7 WordPress Themes built on Fabulous Design
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post courtesy of Tracey Jones looking at 7 excellent WordPress themes that pull off fabulous design with ease.
Let’s be honest here: Looks DO matter. From first impressions to lingering experience – a beautifully and intelligently designed website interface makes the best of it all. That feeling alone translates to positive user experience and therefore better conversions. A visitor on your website isn’t going to give a damn about how lovingly concatenated your code is or how many features you have packed in your front end if that very front end looks bland and common.
When it comes to WordPress, there are plenty to choose in terms of design and themes – free, premium, multipurpose, niche, eCommerce, and on and on… But to truly stand out from the crowd of WordPress websites dressed in those exact same themes, you need to delve deep into this ocean and find something truly unique and eye popping.
Here are 7 beautiful WordPress themes for a variety of website content niches and purposes that are delightfully elegant and smartly coded:
1. Modern Studio
Price: (With Genesis framework) $99.95
Available at: Studiopress.com
This theme doesn’t look all that special, but that’s not an accident. It’s intentionally designed to be superbly simple and familiar, making it perfect for websites with the kind of content that draws in visitors’ attention.
StudioPress’ Modern Studiois a powerhouse of essential features packed in a basic-looking but highly efficient design. It loads in less than half time and comes with:
- Optimized WordPress Customizer and built in Theme options
- 4 custom page templates for special pages like: Default, Archives, Blog, and Marketing (Landing) Page
- 2 Homepage widget areas
- 3 different layout options (Homepage and blog)
The minimalism of this theme doesn’t feel forced and encourages distraction-free reading/ perusal of content.
2. Flow
Price: $49
Available at: Themeforest.net
For a dreamy, artistic website front end, look no further than Flow.
This ‘card’ layout, trendy theme is super soothing on the eyes, which works in your favor when dealing with those who are prone to headaches from bright, flashy colors and blinky effects. The mild colors and smooth scrolls (along with a load of other features) will make this theme worth 50 bucks for your website.
Here’s why:
- 10+ Homepage layouts (infinite scroll, carousel, configurable masonry and fixed grids, etc.)
- Custom Page Templates (for multiple pages)
- Over 600 Google Fonts
- Half a dozen different icon packs (Font Awesome, Dripicons, etc.)
- Custom Widgets
- Visual Composer page builder
- Contact Form 7
- Social sharing buttons built in
And there is more. But you can look that up for yourself. This is one of the few AJAX themes I personally love.
3. Legenda
Price: $59
Available at: Themeforest.net
This 8Themes’ creation is beautiful, agile, and extremely efficient. That’s the kind of combination every WordPress eCommerce store should look for in a theme.
Legendahas everything you need and more wrapped in a simple, stylish, and highly user-friendly design, along with a backend interface that you’ll love to play with. It packs:
Built from the ground up with Twitter Bootstrap, Legendais armed to the teeth with every amazing feature you’d expect and a design that lets your products and content do the talking. It has multiple layouts for your shop’s storefront and custom templates for product pages and blogs, visual composer, AJAX filtered search, a crapload of shortcodes, along with:
- Visual Composer page builder
- AJAX advanced search filters
- Multiple storefront layouts
- Custom templates for special pages, products pages, and blogs
- Bundled – 2 premium slider plugins
- 3 drop down menu layouts
- Built in ‘size guide’ for apparel stores
- Integrated Google Maps and Charts
- Custom widgets for testimonials and more
- Conversion-friendly checkout process
It’s a complete eCommerce package, is what I’m saying.
4. KLEO
Price: $64
Available at: Themeforest.net
KLEO is the king of all community themes for WordPress.
This BuddyPress compatible, super chic theme comes with a bucket load of intelligent features and a design that invites visitors in and encourages engagement – perfect for a BuddyPress community portal. It’s multipurpose and works equally well on all niches.
Here’s what’s under the hood:
- Visual Composer page builder (Are you seeing a pattern yet?)
- WooCommerce specific Landing Pages and custom store templates
- Multiple layout options
- Integrated premium plugins: Slider, rtMedia (BuddyPress member photos upload), Facebook login, Go-Responsive Tables, and more
- Google Maps integration
- SIDEKICK interactive tutorials and easy one-click installs
- Widgetized and widget ready homepages
- Breadcrumb navigation and drop down menu
- Countless fonts, icons, and even more layout options (on Live Customizer)
The theme is fantastically designed and feature-packed for any purpose.
5. CitiLights
Price: $59
Available at: Themeforest.net
This real-estate WordPress theme is stunning and minimal. You’ll love it.
Citilightspacks a solid punch with its essential features and quick loading speed. It’s modern, sleek, and comes with:
This is a real-estate theme.
This sleek, sharp theme is designed for corporate real estate companies, and it certainly pulls off the fab, modern, minimalistic look beautifully. The theme is packed with features GeoLocation, various payment options, dsIDXpress plugin integration, advanced search, and fantastic Admin and Agent profile dashboards.
- Front-end user submission (free and paid listing with 4 payment options)
- Premium Slider plugin and Visual Composer page builder
- Integrated dsIDXpress plugin
- GeoLocation based targeting and result page
- Advanced search filters
- 2 different headers
- Custom Google Maps
- ‘Sold’ property labels
It’s clean, chic, and simple.
6. Redwood
Price: $39
Available at: Themeforest.net
WordPress blog owners can rest easier now.
Redwoodsounds quaint and looks perfectly modern: the theme drives attention to your content and keeps it there without distractions. It is super light and quick loading.
It’s packing:
- “Featured” content slider
- 3 different types of Promo boxes
- 5 separate layout options (for boxed and full-width each)
- Custom widgets
- Sticky header navigation (option)
- Endless customization options
And there’s more, but take this from me: Redwood doesn’t disappoint.
7. Divi
Price: $69-89/year, $249 One-time Purchase (For access to all 87 WordPress themes by ET)
Available at: ElegantThemes.com
Elegant Themes’ magnum opus is an intelligent, sleek, stylish theme by the name of Divi.
This theme is flexible to the last pixel and line of code: a truly marvelous thing with countless design options wrapped up in such an effectively simple admin interface that put the most timid novices at ease.
Divi packs dozens upon dozens of easily installable demos, header variations (layouts), content modules to drag and drop and build a page with, advanced settings for SEO, ads, and more, live previews, and the almighty Divi Builder which is a whole separate story altogether.
This theme is fabulous in all respects.
Endnote
If you were looking for flamboyant, loud design, I am sorry for causing you disappointment. But then again, I hope this post gives you an alternate perspective of what design is supposed to be: Not necessarily obnoxious or immediately noticeable, but something that puts your users at ease with your website and its content.
And these themes fit the bill quite well.
