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Once you have installed WordPress, the next step is to choose a theme for your site. The theme you choose is going to set the whole mood of your site and plays a big part in how your Business is perceived. You can dive right in and pick a theme, but I think that if you want to build a successful Business, you need to put some thought to choosing the right look and feel for your site.

Start with some research

Before you choose a theme, start doing a bit of research. Think about what you want your customers to feel when they browse through your site and take a look at your competitor’s sites. Think about the following:

1 – What is your site’s theme?

Food, exercise, children’s education, knitting, crafts, etc. 

2 – What is your target audience?

Young entrepreneurs, single mums, mature women, men looking for a job change, etc. Make this really specific if you can; have one person in mind (real or not).

3 – How do you want your brand to be perceived?

This is probably a trickier question to answer. You can find a good exercise to help you define your brand here. If you find it too hard to describe your brand at this stage, move on and keep the branding exercises in the back of your mind. You can revisit this later. As you work on your business, you will get a clearer picture of what you want your brand to be. 

Now look online for sites that cover a similar niche and audience; look for your competitors and analyse their sites. As you go through the different sites, consider the look and feel of the site and think about what you like/dislike about the various sites. You can also consider the design elements that you want on your site: 

Do you want an image banner at the top? 

Do you want a slider on the home page? 

A background image?

Two or three columns? 

If you have a clear idea of what you want, it’s going to be easier to choose a theme. While the design is important, there are a few things that are a must for any site:

 – Make sure your theme is responsive, i.e., it’s displayed correctly on different devices. To test this, you can use Google’s mobile-friendly test page.

 – Choose a theme with a readable font.

 – Check when the theme was last updated and don’t choose  a theme that hasn’t been updated for a long time. It’s possible that the developer has stopped updating the theme and you could have support problems and problems with bugs and security. 

Once you have an idea of the type of site you want, you can go through some of the free themes.

Browse the internet for free and paid themes

Start by going through the list of free themes in wordpress.org and set up the feature filter for any specific features that you want to make sure your theme has. You can also select the type of site that you want to build: a blog, e-commerce site, portfolio, etc.

Take a look at the suggested themes, go through the demos and see if the look and feel are what you want for your site and you have the functionality you need. Remember that you can add further features and widgets through plugins. If you are struggling to find something that fits your needs, you can, for example, run a google search for the “best wordpress themes.” There are free themes that are not available through wordpress.org.You can also take a look at some of the paid themes. For example in themeforest.net, studiopress.com or athemes.com.

My advice is not to get stuck too much on getting too specific about the look of your website at this stage. Your priority should be to get the website live and get your business going!