question about the CMS, they may help you. 

Top 10 Features to Consider While Looking for a WordPress Theme

Now, we’ve come to the point – how to choose a WordPress theme. We’ve included the main features in this list as it’s difficult to find an all-purpose solution for different niches.  

1. Fast-loading and clean-coded design

The design of a chosen WordPress theme must be not only dedicated to your industry (it’s obvious, isn’t it?), but also spare from poor code and unnecessary elements. They may overload pages and slow down your website. It goes without saying that a WordPress theme should adjust to all screen sizes. 

Lotus Spa 

For example, Lotus Spa is a WordPress theme crafted with the Elementor page builder. This theme suits any wellness industry website. It comes packed with fast-performing pages displaying on any screen size. You can highlight team members and their profiles, service packages, contacts, and more details. While my favorite visual builder is Divi, Elementor also has great options for visual builders, which means you do NOT need to know how to code to have a beautiful website!

2. Compatibility with WordPress plugins

Depending on the business you create a website for, you might need to install WordPress plugins to add the required functionality. You should make sure that the preferable theme is compatible with these plugins. 

WooCommerce is one of the most popular plugins to incorporate 80+ global payment gateways into WordPress websites. Many WordPress themes are ready-to-be-integrated with this plugin. MailChimp allows you to run email marketing campaigns, while Contact Form 7 is a well-known WordPress form plugin. My chosen email platform is AWeber, but I just started using it, so instead of linking to it for you, I’m going to spend some time getting to know it a little better and then decide whether I want to sing it’s praises! It’s worth noting that they have a free version that’s great for when you’re just getting started, and their PRO upgrade plan is very affordable.

With the Laveri theme, you can enhance the website of your online clothing store with WooCommerce features. They include attractive product pages, sorting & filtering options, shipping settings, and built-in payment gateways. 

Crafted with Elementor, the design is oriented on product presentation, catalogs, galleries, and more eCommerce essentials. The Stratum Elementor Mega Menu helps you build a user-friendly and content-rich mega menu to facilitate navigation on the website. 

3. The Integrated Functionality

It’s great when the WordPress theme comes bundled with the needed plugin at no cost. Thus, you won’t need to search for third-party software. Also, you might spend less time tailoring the theme’s style to its specialties. Let’s have a look at some examples!

Villagio

The Villagio WordPress theme smoothly works for websites dealing with single or multiple rentals in different locations. You can rent out unlimited accommodations and accept online bookings.  

The WordPress Hotel Booking plugin powers up the Villagio theme. This plugin enables you to accept online & offline payments, sync bookings with OTAs and set up dynamic rates. You’re allowed to add booking rules, customize email templates, and manage bookings from the dashboard.   I’ve personally used this plugin for my clients with fantastic results. It’s so customizable and really helps my booking clients stand out in their rental booking niches.

It’s worth mentioning that there is a collection of WordPress hotel themes enhanced by this plugin for free. They combine a dedicated design and fully-featured booking functionality. This can save you some money as it’s a 2 for 1 sort of a deal.

Touriny

Touriny comes integrated with the WordPress Appointment Booking that works for any hourly-based business website. It’s easy to customize pre-designed pages and structure tour directories. This theme comes in handy for tour operators and travel agencies to promote tours and arrange online tour scheduling. 

With Touriny, you’ll be able to accept payments via PayPal, Stripe, and more methods. It takes a few clicks to add flexible guides’ timetables, fill in their profiles, and handle appointments on the backend.    

4. Regular updates

You should look at the story of theme updates. They are usually released to provide new features, bug fixes, or a theme compatible with the latest version of WordPress. 

5. Highly-qualified support

Check out whether different support channels are available after purchasing the theme. You should have the opportunity to leave a ticket, write an email, or send a message to a support team if you have any questions or issues regarding their theme.  

6. Customization options

You need at least a basic set of customization options to make your website unique – its color scheme, backgrounds, font types, etc. 

If you work with the native WordPress editor, you might like the Getwid addon. It’s a collection of 35+ free WordPress blocks and templates that enhance your website editing powers. 

Stratum addon is a collection of 20+ free Elementor widgets that are handy for Elementor users. They are suitable for different site sections. At least 6 of the Stratum widgets are free alternatives to those in Elementor Pro.  

7. Optimization for search engines

You should run some tests to be sure that a WordPress theme comes with no SEO mistakes. You may use dedicated free tools such as Pingdom. Copy and paste the theme demo URL. Also, apply Google Pagespeed Insights to check the theme’s performance – nobody likes a slow-loading website. 

8. Rates and reviews

This point is to tell you about other customers’ experiences and feedback. They may share both pros and cons of the WordPress theme you’d like to choose. You can find rates and reviews on the product page, forums, reliable platforms such as TrustPilot, or social media communities.  

9. Ready to Be Translated

If you’re going to make your website available in different languages, find out whether the theme is multilingual-ready. It should support the translation plugin you use.   

10. Pricing

We’d not recommend you put the pricing in the first place while you’re deciding on the theme for your WordPress website. Paid themes often include different services, premium extensions, or other options. If you’re keen on developing multiple websites, you may even consider membership programs to get a discount.    

So, How to Find the Best Theme for WordPress?

This was our quick guide on how to choose a top WordPress theme for your website. We’ve done our best to list the most important points you should check out first. The provided examples cover different niches. Weigh all the pros and cons and make your choice to build the online presence of your business without touching any code!