14 Important Things To Consider Before You Buy WooCommerce Theme
If you go to google intended to buy WooCommerce theme, you will find tons of theme options to choose from.
Eventually, you will be confused about what to choose and what not after seeing too many options.
Never make your decision in a hurry.
The theme is what you have to choose after considering all its aspects because your whole business is going to set up on that.
You may also find a lot of themes that are compatible with WooCommerce.
But some of them won’t fit properly and you will face difficulties later on.
Why does this happen?
Because you were not careful enough at the time of selecting the theme.
Therefore, we have come up with this blog to let you know which things to consider before you buy WooCommerce theme.
Without further delay, let’s get the ball rolling…
1. Specifically Developed For WooCommerce
The majority of the themes you will come across are compatible with WooCommerce.
But you need to make sure that the developer has designed a theme that works seamlessly with WooCommerce.
Why is this so?
Because developers often make mistakes and forget the criteria of WordPress theme development when creating a theme.
Since there are more than 85 million installs of the WooCommerce plugin, developers usually don’t make that kind of mistake.
After all, it’s your priority that everything is up to date.
Moreover, there are some other things to focus on before buy woocommerce theme.
Such as check the home page, product pages, cart, to verify that there are not any flaws in the theme.
2. Update History
If you’ve been using WordPress for quite some time, then you must have updated your theme.
But before installing a theme, have you ever taken the time to check the update history?
What do I mean by updating history?
Update history means how frequently developers give an update to a theme in order to fix any vulnerabilities.
However, you might not find this quite essential but, it is.
A WooCommerce theme needs to be updated regularly to ensure that it remains secure & free from flaws.
Security and the fixes are two majorly important factors for a theme.
If the developer is not interested in giving updates to the theme then there are risks for a theme to get affected by hackers.
Too many WordPress websites went hacked just because the themes were full of vulnerabilities and did not get required updates from the developers to fix that.
If you have installed a theme and do not get the updates from time to time, you should consider changing your theme.
3. Don’t Melt On Design
It is a general tendency of people when building a store or making a website they want the most attractive theme.
But they do not know what instead they should do.
Their first priority should be to check that the theme must have all the features such as intuitive design, user-friendliness, responsiveness, SEO optimized, etc.
Though we are not saying that Design is not a vital factor.
It actually is.
Do not let the design overpower the functionalities when buy woocommerce theme.
The deal is that you need to give what your customers want like I mentioned above fast loading speed, and at all.
eCommerce business should have more functionalities than designing.
However, as you know, WooCommerce is the most customizable platform.
You can customize your design as you prefer.
4. Check Responsiveness
Another yet important factor to consider when you are up to buy premium WooCommerce theme.
WooCommerce is totally a responsive platform and works perfectly fine on every mobile device out there.
What happens to your site if it’s not responsive?
As a consequence, WooCommerce will start showing display errors like visuals don’t appear clear, the website will lag on mobile platforms, and all.
The majority of users are using their smartphones, and the numbers are on the rise.
As per Statista, “About half of the world’s web traffic is accounted for by smartphone. Mobile devices (excluding tablets) accounted for 50.81% of global website traffic in 2020’s third quarter, progressively hovering about 50% since the start of 2017.”
Now, if your website lacks mobile-friendliness then you can’t imagine how many users you will lose that are specifically coming to purchase at your site.
Moreover, if your website is not responsive then forget about ranking it on google.
Because Google also takes this matter seriously, it has a lot of other responsive websites to rank them up.
If you want to check the responsiveness of a website then there’s a google specific tool in which you can check it.
5. Best In Performance
When it comes to performance then your website should have that kind of performance and speed that won’t let down your visitors.
eCommerce platform includes several factors such as network latency, page speed, server resources, etc.
Before you buy woocommerce theme, check the load speed of that theme. It should be fully loaded as fast as 2 to 4 seconds.
As per Unbounce, “the page that loads within two seconds has the average bounce rate of 9%, compared to the page that takes five or more seconds to load with an average bounce rate of 38%”
You can imagine that if your site does not meet the required load time then you are going to lose a significant number of visitors.
Because it’s 2022, no one has time to wait for a site to load.
It does not matter how stunning your website is, people going to leave if it does not get fully loaded in a few seconds.
Do not forget that this is the utmost factor of Google when it comes to page load time.
They have developed a tool that checks the website load time, it also gives suggestions to fix the things to load the website faster than before.
A nice piece of advice is never to pick a theme with loads of functionalities that you are never going to use anytime.
6. Ratings & Reviews
Another yet essential point to take into account before buy woocommerce theme.
If you want to check its real potential then look at the reviews and search about the developer of the theme.
Do not only check the reviews from where you download it but, also check it other platforms as well.
Ratings and feedback from the people will give you a better picture and glimpse of its bad and good.
7. Should Portray Your Business
There are plenty of themes out there to choose from.
BUT, you can not go with any theme you like.
Take competitive research on what your competitors have set for their business.
Yet, there are themes specifically created for every business, also there are multipurpose themes too.
For example, you can’t pick a theme that is made for electronics items for your furniture business just because you liked the theme.
Choose wisely.
What you need to consider in choosing a theme that is compatible and depicts your business.
You can also list out the features and anything you would like to have in the theme, this will help you make better decisions choosing your theme.
8. Reliable Customer Support
And the last thing you need to take into consideration is reliable customer support when you buy woocommerce theme. While you can train your team and use a time tracking system to ensure their productivity in customer support, it wouldn’t hurt to use a couple of additional digital tools.
When you are paying for a premium WooCommerce theme, then you should also get adequate support.
When you have a well-developed store, but it takes days to fix the problem then it’s terrible.
Your theme developer should be keen enough to get you out of every difficulty you face with the theme.
Make sure to seek out a theme that should get you the premium support and don’t hurt your sales.
9. Invest In Premium WooCommerce Theme
We are not completely against free WooCommerce themes.
BUT,
We are saying that free themes are perfect for those on a budget or who just want to experiment with things.
Yet, if you buy a free theme, then you may have to compromise with code quality, any time support, update frequency, and more.
To get out of all the hurdles, we suggest you to invest in a premium WooCommerce theme.
What it will do is that it will offer you a completely error-free experience, more features, and you won’t have any issues with your premium theme.
If you go towards a premium way, then it will set your business presence apart from the rest, and possibly help boost your sales.
10. Check Readabiliity
This is another major aspect to think about before you head to buy WooCommerce theme.
What your users will first notice after landing on your site is your website’s design and fonts that you have used.
You might be thinking that adding fancy & stylish fonts will make a greater impact or set you apart.
BUT No. it will actually do more harm than good.
People will leave your site if they don’t like your fonts or they are hard to read.
So make your fonts simple and easy to read.
Go for popular fonts like Open Sans, Montserrat, Raleway, Josefin Slab, and Lato.
Moreover, if you know CSS then it would be easier for you to adjust according to your preference.
11. Check Browser Compatibility
You can’t be 100% sure that the theme works perfectly on your browser and will also work properly in your users’ browser.
It could be possible that your users may be using your website from a different browser.
So if your theme isn’t compatible with their browsers then you may lose your potential customers who came to buy from your store.
Therefore, you need to make sure before you buy WooCommerce theme.
The theme should be compatible with all the renowned browsers out there such as Safari, Chrome, Edge, Opera Mini, and more.
Check your chosen theme in various browsers and also check it on your smartphone as well.
However, the developers do mention from where you purchase a theme.
12. SEO Optimized
Another most vital factor on our list is to check SEO friendliness before you buy WooCommerce theme.
When it comes to purchasing a theme for your WooCommerce store then SEO is the most essential factor that comes upfront.
You are selling products and your products need to get ranked.
In order to check whether the theme is coded with SEO in mind or not you can always check the code.
Also, if the page generates proper HTML5 or not you can check it with W3C Markup Validation service.
You can refer to the WooCommerce SEO guide if you want to go deeper in optimize your store for the best SEO practices.
13. Pricing
Pricing is the factor that should not be forgotten when it comes to buy WooCommerce theme.
You may be wondering how this is supposed to be the factor?
BUT, it is.
There are some things that you should keep in mind such as:
- Price doesn’t justify the quality. Higher price doesn’t mean that theme is 100% perfect. Always check features and buy from a reputed store.
- If you really want something up to par then stop looking for discounts and coupons.
- Moreover, do not purchase whatever comes free with the theme such as plugin, etc. After sometime it will become unusable.
- Don’t buy WooCommerce theme that come with their custom page builders. Also, don’t buy a theme that doesn’t support WordPress post editor.
14. Social Media Integrated
Selecting a theme without social media support might not be a great idea.
Spread your business across all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Search for a theme that must-have social media icons on the sidebar widgets, post-sharing, comment login, and more.
However, this also can be done via third party plugins.
But if a theme gets you this functionality, then you don’t need to depend on plugins more.
Last Words On Things To Consider Before You Buy WooCommerce Theme
We have covered everything that you need to know before you go and pick your theme.
Look at the quick points below before you buy WooCommerce theme:
- Make sure the theme is responsive and adapts the various screen sizes automatically.
- Be selective enough about what features you want in a theme exactly.
- A theme that should give regular updates.
- Carefully select the theme that exactly depicts your business type.
- Choose a theme that focuses more on performance rather than design.
- Developer’s & theme’s rating.
- Should have a great & essential 24*7 customer support.
That’s all you need.
Consider this list whenever you are ready to buy WooCommerce theme.
After buying a theme that will last you longer, you won’t have regrets and worries.