Woo hoo – you’ve found a rocking premium theme that eases your soul and your client’s requests. Yay! Feel satisfied enough and ready to install it? Slow down a little. It’s obvious that for a skilled WordPress warrior, the process of choosing a premium WordPress theme guarantees up to 80%-90% of a theme’s quality to make the client happy. But, you can always get more from premium WordPress themes as well as from its provider. I bet many of you haven’t utilized your purchased theme to its best yet. There are two things you need to know to get the best out of a WordPress theme: One – What that beautiful, wrapped with ribbon premium WordPress theme can give you. Two – How you should utilize everything (a.k.a Make sure your money is well-spent).
What’s in premium themes for you?
What’s in the box?
Code
Code is Poetry – You always see this line at the end of WordPress.Org website. Premium themes often come with good code. And good code comes from clear structures, simple logic and consistent rules. Unlike using a random free theme picked up from anywhere, there is no fear of spaghetti-like code or horrible HTML or security vulnerabilities. You don’t pay for a mess. Each code line in a good premium theme reminds you of the smooth verse in a poem – Short, simple-looking, yet meaningful. I love this metaphor. Isn’t it so true?Design
They say “Don’t judge a book by its cover” but you may often have to judge a theme by its appearance. Being eye-catching, looking professional and having something unique are the winning points that help premium themes grab more attention. Also, the best WordPress themes are far more likely to be designed with the latest web design trends. That means you have a compliant and responsive theme ready for use. As promised, your site is always easily accessed via different devices and always remains functional no matter what platform it’s running on. Plus, premium WordPress themes usually have different styles (blog style, custom style, etc.) for you to switch between as needed and a bunch of good advanced customization options.SEO
The clean code of a good premium theme makes itself easy to be scanned and crawled (like a clean wide flat road, no pebbles and no potholes so no one stumbles). Google and other search engines are clever enough to index your site’s content, so there is no need for a good premium theme to brag about great SEO gains. For me, good code means good for SEO already. Even better, premium themes always get your most important content (title, tags, header…) highlighted. You’ll have fewer tasks in your SEO optimization efforts.What do premium theme providers have for you?
Documentations and Tutorials
Although most WordPress premium themes have the same elements, there is always a need for documentation or tutorials (even for a Pro user) to fully control and customize the theme. Even a “Read me” file included in the premium theme’s package is useful. Theme providers understand this so they always provide user guide documentation and/or video tutorials for users.Premium Support
Many providers out there impress and encourage the loyalty of their buyers with superb support via flexible methods like email, live chat, forum, ticket system or FAQs. The good news is that you’re very likely to get a prompt response within 24 hours after submitting a question and quickly get your problem resolved (of course this will depend – complex problems are always time consuming).Update schedule
A reputable premium theme provider always updates their themes to the latest WordPress version. That’s why we say premium themes stand the test of time.Now, what have you got?
A homepage’s message
Use your magic wand here. It’s important to make sure your homepage has a clear focus. Supporting that are the key elements like the featured items in a slideshow, easy to read text and the typography. Don’t hesitate to change insufficient line height and tiny font sizes. Keep calm and keep on wizarding!Design vs. Branding
Where is your client’s request list? Okay, open it and check what you must do to make the theme reflect your client’s brand. Is it a website about Fashion? How about put some rocking catwalk photos on the slideshow? Or put the hottest fashion news widget on the right-hand side? Or a custom advertisement? Does the color of the logo contrast with the theme’s whole scheme?Working on child themes
The best premium themes always include multiple child themes (page styles) for maximum flexibility in achieving one’s need. A child theme must be full width, come with a sidebar, a Contact page, an About us page, and other customization options. Child themes are an important part of premium themes because you can utilize them to make your website unique using your creativity when there are many people who have purchased that popular theme too. Plus, using the provided child themes help you save tons of time in your development process.Removing the copyright
Some themes allow you to remove the copyright line at the bottom. You can check the theme’s license to make sure you can remove the original developer’s credit line to claim your own credit here. You sure didn’t design the theme but you built the site, so why not?Asking for help
Don’t sit in front of the computer and tear your hair out if you’re facing a big problem with the theme. You need help and your theme provider is responsible for that to some extent. Find a way to connect with them and ask for support. The best methods to have a quick response are live chat, forum and ticket system (sending an email is likely to put you in even greater frustration). Be as detailed on your problem as possible to support the theme’s developer in resolving your issue.Last but not least, making sustainable customizations
What are sustainable customizations? These mean that all the changes you made today with your theme won’t lost when you update your theme. You’ll achieve this practice via building a child theme. Child themes share with the “parent” all of its files and you can overwrite any of these files when making a child theme. For example, if you want to add an advert to your site’s header, you can copy the header.php file from the parent theme and add the advert section’s code here and then apply it to the child theme. So in future if you update, you won’t lose this section.Wrapping Up
Is a premium theme worth spending your money on? Yes. I hope that now you’ve got a checklist of things you always need to finish your project with satisfaction. What do you usually do with premium themes? How do you tweak the code to make your theme better?
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