I hope I’m not too cocky when I say that we are well-known in the WordPress ecosystem due to both our modern portfolio of products, but also for our strong mantras regarding what good design is all about, where is the fine line between authors and customers, and why the one-size-fits-all kind of approach is simply not an option for us.
In case you haven’t heard of us until now, here’s a summary: we’ve been creating WordPress themes for more than eight years, and ever since, we’ve been pushing the boundaries to benefit our clients’ needs and requests.
Often, this is translated into putting in place a list of efficient constraints in order to avoid burdening you, the customer, with big design decisions and focusing on what truly matters to your success.
I will walk you through how to choose the right blogging WordPress theme for what you plan to accomplish. I will help you to not get lost in the deep ocean of one-size-fits-all or the so-called too-good-to-be-true products. As in life, there isn’t a recipe for anything that’s meaningful and long-lasting, just a bunch of choices.
What follows is a set of rational arguments why Pixelgrade could be your first option when kicking-off on this blogging journey or leveling up your digital game.
I narrowed everything to three straightforward steps you should follow if you consider paying for a premium blogging WordPress theme. I chose three not because it’s a magical number, but because the Internet is already full of advice that you can skim through whenever you want. My aim is to provide the essentials and the obvious that are so often neglected but manage to bring the best outcomes.
By considering them, you will increase the chances of making a decision that will help you stand out in the digital world, and eliberate you from headaches and lost time, energy, and money.
Ready to learn the basics and create a truly amazingblog? Welcome on board, have a nice ride.
Step 1 — Built for one niche, not one size fits all
The best blogging themes out there are built on an in-depth process: doing research, defining the pains of the users, and finding design solutions for the upcoming product.
In other words, everything related to the theme serves specific goals that potential customers need to accomplish at some point during their journey.
You should choose a theme that offers a particular list of features created to solve real and specific problems.
Let’s take the example of Julia, our food blogging WordPress theme.
Since most of your content is around recipes,ingredients, and other culinary experiments, you will need a solution to easily display them to your visitors without creating any confusion or anxiety.
On top of that, a simple yet efficient recipe index should concern you because the more articles you will write, the harder it will be for your visitors to find the ones they are most interested in. By keeping track of your recipes, your audience will be able to quickly filter them by category, course, season or any type of tag that makes sense for your blog.
Make their journey more pleasant, avoid testing their interest or loyalty useless.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, if you lose focus and go with a theme that promises you a huge list of features (remember the too-good-to-be-true promise made by everyone these days?), you will end up overwhelmed and drained.
Instead of putting all your resources in writing meaningful and authentic content about your food, you will spend a lot of time trying to navigate between choices that make no sense for your blog’s endeavour.
At Pixelgrade, we’ve always been a huge fan of serving niches instead of pleasing everyone or creating a multipurpose theme packed in the ultimate and disruptive solution.
Our portfolio of WordPress blogging themes is a proof of that: you have travel blogging themes, magazine themes, food themes, fashion themes, minimalistic themes — all tailored to particular needs discovered along their process of building these products.
Moreover, all these needs have been heavily confirmed by real use cases from our customers, discovered from our discussions with them. From answering dozens of customer support tickets to running Skype calls, we’ve been gathering first-hand insights to improve our work.
Step 2 — Customizations made easy and smart, no extra costs
The Internet is full of bloggers of all kinds, but few of them succeed in creating a personal brand out of their digital activity. There are several reasons why getting recognized is hard, but you can definitely do some things to increase the chances to be heard.
Maybe you don’t even want to become some famous blogger out there (you don’t have the time to invest, the interest to make a career out of your writing activity, etc.), and that’s totally fine.
In the end, you can define what success means to you, but you should definitely care about having a blog that offers a consistent experience from top to toe. Without that, there is just no point in adding more noise to the already crowded digital landscape. Find another route to satisfy your writing needs.
Usually, customization implies various costs. Even the name entails that because everything tailored makes perfect sense to be more expensive.
- Do you want a car made on your requests? You need to pay more.
- Do you aim to have a house built with specific materials and in a certain way? You should have some extra cash saved up.
- Do you want a suit that makes you look outstanding? Hire a talented tailor.
There’s no exception when it comes to blogging themes. To continue the food blog example I mentioned above, you should look for a theme where customization is an investment, not a cost. In other words, buy a product that is already build-in with such a system in place, not the other way around — don’t get the theme and then hire a developer to write code for you. It just makes no sense.
We created Style Manager, a customization tool with an intuitive interface where you can choose between predefined color and font palettes or simply create your own.
The great thing is that it allows you to get visual consistency across your websites. This way, you make sure you are on the right track with the design of your website and offer an exceptional experience while focusing more on what you really love: creating content.
Step 3 — Autonomy in terms of using the theme at its full potential
Plenty of companies that built WordPress themes shout out loud about their 7/7, 24h customer support availability. You can open a ticket whenever you want; someone at the end of the funnel will write you back in no time. It seems like a huge advantage that you should take benefit of, right?
Well, reconsider for a bit.
Do you really need such a timeframe to reach the customer support department? Do you care about the people behind the screens? Would you like to work for a similar company?
The truth is that you are what you reinforce. If you sustain such an attitude, it says something about you and your values.
On the other hand, this does not mean that you should no longer have access to customer support in order to keep things floating and making sure your blog is up and kicking. We certainly take pride in the lengths we go to help our customers. Ultimately, you pay for it. In the WordPress ecosystem it’s almost a default, so no doubt that you want to take advantage.
We come up with a balanced and healthy solution for both sides: employees and customers. It’s called Pixelgrade Care, and it’s a plugin created by us that offers you a smooth onboarding process, but, more than that, direct access to theme’s documentation directly from your Dashboard.
In other words, you no longer need to mingle between several sources of information, you can skim through our knowledge base in the blink of an eye, and if you do not get the answer to your concerns, you always have the option to open a ticket right from there.
Maybe it’s important to know that our blogging WordPress themes are easy to use, so most probably you will get the outcomes you wish on your own, but in case you need more guidance, this is our smart solution to provide it. This way we protect our customer support menthal space, help you get the job done, and keep everything up and running.
There are also other good practices to consider when you are in the position of choosing the right blogging WordPress theme, but these ones are mandatory if you care about what are you building, how, and for what costs.
As any initiative, both digital and non-digital, you need to jump into cold water and learn on the go since nothing beats the lessons you are going to learn by being in the arena.
However, our portfolio contains a cluster of 11 simple and beautiful blogging WordPress themes (from fashion to travel, from food to magazine) that you can twist and turn to fit your personality and working style.
We genuinely care a lot about our craft and the experience we are providing to our growing community of 60K+ creative people from all over the world.
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