Comprehensive Checklist For Selecting A Magento Theme
By Emily Benson ; March 9th, 2017
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With the availability of several eCommerce websites, getting your E-shop noticed by visitors seems like a difficult task. Online shoppers are highly volatile. They take only a few minutes to decide whether to use your site for E-shopping or not. So, it is very important for you to choose a perfect theme that reflects your business activities, communicate your message to buyers and encourage them to buy products from your E-store.

 

There are many factors which you need to consider while setting up your e-Shop. You need to pick the right platform from many website builders and CMSs available and then opt for the right web hosting company for your e-Store. In case your E-store is hosted on Magento, you need to choose the right Magento theme. Generally, Magento designer/developer and eCommerce business owners spend a lot of time to scroll through numerous Magento themes, but they fail to choose the best one for their E-store. 

 

So, what are the main factors that you should keep in mind while choosing the right Magento theme for your website? You must take note of the following things to find the best option for your website:

1. Responsive to mobile devices

A large segment of eCommerce business has shifted from PC/laptops to mobile devices. If your site is not mobile responsive, you may lose the sales coming out from mobile devices. Therefore, it is important for you to make your Magento store mobile responsive. 

 

So, you need to choose a responsive theme for your E-store so that you may get immense traffic from mobile users and increase the conversion rate dramatically.

2. Cross-browser compatibility

There has never been a universal browser used by everyone who makes use of the Internet. Therefore, different people use different browsers while visiting web pages. It may cause a big problem for E-shop creators who fail to choose a Magento theme that is easily viewed on all major web browsers. If your website doesn't perform well on specific browsers, they will stop visiting your site.

 

So, don't make a horrible choice by choosing a Magento theme which allows optimal viewing only on a few browsers as you will lose your fans/clients, pageviews and business too. Ensure the cross-browser compatibility of the theme you are choosing and make sure it can perform uniformly on all modern browsers.

3. Availability of customization features

It is one of the most important factors that you should keep in mind while selecting a Magento theme for your E-shop. In fact, Magento theme users want to have an easily-customizable theme so that they can make adjustments to their site based on their specific needs. 

 

So, Magento themes should come with customizable design. Using this feature, you can control the all aspects of your site and design it beautifully to attract visitors.

4. The theme should be visually appealing

 

On the web, people walk through pictures, graphics quickly and they hardly spend time to read the text content. Therefore, you must use a theme which has an exquisite look and potential to attract people. A visually pleasing website can be the first choice of visitors when they look for product and services on the Internet. While choosing a theme for your website, make sure that the color of your theme complements your business and logo.

5. Easy-to-use user interface design

Good user interface design is important to make your website successful. If visitors/clients/potential customers face problems while using your website or navigating from one page to another, it is possible that your merchandise could left collecting dust no matter how useful and beneficial they are for customers.

 

Your Magento website could shine if you choose easy- to-use themes. Make sure that the theme you select have easily recognizable shopping icons, a functional search bar, easy-to-use buttons, easy to navigate feature and based on latest web design trends.

6. Connectivity options

A good Magento theme should have social sharing options so that you can share your site's content on different social media channels & keep your customers informed about what's happening on your E-store. As social media channels play a major role in the promotion of one's business, getting customers through referrals, increasing website traffic, and earning high-quality backlinks, so, ensure that you choose a theme which supports all major social media channels.

7. Free supports & updates

While using a Magento theme for your site, you do encounter technical issues from time-to-time. It is not essential that all those, who are using Magento to propel their E-business, necessarily have extensive technical expertise to handle the complex technical glitches of Magento themes.

 

So, while choosing a Magento theme you must make several inquiries about the reputation of the company and evaluate their performance when it comes to providing the free support and updates for the theme you are purchasing. Always remember that getting a free theme doesn't mean you will get free support as well. Therefore, you may require the services of Magento development companies or individual Magento developers when you need to make vital modifications in your E-store.

8. Speed

Google considers speed as an important factor when it has to determine the ranking of websites in its search results. There are several reasons that determines your site's speed. When it comes to themes, you must ensure that the theme you want to use doesn't contain too much graphics and inappropriate features. All these affect the loading speed of your site indirectly and your business too.

9. Use of innovative technologies

As Magento core is already SEO-friendly, you should use a theme that follows the standard coding practice so that search engine crawlers recognize your site page's easily and add them in their results. While choosing a theme, make sure that it is equipped with innovative technologies such as Bootstrap 3, SASS, CSS3 and HTML5. All these are necessary when you perform various activities of SEO and expect your site to rank better in different search engines.

10. Support for main modules

eCommerce business operators use a number of Magento extensions and modules to increase the functionality and performance of their site and provide users the best shopping experience. Therefore, while purchasing a theme for your E-store, you should make sure that it supports major extensions and modules of Magento.

 

If there is a clash between Magento theme and modules, you may face problems to operate your E-store. You may seek the help of expert Magento developers to sort out such issues.

11. Support for several languages

When you build an eCommerce website and look for more business, you have to make it multilingual. This helps you to reach out the foreign language Internet users and squeeze business out of them. Therefore, you need to choose a theme which supports various languages including RTL languages also to make your site available for everyone in their native language.

12. In built support for blogging

These days, blogs are an essential part of websites. You need to update your blog with fresh content at regular intervals to increase the readership on your website and obtain organic traffic. Therefore, you should choose a theme that has a blog inside. Make sure that the blog has a professional design with features to customize meta settings.

13. Space for Ad

Promotional ads play a big role towards the success of eCommerce websites. A theme is incomplete if it has no space for banner or promotional slider. Therefore, you should choose a theme that has appropriate space for displaying promotional banners and ads. It helps you to deliver your business messages to the potential customers and catch their attention.

14. Free vs Premium Magento Templates

Most of the people remain in indecisive situation when they have to choose between free or premium templates. In general, premium themes come with more features, support, updates, and functionalities. You have to be careful in such situations. Don't think about money first. Just evaluate your needs carefully and select free/premium themes accordingly.

Endnote

A lot of factors come into your mind when you have to choose the best theme from a wide range of free and premium Magento themes for your eCommerce store. Nevertheless, if you consider the above-mentioned factors, you can get the most excellent theme for your eCommerce store easily.

About author

Emily is an experienced CMS developer, currently working at HireMagentoGeeks. While she is not coding, she enjoys writing articles on CMS, Web Development etc. You can follow her on Twitter.

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