WordPress is running 17 percent of the web. Period.
The simple yet striking features have helped this framework to grow in leaps and bounds in terms of usage.
Technically, WordPress is self-sufficient and helps web administrators offer a seamless experience to every site visitor. The themes have a charm of their own and can be customized differently to suit blogs, portfolio sites, e-commerce platforms, and much more.
WordPress themes can be free or paid, with the latter offering more advanced features. However, there are some standard features that make your development experience to the next level. We’ll discuss ten of them in this blog.
Let’s dive right in.
Excellent Coding Standards
Web design begins and ends with coding. A good theme takes into account proper PHP, HTML, CSS, privacy, and security protocols. If you approach any leading WordPress Development Company, there will always be a set of coding guidelines and protocols in place. They ensure the quality of the theme and also help in its long-term maintenance.
Responsive Design
Responsive design helps your website to work equally well without any device limitations. With a greater number of people viewing information on tablets and smartphones, this feature becomes essential. For responsive themes, you don’t need to maintain multiple sites and content and visual, and user interface consistency across devices.
For example, Paper bag is a fully responsive WordPress blogging theme. It features beautiful large featured images and comes with multiple layout choices. You can set it up easily using the live theme customizer. There are 20+ color schemes, and you can also create your own color schemes.
Multiple Page Styles
Themes with a single-page outline don’t make the cut. Designers and developers want pages that are optimized for specific user features: e-commerce, contact information, reviews or testimonials, blogs, and others.
The best themes always come loaded with such page styles so that you can get started instantly. Every page has its own style and maintains the overall look and feel of the site. You can jump from one page to another smoothly, and the site will appear more professional and polished.
Theme Customization
Needless to say, WordPress developers love to play with their creativity, and this makes customization important. In versions of WordPress 3.4 and later, the live theme customizer allows users to make multiple changes and preview them simultaneously.
Advanced users will experiment with the file type. Creating and saving themes using Adobe Photoshop files (PSD format) is a common practice. By including PSD files with theme downloads, users can change almost anything in the layout. In other words, there are endless possibilities when it comes to customization.
Social Sharing
The content on your website is of no good if it cannot be shared on social platforms. A ‘socialized’ site attracts more visitors and generates an exponential growth curve for your business.
Nearly all themes come with social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Xing, Reddit, and Pinterest. If you don’t find these buttons, you can use plugins to serve your purpose.
In addition, you can also integrate a plugin shortcode with your theme to incorporate social sharing buttons. A typical shortcode is shown below:
[wp_social_sharing social_options=’facebook,twitter,linkedin,pinterest,xing,reddit’ twitter_username=’arjun077′ facebook_text=’Share on Facebook’ twitter_text=’Share on Twitter’ linkedin_text=’Share on Linkedin’ pinterest_text=”Share on Pinterest” xing_text=”Share on Xing” reddit_text=”Share on Reddit” icon_order=’f,t,l,p,x,r’ show_icons=’0′ before_button_text=” text_position=” social_image=”]
SEO
Despite all the hype around it, SEO is usually overlooked by site owners and developers. No wonder the business suffers terribly on Google and other search engines.
For best results, the themes should be backed by features such as search engine readability of website content, site speed optimization, content indexing, and support of other SEO-specific features like Dublin core and microformats. You also need to ensure that your WordPress site uses a permalink structure for URLs and creates custom and keyword relevant slugs for pages and blog posts.
Ultimately, your SEO practices should please the search engine spiders that crawl through your theme and determine its relevance in the digital world.
Auto Upgrade and Support
It seems like a no-brainer, but theme designers who provide upgrade and support options are the ones who stay in this business for long.
Have you ever observed the description boxes of the most popular themes? They have detailed auto-upgrade and update information and include specific instructions for use, installation, and customization.
Although customer support is an option mostly reserved for premium themes, there are many free themes that offer it. You should always prefer such themes over others.
Demo Version
The best themes, whether paid or free, should offer a demo version. Demo versions are the easiest way to evaluate a theme before buying or installing it.
The demo will highlight some of the best features of the theme. You should be able to check the following aspects in a demo.
- The kind of options you have to customize the menu.
- The available social media icons and whether they are easy to locate.
- How the homepage looks.
- The available layouts for that theme.
Retina Display
Retina Display is a marketing term coined by Apple. It literally refers to devices and monitors that have a very high pixel density (roughly 300 or more pixels per inch).
An elegant WordPress theme should be able to display properly on retina-ready devices. The visual effects should be sharper and crisper. End-users can zoom in to a greater length and understand the products better, especially on eCommerce marketplaces.
Design Bundles
Nowadays, WordPress theme designers include multiple add-ons in the themes to provide a complete package. These extras could be business cards or letterhead and are kept consistent with the overall look of the theme.
One of the most popular bundles is the Dorothy theme. It includes a WordPress theme, business card template, and social media branding package, and newsletter template that works with popular email client Mail Chimp.
A Final Word
Picking a good theme from so many available options can be overwhelming at times. You should take into account the eight features mentioned in this article before making any decision. Always remember that you are developing a website for your users and not for yourself. Do your research, and everything will fall into place gradually. All the best!
Author Bio
Bharat Patel, who heads the digital marketing team at BrainvireInfotech, is armed with over 12 years of experience in the fields of online marketing and project management. He is extremely proactive in implementing the latest technological innovations in his projects. Bharat’s core expertise lies in search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and conversion rate optimization, among other things. His immense flare of writing encourages him to consistently pen down words revolving around current trends and innovations that relate to his fields of interest.
