heres a look at some of the top wordpress themes for 2017Do you run your website on WordPress?

It’s tough to overstate the importance of a great WordPress theme. Like a stunning outfit that flips the script on your “look” and shows you off in a whole new light, a top-tier WordPress theme can be a revelation.

Every website owner — yes, even you — can benefit from a great WordPress theme. The specific benefits depend on your website’s objectives, of course. Your peers commonly cite these justifications, among others, for shaking up their website skins and adopting new WordPress themes:

  • Higher retention rates (lower bounce rates)
  • Increased engagement (social shares, in-post comments) with website content
  • Higher click-through rates
  • Increased engagement with affiliate content
  • Increased revenue from ecommerce components

Changing up your website’s skin doesn’t require a team of designers, or even a professional hand at all. Deploying and even customizing a new WordPress theme is well within the capabilities of moderately savvy website owners willing to spend some time tinkering. (Who said trial and error never built anything great?)

That said, WordPress is easy all around. Developing a new WordPress theme is almost as straightforward as deploying one. That means there are a lot of free WordPress themes to choose from.

Choosing the right option is no simple task, so let’s narrow it down a bit. Here’s a look at some of the top WordPress themes for 2017 — plus a few tips for getting the most out of them.

Oblique

If you run a personal blog, you need to take a closer look at Oblique. Though its wattage might be on the low side, it’s perfectly powerful enough for relatively low-volume uses: professional websites for independents, clips archives for media types, eclectic blogs for travelers and storytellers. You’ll love the slide-out menu, nimble design, and muted, easy-on-the-eyes color scheme.

https://wordpress.org/themes/oblique/

Custom Themes

Before we go any further, let’s give a shout to the custom theme — that quintessentially WordPress creation that fuels the creative fires of countless amateur web whizzes and makes it possible to produce beautiful, bespoke websites without an army of developers and designers behind you.

There’s no limit to WordPress custom themes’ potential. For instance, check out how Ideaing.com leverages customization with table comparisons and product insertions on its smart doorbell page. The theme serves two purposes. First, it helps Ideaing.com deliver relevant information to comparison-shopping (or merely curious) customers. Second, it makes those customers more likely to convert by reducing friction — to further investigate and potentially purchase their favorite smart doorbells, all they need to do is click the custom buttons on the right side of the page. Who knew custom themes could be so profitable?

https://ideaing.com/

ColorMag

Oblique is a great personal blogging option for aspiring journalists and authors. But what if you’re too big for its narrow britches?

Look to ColorMag instead. ColorMag is a powerful aid for online publications: general-interest journals, literary magazines, trade publications, even breaking-news roundups. It’s as colorful and eclectic as Oblique is dark and subdued. And its WooCommerce integration makes it easy for ambitious publishers to monetize their websites — a not-insignificant consideration in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

https://wordpress.org/themes/colormag/

RokoPhoto Lite

Beautiful images need a beautiful WordPress theme. That’s where RokoPhoto Lite comes in. It’s one of the most popular options for photographers looking to showcase their work. Thanks to RokoPhoto Lite’s ginormous featured photos, it’s also great for multimedia publishers seeking attractive lead-ins to feature-length, image-heavy stories.

https://wordpress.org/themes/rokophoto-lite/

ShopIsle

Looking to take your small business online, but not sure you want to invest in an expensive, clunky ecommerce solution? Look to ShopIsle, a lightweight, super-responsive theme that offers almost everything you need to run a successful ecommerce portal. ShopIsle’s secret weapon: its video ribbon, a potentially powerful showcase for featured products.

https://wordpress.org/themes/shop-isle/

Hey — if none of these themes trip your trigger, it’s not like there aren’t hundreds of others to choose from.