28 Feb Checklist: 6 Things to Consider Checking Before Buying Premium Themes

A premium solution isn’t always worthy!

When it comes to WordPress, then premium solutions are commonly either themes or plugins. I had already covered things you need to check before installing a plugin and now its turn for the theme.

There are hundreds of free themes available, but seriously they can’t even reach near to premium ones. This is mainly because of features gap between these two.

But if a theme is with a premium tag that doesn’t mean it’s great. When it comes to free ones, you can install and use them. If nothing good happens then, you will only invest time and efforts, not the money.

But in the case of premium ones, money is a prime factor involved and so does the trust you’re putting on a developer. If you’re not sure of what makes a premium theme worthy then researching on your own can take a lot of time and requires related experience.

What to Check Before Buying Premium Theme?

Here comes a life saver as I’m including here things to consider checking before buying a premium theme. Just go through them and make sure all of them to be part of next premium theme you’re ready to buy.

#1 Code Credibility

This should be your number one priority. The code that is the reason for the existence of theme you’re looking to buy should be written neatly and without any security loopholes.

If the coding part isn’t good, then you can’t think of it delivering required standard of features it is supposed to be. If there are security loopholes, then theme itself is making a way for malicious objects to be inserted which can lead to severe bad results or even hacking attacks.

Also, the code shouldn’t be complex. It should be easy to understand and also lesser in size. If theme size is huge, then it will cost a lot on a server that will affect average page load time (not a good practice for SEO).

So overall, you need to check the code of the theme first. If you’re not a technical master, then you can rely on W3C Validator, which can help you check the code.

#2 Developer and Seller Profile

Developer and seller profile may be same or different. Either way, you need to check their profiles and make sure they are known for their work on the internet or in the community.

Check their Google+, Twitter or portfolio webpages to be aware of their social profiles. You can ask other users in various forums about them while keeping your sole aim to knowing whether these profiles are legit or part of any scam.

The theme you’re interested in buying should also be compatible with different versions of popular plugins (or the one you’ve planned to use) and also with native WordPress script. It is as vital as making payment to buy that theme. Don’t miss this part!

You’re investing money in buying a premium theme from them, so you owe them for any kind of related question and answer session. Contact them and know them personally.

#3 Features

Responsive, SEO optimized, well coded, lesser use of CSS and JavaScript, etc. are the features that need to be part of any premium theme you’re looking to buy.

All these features help the website owner to deliver a standard quality of experience to both readers and search engine Bots.

If a theme isn’t responsive then it can’t flexibly adjust with different display sizes while, on another hand, it can deliver an impressive experience on PC, tablets, smartphones and even on mobile phones. Being responsive simply means better user experience.

Overuse of CSS and JavaScript can hurt the page load time and increase it severely. So you need to check on these two before making your consideration.

Page load time plays an important role. The theme you’re considering the need to deliver very lesser load time. There is no specific value here, but you need to go for as little as possible.

Being SEO optimized can help search engine Bots to understand easily the structure and other aspects of the theme and then website off course. If Bots are happy then your website is on the move to be ranked over higher positions in SERPs.

So these are certain features you need to be looking before finalizing your decision.

#4 Control Panel

Every premium theme that is really capable of delivering the awesome experience to both webmaster and reader comes with a dedicated Control Panel.

It is accessible from Dashboard area of WordPress, and it simply brings a platform that can be used to bring in as many customizations as possible.

Webmaster can change header logo, tagline, navigation, font styles, width, footer, sidebar, social icons, favicon and even the whole look and feel of the website.

Apart from customization, better Control Panels even allows webmasters to take care of code insertion. It allows them to insert Analytics, Webmaster or any advertisement code comfortably which is otherwise needed to be inserted either manually or with the help of a plugin.

Many popular Control Panels (also called Theme Builder, sometimes) comes with Drag and Drop UI which clearly result in delivering a high standard of experience which clearly indicates that you had bought a better premium theme.

#5 Pricing

Once everything is judged, and you have a perfect theme as per requirements and above mentioned checklists, then still you shouldn’t press Payment button.

Now you need to look for best alternatives to the theme you’ve finalized. I’m pretty sure you’ll find at least 2-3 better alternatives unless the first theme was unique.

Once you have the alternatives, then it’s time to run pricing comparison tables. Even if you have a lot of money then still there is no harm to save few, when you can.

Also, compare which package is offering a better solution with more features at a lesser price.

#6 Update & Support

For any premium solution, update and support are the permanent members. You need to check update and support pages or parts of any theme you’ve finalized.

Ask earlier users over forums or various support pages whether the developer was able to deliver regular updates and support or not.

Over to You

You seem confident than earlier now, isn’t it?

I hope this guide helped you and now you’re aware of every important thing you need to check before buying a premium theme.