Confused with so many themes? Finding it difficult to choose a suitable theme for your blog? No worries. You don’t need to be a developer. You can just follow the simple ten steps to choose a theme for blogging. A theme is crucial in running a blog and developing it. Also understanding many things and being careful while choosing a theme for your blog is also crucial. The wait is over. Just read these ten valid points before choosing a theme, you will be more confident.
Know the main purpose of your site
Just find out what exactly your blog is for and what kind of topics you want to contribute. Try to find the exact main purpose like whether it is for business, education, technology, etc. Based on the main purpose, you can easily find a suitable theme for you.
Like if it is for an academic purpose, you can keep the normal themes or plain ones. Like it should display one by one chapter. If it is an e-commerce site, then you should choose which is responsive, optimized, and modern. The main intention is the built-in features of the theme should suit your purpose of blogging and should help you.
Keep it simple
All the platforms for blogging can offer you many features, layouts, designs, etc. But in the enthusiasm of developing the site, you would be tempted to use many of them to make it more attractive. But the common fact is you don’t require many.
You have to keep it simple as much as you can. Because too many things can consume more data and patience of the reader to understand. Sometimes they will get bored of loading the site. You have to keep it simple and focus more on providing information.
Don’t add many images to the theme because hosting can be difficult. Always avoid keeping too many animations, flashy images because they can decrease the site’s speed. For images you have to follow JPG format and if possible webp format for speed purposes.
Check the speed
While you are looking for the themes, you can find an option to see a website with that theme. When you open the website, you can understand the speed of the theme. The theme should be highly responsive and friendly to the users with all the devices.
In search engine optimization, the speed of the theme matters a lot. When you are filling your blog with much information, the site should not consume lots of time. The theme should respond faster to the actions otherwise google will not prioritize your website.
You can also find the responsive nature of the theme through many ways like GTmetrix, freshping, etc. You can get to know the poor code and bad requests etc.
The general design and code will be simpler and easy to load. But with the introduction of heavy image themes and complex or poor code can slow down your site.
Focus on Search Engine Optimisation
Make sure your theme is ad-friendly that’s optimized properly for SEO. You have to focus a bit on search engine optimization because ultimately you would like to run the ads and make some amount of it.
The search engine optimized theme can drive you clean traffic, leads and can rank higher in Google. It can be able to compete well with other sites. A well-optimized theme should be responsive, have a good background code, and load fast.
You have to always pick a theme with good and clean code. Because they can help to update things faster like meta, header tags, and title, etc. Also helps in the navigation of the site easily. The SEO-friendly themes help the viewers by making it convenient for reading as well as sharing. You can choose a premium theme that is well optimized previously.
Care about font and color
Choosing a particular color for your blog is necessary. Because it can help in becoming the brand color. You can also make use of mixed colors for your theme. But make sure that should not be confusing and clumsy. You can select either dark or light colors. But the only thing you need to keep in your mind is that the viewers should be so comfortable while reading. The background color should not divert the reader from the content.
Again for the font also, you need to keep it as simple as possible. Because trying different font styles and sizes can be hard to navigate. The simple and normal fonts can help the reader to browse faster and understand the content. Always go with the things that are simple, easy, and familiar. Because our main intention is content and more viewers. In the process of making it a more creative and attractive blog, it can be complex.
Go for the reviews
It is always advisable to read the reviews before using a particular theme. Because you can also understand the problems that will come later in the reviews. The ratings can help you to know how good the theme is.
Another important thing is you should opt for an updated theme. There will be many problems linked with the outdated themes. Being a beginner, you can find it hard to understand and fix them. Going for an updated theme can make the blog more attractive and secure.
Compatibility
While you are checking in your device and browser, it will work fine. But you can’t be sure whether it works the same way in the other browser and devices too. So for that, you need to check your theme on different devices like your phone, laptop, tablet, etc. Also, you should verify in different browsers like in your chrome, firefox, etc.
Sometimes the readers find difficulties in using the site on their mobile phones because of the poor compatibility of the theme. You can focus and make sure it should work properly. You can find the browser compatibility tools while selecting a theme. You can use that to check but if you can’t find that option you have to check everything on yourself.
Free or Paid themes
Well, you will be confused about whether to choose a free theme or go for the premium theme. If you are a complete beginner, then you should go for a premium theme. Because initially, you can’t fix your things if you can’t find anything or if you can’t change, or if you did something wrong. The premium plans help you in fixing the errors so easily. Otherwise, you will be left with only one option that is to hire a professional to fix those errors or mistakes. That can also cost you much. Read the reviews properly before buying the theme.
But if you are good at basics, you can go for the free themes in the beginning. You can go for the premium themes later for a good quality code. You can’t expect the updates here and a good code. But you can install and work easily on it. Also, you need to read and understand all the instructions. You can get to know what services they would offer you for blogging.
Responsive nature
The theme should be responsive because it can provide you with good readability. You can find your readers will use it on any device like a phone or laptop etc. But in the small screens, the layout should be adjustable according to the screen. A good responsive theme will not require any additional plugins to do that.
Always remember that priority should be given to whether it is mobile-friendly or not. The responsive theme can work so fast and generates results faster. You can also test the responsive nature of the theme through the mobile-friendly test in google.
Customization options
Though this is the final one, customization is really important for blogging. The customization makes you develop your blog further every day. You have to find the options to add or delete things whenever you want. You should be able to make the changes in the theme so easily and can publish them immediately.
The flexibility will be offered by most of the themes but some will not. Make sure you should not go for them. You should be able to add more features to your blog later while improving. So select your theme which is highly customizable but should be attractive and unique too.
Final words:
Hope you have enjoyed and understood everything by reading. Cross-check all the points for your theme. You can find a better one.
Happy reading.
