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Female Blogpreneur

Empowering Female Blogpreneurs

Female Blogpreneur

Empowering Female Blogpreneurs

Blogging NewbiesSearch Engine Optimization

10 Crucial Things to Look For When Picking a Blog Theme

By Epifania Posted on April 17, 2021 34 8 m read
blog design template

Whether you run a WordPress, Blogger, or Wix blog, the blog design template you have in place speaks many things about your blog not only to other people but to search engine bots as well.

Many issues accompany the use of a bad theme as it can displease and affect your audience’s experience, give search engines a poor expression of your site, and affect the general well-being of your website. 

All this will significantly affect the success you are looking to achieve with your blog in the long run.

This is why having a great theme is so crucial for your blog site. But what exactly should you look for that makes a blog theme good enough for your site?

Well, there are several factors you should consider, but they depend on whether you are designing the theme yourself or buying it from a web designer.

Regardless of your Content Management System (CMS), there are several to choose from, but if you are looking for a great blog design template that will make your blogging journey more manageable, it means that you will have to go beyond just the looks of the theme.

If you are not sure what things to look for when picking a blog theme, here are 10 crucial features you should be looking for in your future blog design template or theme.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Price
  • 2. Responsiveness
  • 3. Cross-Browser Compatibility
  • 4. Look
  • 5. SEO Friendly
  • 6. Performance
  • 7. Supported Plugins
  • 8. Theme Ratings & Reviews
  • 9. Customer Support
  • 10. Updates

1. Price

Price is a big influencer when selecting a blog theme. Although some believe that buying highly-priced blog design templates get you the best themes out there, this isn’t always the case.

Expensive doesn’t always equate to quality.

It also is easy for you to come across free blog themes for your respective CMS, but these free themes come with the disadvantages of having developer credits in them and for the sake of convenience and professionalism, having those kinds of themes isn’t a great idea.

Free blog design templates also require a lot of work on your end to make them look the way you want.

However, making the investment in premium themes is worth it in the long run and is often the route if you want to succeed in your blogging journey.

There are many premium themes out there, and if you are not sure where to look, here is a list of 25 Places Pro Bloggers Buy Premium Themes.

Can you use a free theme and still see results? Yes. However, I don’t recommend it because they are often optimized for some crucial features they should have.

2. Responsiveness

It gets frustrating when you visit a website on your mobile device, and the page is loading very slow; some of the content is not appearing correctly, and you have to zoom out to see certain things properly.

However, if you are browsing on a desktop, you will be cool with a view from the clean blog because now you are on a bigger screen.

This means that the web page is designed with desktop users only in mind, but more often than not, sites like this are drastically declining.

Nowadays, users of mobile devices are increasing. If you have a site without great support for mobile browsers, chances are that you will have poor search engine ranking, and for the little mobile traffic that comes to your site, the majority will bounce out.

3. Cross-Browser Compatibility

This is a bit similar to responsiveness, but with a little narrower focus because even if your site is responsive to mobile devices, it has to be compatible with all major browsers as well.

Some blog design templates appear differently on different browsers, and if the theme you have in place doesn’t suit a particular user browser, chances are that you may lose that audience due to obscured view.

Most modern blog theme templates you will find on theme stores are compatible with several browsers, but adding this to your checklist will prevent you from losing potential readers due to browser compatibility issues.

4. Look

A visually attractive theme on your site has the potential to be magnetic enough to influence your audience retention. You also will be proud of having a clean blog, and that increases the fun of blogging.

This is why you won’t go wrong investing in a great-looking theme coupled with other great features behind it. And if your content is also of great quality, your chances of success will double.

However, many bloggers tend to prioritize the look of their blog design templates over any other thing and end up sacrificing other features for beauty.

This is not wise because if you have a good-looking theme, but it is negatively affecting your visibility on search engines and the usability of your audience, then you are sabotaging your own success.

It’s important to know that a simple blog design template without much fancy stuff will do just as well as one with the fancy stuff.

5. SEO Friendly

Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part of blogging, and a theme has the power to affect how search engine bots will crawl your blog’s pages. 

When you are using a bad theme on your blog, even if it looks attractive to the eye, it may block search engine bots from crawling, and that can cost you a lot of traffic.

Site loading speed is a factor in the Google algorithm, and so is audience retention. 

A slow loading speed will not be ranked as well as a faster loading site with similar content would. 

An unresponsive theme will get visitors frustrated and cause them to exit your site quickly, which significantly lowers your site retention rate.

This is why when looking for a blog theme, you should look for a simple blog template and shouldn’t trade SEO friendliness for any other feature.

6. Performance

Here is another part where a simple blog template or a clean blog is of great importance; performance. 

Search engines have their unique ways to ascertain user experience on your site, and performance is one of the key factors they consider in this aspect.

Performance is a vital feature to consider when picking a blog theme template. And just like you shouldn’t trade a theme’s search engine friendliness for any other functionality, performance should be seen in that way too.

The performance of your site is essentially the time needed for your site pages to load. 

A simple blog template has a huge role to play in your web page’s speed and directly impacts your audience’s experience.

It often has fewer things to load and generally performs in terms of page load speed than a more complex theme.

7. Supported Plugins

One of the main reasons why WordPress is the most preferred Content Management System for several websites and blogs is the fact that users have full customization options on it, and plugins offer a great deal of help in this aspect.

When choosing a blog design template, especially on WordPress, go for one that has reliable customer support and support for other features and plugins such as Woocommerce and the popular plugins out there.

If blog monetization is something you want to do in the future, then this feature is essential.

And if you have other more specific plugins that you would like to apply to your blog, find out if the theme you are about to use on your blog can support that.

It isn’t that hard to find out if a theme can support your plugin. All you need to do is ask the theme developer, and they will let you know. 

And if they don’t respond then, that’s an indication of the kind of support you can expect to get after buying the theme.

Some blog design templates come pre-installed with popular plugins; you should also find out their properties or descriptions before purchasing them. 

Also, find out if the theme can run without them if they are plugin you won’t need. This is because some of the plugins that come with a theme may negatively affect your site loading speed.

8. Theme Ratings & Reviews

There are thousands of themes out there that would look appealing enough to you, but from the varieties out there, all you need is just one good theme for your site.

This is why weighing your options by filtering is a great idea. And what better way is there to get a glimpse of how using the theme will be like, than to hear the thoughts of previous users of the theme?

An indication of a great theme starts with the reviews. So it’s always a great idea to pay extra attention and see what experiences the current or previous users of that particular theme are having. 

This is a strong indicator that tells you more about a particular theme that interests you. If the ratings or reviews are poor, it’s a sign for you to look for another theme somewhere else.

Since there are several good themes out there, I’m confident you will find one that meets your needs without compromising essential features.

9. Customer Support

We already discussed how this is something you should not expect if you are using a free theme. Maybe you are lucky enough to find one that offers support; you will soon find out that the support only goes so far before you need to pay to get help with more complicated issues.

Themes can sometimes be complicated. And unless you have a strong tech background and have some coding knowledge, you will need the theme developer’s help when you run into an issue.

However, suppose you are using a premium theme with customer support. In that case, the developer can look into the difficulty you are facing with their theme and will issue an immediate fix for you.

Although the customer support validity for the premium themes you purchase often expire, and you might need to upgrade your subscription to continue enjoying customer support, most of the time, this is worth it.

However, most of the challenges you will face will be in the early stages of setting up your blog, which is covered by the initial support period.

10. Updates

Updates on most things digital are great and go a long way in preventing you from having several headaches in the future.

This is no exception for blog themes.

Theme updates allow you to have improved features, bug fixes, and security patches where there is any vulnerability or glitch.

If you are looking to use a single theme for a long time that represents your blog style, then buying a theme from a developer who provides frequent updates is a great idea.

So while still browsing for a blog design template to use, you should pay attention to the last time the developer updated the blog theme.

If it hasn’t been updated for half a year or even more, you shouldn’t consider buying it, and even if you choose to, make sure an update comes by not later than one year.

I wish someone had told me all this when I was starting my blogging journey. It would have saved me a lot of headaches.

Are you a new blogger looking for a blog theme, or do you already have a theme and are looking to switch it up? What has been your experience? Let me know in the comments below!

10 important characteristics of a good blog design template when picking a blog theme.
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34 Comments
  • Cristina Rosano
    April 19, 2021

    These are all great things to look out for! I think that the responsiveness, performance and compatibility are of the greatest importance as well as having a great customer support! [Personally I wouldn’t mind spending more for it if it’s a great theme that checks all the boxes.Thank you for sharing x

    Reply
  • Sumedha
    April 19, 2021

    Informative post! Performance and mobile friendly are definitely very important aspects. I would also say customization because it is not great to have a website that looks like many others and can’t be customized to stand out.

    Reply
  • Tiffany McCullough - Metaphysical Mama
    April 20, 2021

    I had no idea so much went into choosing a blog theme! Right now I am using a free theme and I have been thinking it may be time to upgrade. I am so glad I found this post before I made any decisions. Thanks so much for this!

    Reply
  • Headphonesthoughts
    April 20, 2021

    These are great tips. Definitely have an SEO friendly template design is great to have.

    Reply
  • The Healthcare Hustle
    April 20, 2021

    great post! i’m a new blogger but I def wanta try out themes and love these tips.

    Reply
  • EsmĂ©e Rodrigo
    April 21, 2021

    Ohhh just found your blog and it looks amazing! Also these tips are great, I have been using themes from Pigdig and they are my absolute favorite ever!

    Reply
  • Caroline
    April 21, 2021

    This is such a great guide & definitely would have been really useful for me when I started blogging a couple of years back! I think I’ve finally found a theme that I really love but if I change (which I’m sure I will at some stage), I’ll definitely check back to this guide 🙂 xx

    Reply
  • Fabiana
    April 21, 2021

    Great post, very informative and detailed!!!!!! What a misfortune not to have known all this information when I chose my theme, today everything would be easier for me!

    Reply
  • Tyler V Layne
    April 22, 2021

    These are some really great tips! I am definitely going to save this blog post for the future. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply
  • Maureen
    April 22, 2021

    Your post came at the perfect time for me. I am looking into changing my theme since my current one is pretty slow to load. With the upcoming Google algorithm changes, it seems like speed is going to be more important than ever. But it is hard to predict how fast a site will load without installing the theme first. Do you know of any resources that compare the speed of themes?

    Reply
  • Rosie Ireland
    April 22, 2021

    I’ve done loads of reading on the upcoming google update and think you’re bang on. For me, site speed is a massive thing. I also don’t want anything too intrusive when reading – I know some design templates allow that but I’d say to scale back on that!

    Rosie

    Reply
  • Merry Sari
    April 22, 2021

    Oh thank you! I’ve been thinking to purchase a theme this year but I still need more time to think which one is the best. Performance, mobile friendly, responsiveness are definitely very important x

    Reply
  • Leslie Nichole
    April 22, 2021

    I was JUST thinking about this last night. I use WordPress but I have the cheaper plan because my blog doesn’t make any money and until it may I don’t want to make the investment yet, but that could change tomorrow because I want those premium themes, haha. There’s only so much you can do on the cheapest plan, I did it to get my .com name. These are great things to keep in mind, thank you for sharing with us.

    Reply
  • Nicole
    April 22, 2021

    Ah this is so helpful. I get so obsessive when choosing a theme it’s nice to have these tips to help me!

    Reply
  • Fabe
    April 22, 2021

    Thanks for sharing. So many aspects to think of when creating the idea of your blog.

    Always helpful to have a list to keep things clear and aligned!

    Reply
  • Aloha Melani
    April 23, 2021

    #10 is a point I think many should pay attention to but don’t. A theme that was created years ago and has never been updated will only give you problems no matter how pretty it is. Fantastic list.

    ~Aloha

    Reply
  • sadie
    April 23, 2021

    Great advice and ideas to consider here. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • Roger Alberty
      April 23, 2021

      Great post! Responsive themes are a must have now. There is a lot to account for and I feel you touched on the most important topics. Thanks for the post!

      Reply
  • Nyxie
    April 23, 2021

    Excellent post! I’m always looking out for new themes, but I have a commitment issue with them. I can never pick just one to stick with. Hence why my site is kept so simple.

    Reply
  • Irene
    April 23, 2021

    These are some really good things to look out for. I have to admit, I’m using a free theme right now. But I think it’s probably good enough for now since I’m not monetizing my blog at this time. I do have a problem with it loading a little slowly, but I’m pretty sure that’s an issue with my host.

    Reply
  • Nicole Andrews
    April 23, 2021

    Thanks for these helpful tips! I definitely struggled when picking a theme for my blog. These are all factors that I tried to consider but you have so eloquently put them together in one place. I will refer to this if and when I decide to change my theme!

    Reply
  • Amy
    April 25, 2021

    This is very helpful. I am considering changing my theme and you gave me a few things to think about .

    Reply
  • Della Driscoll
    April 26, 2021

    Amazing post with some really informative tips!! It’s so important to take all these things into consideration before buying one x

    Reply
  • Helen
    May 1, 2021

    awesome tips! Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know that some themes were more seo friendly than others. hmm I wonder if my theme is seo friendly…?

    Reply
    • Yepp some themes are certainly built with SEO in mind. It’s worth checking if yours is

      Reply
  • Tangela Williams
    May 1, 2021

    I just switched up my blog theme and it’s running much smoother. Thanks for the advice!

    Reply
    • That’s awesome, well done for having the courage to switch it up!

      Reply
  • GWT
    May 1, 2021

    You’ve presented truly crucial pointers here for anyone looking at selecting or redesigning their blog theme. Yes, the site looks great sprawled across a desktop, but our mobiles have become permanent attachments for most of us. This was indeed crucial when I looked at site design. Responsiveness is also crucial too.

    Great post!

    Reply
    • Yes, that’s true. Thank you!

      Reply
  • Jeanine Byers
    May 1, 2021

    Those are all important things to know! And I didn’t realize there were that many things to think about when it came to deciding who would host your blog or how to set it up, etc. I have been using Weebly for a decade, though, so it would take a lot to get me to change to a new one.

    Reply
    • Hey Jeanine! If you’re satisfied with their platform and you have no issues then there’s no need to change 🙂

      Reply
  • Heidi
    May 2, 2021

    Thank you for this! I need to switch mine up. I didn’t know much when I started blogging and my blog went in a different direction than I was originally planning. I’ve just been worried about switching themes because I don’t want to mess anything up! I will remember these points when researching a new theme soon!

    Reply
    • Hey Heidi. Consider getting some help with your theme change. I offer blog redesign services and will be happy to help. You’re welcome to contact me on [email protected] if you’re interested.

      Reply
  • Maniyah Sells
    December 3, 2021

    Thank you very much for that information, I honestly had no idea about the different things you need to look at when choosing a blog theme.

    Reply
Epifania

Epifania

Blogger, author, entrepreneur, and finance professio, with a bit of web and graphic design know-how.

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Epifania Maphosa

Epifania Maphosa

Epifania is a finance professional turned blogger, coach and digital entrepreneur with a passion for blogging and sharing her knowledge with others.

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