The short answer…ABOSLUTELY. Now for the longer answer.
Choosing to build your new website on WordPress already gives you a major advantage over other websites. The endless options and millions of plugins available to WordPress users makes it easy to grow and optimize your website. But first, you need to pick a theme and build out your site.
WordPress themes are the major design aspect of what your website structure will look like. Choosing a theme that suits your vision for website functionality is important for optimal user experience.
For example, using a single page WordPress theme for a magazine style website just won’t work. With the amount of content you will be uploading, it will drive visitors nuts trying to navigate the website.
Similarly, if you have a magazine style theme – that is designed for massive amounts of content – with only a few words about your business, visitors will get the feeling the website is incomplete. Or, worse yet, that you company isn’t even open for business.
How To Pick The Right WordPress Theme
Before shopping for themes for your website, take the time to draw out what your website will look like. Get a large poster board paper and start with a small box at the top. This box represents your Homepage.
Next, you will want to decide what you main categories are. For example, if you are writing about pets you might choose Food, Toys, Bedding, Health, and Travel as your categories. Using these five as the example, you will draw 5 other boxes below the “Home Page” box with horizontal lines connecting the 5 categories.
You will start to see your paper filling out and hopefully feel a sense of relief as the design process gets more and more simplified. There is more fun ahead though!
Under each of the Categories you will want to define topics. For example, under the “Food” category you can use the topics Wet Food, Dry Food, Organic Food, Grain Free Food. These help to narrow down the search field when a visitor is looking for specific information.
The more categories and topics that your site will have the larger and more extensive it will be.
WordPress Themes For Simple Websites
Now, if the example above seemed like it is way more content than what you are expecting from your website, that is okay. The beautiful thing about WordPress is that there is a theme for every style website!
For websites that are landing pages for a company’s brick and mortar business than a simple one-page site is all you need. When looking for a theme, type in, “single page themes” and you will see a ton of great options pop up!
These single page themes make for the perfect “squeeze page” style website and are perfect for service-based businesses. You can still add a lot of content – like blog posts – to a single page theme. The single page theme is mostly to imply that a majority of your websites info will be on a single [homepage] page.
The advantage of a single page theme is that when a visitor lands on your homepage they can continue scrolling down to get just about all the info they were hoping to find from your website.
Customization Of WordPress Themes
WordPress allows for endless customization and styling of your theme. From basic color changes to advanced coding, you will be able to fit a theme for your brand.
Some of the most common customization options are adding sidebars, banner ads and email signup spaces. There customizations are sometimes built into your theme.
Plugins like Visual Composure let you add an extra layer of customization to your website. The template builder options will give you a clean looking website with usable sections for making your content pop.
Demo Themes
If you find a theme you love and want to replicate it exactly than you are in luck, this is possible by using the developers “demo theme”. A demo theme is what the designer built to attract customers like you. It is what they feel best represents the theme’s aesthetic.
Most WordPress themes allow you to import the demo theme content so you do not have to customize widgets and plugin’s yourself to mimic it.
When using a demo theme, you need to be sure to delete any unwanted content while adding all your own. This can take time but usually is faster than customizing the site from scratch.
The World Is Your Oyster With WordPress
You have endless options to customize your website and make it your own. Join a WordPress forum or look on your dashboard for local WordPress meet-ups in your area.