If you’ve started looking for themes for your business site, you will understand that there are literally hundreds of thousands of possibilities out there for you to utilize. However, with so much choice around, how do you know which best is for you and your business? Again, there are plenty of themes around which will fulfill your criteria upon first sight, but there are a few necessary questions you may want to ask yourself before leaping.

What is a Theme?

For many people crafting their business from scratch, this will be the first time they have ever engaged with WordPress, let alone considered what a ‘theme’ is. A theme is what makes your site look the way it does. By applying different themes, you can change the entire layout, color patterns, and overall aesthetic in just minutes.

The most important thing to remember is when it comes to picking a WordPress theme; you have two options, ‘free’ or ‘premium’ themes. As a business owner, you want to pick a premium theme. Of course, this costs money – but it is worth it. A premium theme is an investment; there are teams of people dedicated to keeping it up to date, bug-free, security-safe, and web tight. The last thing you want to happen is for your site to be hacked. Remember…no site, no online presence, no income. Avoid this by investing in a premium theme. On top of everything else, their design and aesthetic appeal are often far superior to free theme choices.

Choosing the right theme

There is so much advice that can be found online concerning choosing the right theme for your business; this can be confusing when trying to choose something which will work for your specific business brand.

Since you will be investing in a premium theme, you don’t want to waste your strict business budget by choosing a theme that doesn’t actually suit your needs. Product photography, product development, marketing, and branding will demand your budget so it is imperative to avoid website redesigns in the early stages and get it the right the first time. Sometimes, it can feel a little overwhelming with so much choice, but there is one thing to remember – your site should be individual and a complete reflection of you and your business. Please read up on the advice given by online business coaches and bloggers, but what may work for their business may not work for yours.

What is your business?

Businesses require different needs from a website. For example, some businesses set up a website purely as a first base for customers, where they can read about the company and what it offers, and maybe view a gallery of past work or projects. Other businesses are based purely online and sell various products online and will generally require a lot more from a website.

Make sure you understand exactly what it is you are seeking. A basic portfolio website is easy to cater to. However, a demanding e-commerce business requiring strong product pages, video, 360-degree photography, and social media links must be built within a theme which enables these plugins.

Consider CRO

Conversion rate optimization basically refers to the experience visitors gain when on a particular website. The goal is to transform these visitors into actual paying customers. Different design layouts can dramatically affect a customer’s decision whether they will spend their money with you or not.

You must make sure the theme you are investing in will connect with your customers, allow them to see your products in the best light possible, and most of all, you MUST create a sense of trust and security, so customers feel you are a genuine company. Conversion Rate Optimisation itself is big business, and CRO consultants can significantly boost business profits. So as you are starting, make sure your theme ticks the boxes before investing to save you future CRO consultancy fees.

Here are a few good questions to ask when it comes to choosing a theme:

• Does your theme come from a credible developer? Make sure your premium theme comes with solid web support, for you will probably be constantly utilizing it when it comes to maintaining your site. A credible developer who has a track record for creating and distributing themes will offer good web support. If you are unsure, do a quick Google search to bring up a wealth of information & reviews regarding the developer.
  
• What is your price range? You get what you pay for; the more expensive a theme, usually the better it is. However, you can get pretty decent themes for around sixty pounds. However, don’t be conned with a very expensive theme that does little; always research the one you are about to purchase. Check annual renewing fees also.
  
• SEO options? The very best themes have inbuilt SEO tools which help your website stand out in search engines. Look at themes that offer this as standard.
  
• Responsive theme? We live in an age where people access the internet in many different ways, whether on their smartphones, tablets, or laptops. Responsive themes adapt to such platforms.
  

As you can see, there are a few things to think about when choosing a WordPress theme. First, don’t rush your design decision; your website needs to convey the correct message to your visitors and match your brand feel. Do your research and pick the right theme for you and your business. There are plenty of reviews that can be found online relating to each theme; make sure you assess what is being said about particular themes you are considering, and if you still feel unsure, you could always contact other businesses which use the particular theme to ask them how user friendly it is, or if there are any problems they have encountered.

Find over 10,000 premium themes here.

About the author: Hannah works for VoucherCloud, and has recently worked on their website redesign and launch. Vouchercloud offers voucher codes for their customers, such as Debenhams discounts and Travelodge offers where customers can save from top brands. Many planning, consultancy, and time have gone into their new website. However, Hannah began working with smaller brands, so she understands how important it is to get design right when on an unforgiving business budget.

Data Breach Infographic developed by LifeLock.com

I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you that WordPress is huge. Let’s look at the statistics – at the time of writing, there were just under 65 million WordPress sites in the world, and over 371 million people view more than 4.1 billion WordPress pages every month.

That’s just for WordPress.com – self-hosted WordPress.org sites are arguably even more popular, thanks to their adaptability and the ease of use that the CMS offers. In fact, TechCrunch, CNN and the NFL all use WordPress sites, and it’s likely that WordPress as a CMS will continue to see dramatic growth.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I love third-party plugins, they can offer a whole host of new functionality to your website and enable you to do things that you never even dreamed of. But they can also cause problems, particularly if you’re plugin happy and install everything that you can find.

Here are some of the most common problems that WordPress plugins cause, along with a few hints on what you can do to avoid them.

Security vulnerabilities

Let’s jump in at the deep-end – the worst-case scenario is that you’ll install a plugin which opens up a huge security vulnerability, allowing hackers or even the plugin’s developer to access the back-end of your website.

And it’s not always because of a malicious developer, too – take this case from a couple of years ago, when three popular plugins had unwanted backdoors added to them. Luckily, in this case, WordPress reacted quickly to reset all users’ passwords as a precaution and no lasting damage was done.

Of course, some other plugins are designed specifically to try and catch an unsuspecting admin out, and you need to look out for the warning signs. But don’t worry, help is at hand!

What to do: Change your password regularly, and use a separate password for your WordPress site than you do for all of the other sites that you frequent. Also, consider using a .htaccess file that blocks anyone from accessing your admin panel unless they’re logging in from your IP address(es). Make sure that you update your plugins whenever new versions are released (checking several times a week), so that you’re not running outdated software that might not have been patched. And finally, always take a look at the rating of the plug-in on the WordPress.org website – if it has a low rating, other admins have probably experienced problems.

Clashes with other plugins

Unfortunately, not all plugins were created equal – a quick Google search turns up over 550,000 results for ‘WordPress plugin clash’. The sad fact is that, on the odd occasion, two different plugins are completely incompatible, often due to duplicate variables, or two lines of code that get stuck in a loop.

Worse still, many developers aren’t aware of these clashes – there are just too many plugins out there for even the most dedicated development teams to test their work against every other plugin on the market.

What to do: If you can track them down, report the problem to the developers – if they’re still supporting the plugin, they’ll probably fix the bug for future releases. If you can’t find them, or if the plugin is no longer supported, you’re just going to have to avoid using whichever plugin you value the least. To make matters worse, if you really need the new plugin and you’re not sure which of your existing plugins it’s crashing with, you’re just going to have to try deactivating plugins in batches of three to try and narrow down which one is causing the problem. Oh, and have a look around online first to make sure that it is a clash, and that it’s not just a plugin that doesn’t work.

Faulty plugins

As we’ve just established, not every plugin works first time, and quite a few of them no longer work at all. In these circumstances, you’ll find that you’ve installed and activated the plugin, but it’s not having the desired effect. Now what can you do?

What to do: Unfortunately, if the plugin doesn’t work, all you can do is report it to the developers, give the plugin a poor rating on WordPress.org to warn other admins, and move on. See if you can find another plugin that does the same thing, and try that instead.

Unsupported plugins

Let’s presume that you’ve pinpointed a problem and you want to report it to the developers. How do you go about doing that? Well, the first step is to find the plugin’s page on WordPress.org and click on the ‘support’ tab – with a bit of luck, you’ll be shown a list of recent posts about the plugin, and you’ll be able to raise your own issue here.

Alternatively, most plugins have either an author bio alongside them, and you’ll be able to find more information about the developers here. It’s also worth checking any documentation that came with the plugin.

But if you use enough plugins, you’ll eventually find a plugin that doesn’t include any developer information or documentation, and you’ll be left scratching your head and wondering what to do next.

What to do: Have a look around on Google and see if you can find someone else that’s had a similar problem. If it’s a popular plugin, you might well find that someone has already encountered and solved the problem, documenting the process along the way. If not, you’re out of luck – you’ll just have to remove the plugin and move on.

Not specifically designed for the site

Even if you find that your plugin is working correctly, it might not fit the look and theme of your website. This is quite a common pitfall, and one that’s impossible for developers to predict – they design their plugins to work on as many themes as possible, paying particular attention to the most popular ones during their testing, but it’s just not possible for them to guarantee that their plugin will display correctly on whatever theme that you’re using.

What to do: Learn how to use CSS and play around with the plugin’s stylesheets – you might find that you’re able to correct the issue yourself. Depending upon your budget, it’s also worth looking for a freelance developer who may be able to come up with a fix. If all else fails, report the bug to the developers, but they’re less likely to correct an issue with how the plugin displays than they are to correct a problem that stops it from working altogether.

Slowing the load time

Let’s presume that everything is working correctly, that it all displays fine on your modified template and that the plugin does everything you were hoping for. But then you load up your website and spot a noticeable difference in the amount of time that it takes for your pages to load.

This is even more important in the age of Google – they found that when they ranked slow websites in their results pages, people actually used the search engine less frequently. Because of this, they now take loading times into account when they generate their results. It’s not just Google, either – Shopzilla shaved three seconds off their loading time, and experienced a 25% increase in page views and an increase in revenue of up to 12%.

What to do: Deactivate any plugins that you aren’t using, and investigate Google’s Webmaster Tools – they can increase your loading speed by up to 60%, by using a couple of innovative techniques. First off, they’ll pre-load information in anticipation of a user clicking through to the most popular pages. Secondly, they’ll defer the less important information and get it to load after everything else on the page has displayed.

As long as you’re sensible and look out for the warning signs, there’s no reason that you can’t add plugins safely and securely to your WordPress website. There are also other things that you can do, like backing up your database and your website files, to ensure that even if there is a problem, it won’t knock your site out of commission for good.

What WordPress plugins do you use? Have you ever experienced a problem? Let me know with a comment!

Author Bio:

Dane Cobain is a social media specialist for UK-based creative agency fst the Group. He’s also a gadget-lover and tech fanatic, as well as an internet addict.