It’s extremely rare to find a business that doesn’t have an online presence in this day and age! And to build your online presence, you’ll need a fully-functional website. Once you have chosen your CMS, the next big task is to choose the right template for your website. But from the pool of options, choosing the right template for your site can be daunting!
You don’t want to keep going back and forth while choosing the right template for your business. This is why it is important to have a clear knowledge of what to look for while choosing your template.
In today’s article, we are going to give you an overall guideline on how to choose the right template for your Joomla website. So without further ado, let’s get started!
Why Template Choice Is So Important
Making the right choice with your template can make the rest of your work really easy and stressless while making the wrong choice can make you run into a lot of trouble. If you think your template choice should be based solely on how the template looks, think again.
The right Joomla template not only looks good but is also accommodating to updates and customization. If you don’t want to encounter technical issues or security breaches, you need to choose your Joomla template carefully!
What to Look for in a Joomla Template?
Have you ever hopelessly stared at a collection of templates and asked yourself – how do I know which one to pick? It’s normal to feel overwhelmed when it comes to choosing the right design from the sea of seemingly endless options. But the good news is the process can be simplified if you know what exactly to look for in a template.
Let’s have a look at some of the key points to keep in mind while picking your Joomla template.
Highly customizable: Choose a template that’s going to give your website a distinct look and feel while being very easy to customize! Go for a template that offers a lot of flexibility in terms of customization so that you can easily craft your website according to your needs. A highly customizable Joomla template should allow you to make easy modifications to the designs or change the content.
Represents your niche best/Niche-specific: Don’t just go for a template that looks the best to you, choose a template that’s specific to your niche! For example, If you are a photographer, go for a template designed for an image-heavy site. Similarly, if you have a business site, pick a template that relates to your industry. This is going to save you a lot of optimization and customization work.
Make sure it has the necessary features: You will find plenty of templates for a specific niche. Compare the features each offer individually. Do some research and determine which template meets your requirements the most. Make sure the template you choose is feature-rich and consists of standard features like SEO readiness, translations, drag-and-drop page builder, etc.
Responsive: Responsive design will let your site automatically scale its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed. It will increase the time visitors spend on your site and can also improve your ranking in search engines. In a multi-screen world, never settle for a Joomla template that’s not responsive.
SEO optimized: The template you choose will also influence your rankings and SEO. And SEO plays a key role to meet the online marketing strategy! A poorly-developed template with no well-structured code can impact your site’s performance hugely. So make sure the template you pick is SEO optimized so that your Joomla site can rank better in search engines.
Select a reliable template provider: To get reliable customer support whenever you need it, it’s important to use a template developed by a reliable company. If anything goes wrong with the site, you’ll at least know where to go for help. JoomShaper is proud to have over 120+ Joomla templates trusted by millions of Joomla users out there and provide the fastest and efficient customer support.
Check the Developer’s Support Policy: No matter which template you choose, there might come a time that you need support. Typically, most developers offer 3-6-12 months of support and updates with your purchase, with an option to renew to continue receiving support. However, you’ll want to confirm this — you should read the Support policy and Refund policy on the developer’s site. JoomShaper offers a Tickets System, Chat, Faq, and documentation section for customers.
Update History: Always check for the update history before you invest in a template. If the template is updated frequently, it means the template is up-to-date with the current web trend and functionalities. Always choose a template that is frequently updated.
Pick the Right Template for Your Niche
In this section, we will give an insight into what to look for when it comes to picking a Joomla template for some of the most popular niches. But that’s not all. The best part is, we are going to recommend three templates from our huge catalog of Joomla templates for each category. Let’s dive right into it.
Business & Corporate
Choosing a suitable template for your business is not that hard if you know what to look for. For business and corporate websites go for a template that’s going to deliver a professional look along with core features like showcasing your products and services elegantly, intuitive contact form, social media integration, captivating About page where you can highlight your strengths and goals, etc. To name a few, templates like Wimble, Floox, and Revibe make a great option for any agency and corporate sites.
eCommerce
For an eCommerce website, your template layout has a direct impact on your conversion rate. Kiss goodbye to your potential customers, if the layout design is not intuitive and user friendly. Pay attention to details like appealing color-scheme, clear fonts, an appropriate design that fits the products you sell, page loading speed, responsiveness, easy-to-navigate layout, and many other things combined in one place. To make your task easier – Unei, Arino, Mega Deal II are some of our recommended eCommerce Joomla templates.
Education & LMS
eLearning, especially in this pandemic, has become a hot thing! If you too want to build an education & LMS platform online, this is the perfect time to do that. While picking a Joomla template for your LMS site, focus on features like reports & analytics, responsive design, intuitive user interface, eLearning assessment tools, gamification features, certification support, etc. Here’s our recommended education based Joomla templates – Edulif, Educon, and Varsita.
Portfolio CV
A portfolio website is a place where potential clients can find you. It’s a hub for information like what you do, where you’re based, types of services you provide, your expertise, and how to contact you. It’s your living, breathing resume. So you better choose a Joomla template that creatively represents your work and value. If you are into sports, Dylan can be a great pick for your portfolio site. Or, if you are more into the creative side, go for Rhino or Indigo.
Blog/News
If you are into blogging or news sites, your focus should be on an aesthetically pleasing design and information-heavy template. Working with an unattractive, messy looking template is not going to attract your audience, no matter how much effort you put into the content. But when you start out with a beautiful website template, most of the design work is done for you. You are sorted with the color scheme, images, and layout and any new blog posts can automatically conform to the design. Some of the amazing Joomla templates for blog and news sites are Newsberg, Gazette, and Newedge.
Wrapping Up
Choosing the best template for your site is not an easy task. Keeping in mind, every website has unique needs, JoomShaper offers a lot of templates for many purposes that can save you time, money, and effort when you create a Joomla site. Hopefully, after reading the article, you won’t be overwhelmed again when it comes to choosing the right template for your next Joomla project.
Let us know what you look for in your Joomla template in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Explore All JoomShaper Templates
