Welcome to the modern Digital Age of technology and the Internet. It is almost impossible to have a successful business without a high-quality website these days.
You know how important it is to have an efficient and marketable website for your business. Getting that website in its optimal working order, though, can be a tough challenge.
Not everyone is a trained web developer. If you don’t specialize in website design, you might not know exactly how to work with Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress. At the very least, you might not know what to do with the software once you actually have an account.
Fortunately, you have come to the right place. Listed below are the seven best things for you to know when customizing WordPress themes to suit your business’s needs. Don’t get left behind in the digital business landscape.
Using WordPress
Since you know that you have to have an engaging, efficient website for a successful business, you have to use the best tools. For web development software, WordPress is popular for a reason.
In fact, studies say that WordPress runs about 30% of the entire Internet. Clearly, the benefits are worthwhile for business who need a marketable website.
If you don’t have much practice with using CMS software such as WordPress, don’t worry. Here are the initial set-up instructions for a WordPress blog.
The software is easy to use once you follow the instructions and maybe some tutorials. Once you learn how to run the site, you will be able to optimize the WordPress theme of your choice.
Page Navigation
Perhaps one of the most important parts of your website will be the architecture of the information. That means it’s important how you structure your menu and web pages.
You want to make sure that you find the theme that best fits your organizational needs. Your business has certain consumer interaction needs. For example, if you want to establish a solid eCommerce business, you need an easy-to-use and easy-to-find eCommerce page on your website.
Only choose themes that are specifically optimized to suit your business’s needs. This requires a thorough understanding of what your users will want to accomplish ahead of time when they visit your site.
You can learn more about the structure of a website by researching other site’s and how their menus are set up. This will give you a good idea of what you might need for your site.
Customizing WordPress Themes and Their Colors
For your WordPress site, you will most likely be concerned with even the smallest details. The design is important to you – including everything from the font to the color scheme.
You might be able to find many themes that have customizable color options for their sites already built in. This would also be true of other details, such as font type. Each theme is optimized for something a little different, so just be clear about what you want to prioritize.
Sometimes, though, it takes a little bit of creativity to pick just the right color for your site’s background. To work behind the scenes, you might need to know a little bit more.
Make Sure You Know CSS
If you aren’t already familiar with web development programming languages, that’s alright. They aren’t a strict requirement for WordPress users. They certainly help, though.
This is especially true if you find a customizable theme that you really like, but you find that there is a certain design feature you wish it would also have. Knowing the coding language CSS would help you go in behind the scenes and fix that.
If there is a color or font you would like to add to the theme’s capabilities, simple code it in. This make takes some research on your part, but CSS is easy to learn. You only need a working knowledge to really perfect your WordPress site.
Working with a Child Theme
There’s another way to customize your WordPress theme, but it requires that your WordPress stay updated. Unfortunately, only 39% of all WordPress sites are running on the most current software.
If everything is in working order, you might want to look into using a child theme to customize your site. This requires you to essentially build a copy of an existing parent theme, but you make adjustments that better suit you.
The adjustments you make will only affect that child theme, not the original parent theme. This saves any tinkering of themes that designers spent a lot of time building. The good news is that WordPress will only use the files from the child theme, so it can still look like an entirely separate theme customized to suit your business’s needs.
Find and Install the Best Plugins
One of the most significant benefits of using WordPress is its ability to perform almost any web-based function. This is thanks in large part to the availability of plugins users can install.
These are especially important for eCommerce sites because plugins can essentially take care of any security and handling issues that may arise when selling products online.
Take the time to sit down and plan exactly which plugins you want your site to have available. Make sure you think about everything a site visitor could possibly want from visiting your blog. Only then will you know what Internet-based tasks you would like your WordPress site to perform.
Once you know how your site will need to operate, you can choose a theme that best optimizes those functions. This is an important part of customizing your WordPress site, due to the user experience these plugins can create. If they all work well together and are functional, your site is more likely to create a loyal consumer base.
Make Sure the Theme is Optimized for Your Blog
Your WordPress site and blog are crucial to the success of your business marketing plan. Customizing WordPress themes is one of the ways in which you can ensure your site stands out amongst your competitors.
For the blog on your site, you need to take extra care that it is genuine, relatable content that a loyal readership can appreciate. We know how important building this blog is for your site. We encourage you to check out the rest of our guidance and tips on blogging today.