Choosing the right WordPress theme for your business is a step that needs to be taken seriously. After all, the look and feel of your website – and the user experience you deliver through the site – greatly affect the success of your business. Positive UX, combined with good products and unique selling propositions, are the keys to converting traffic into paying customers.
Naturally, you want to invest in a good website design to deliver that positive user experience. Fortunately, that doesn’t always mean spending a lot of money on a small business website theme that works for you. There are a lot of free themes that also offer the right set of functionalities, consistent and pleasing design, and great overall performance.
Shophistic Lite
Sophistic is actually a premium theme that is very popular among ecommerce businesses, but the lite version of this theme is more than good enough if you are looking for themes when starting a new ecommerce site. The theme takes simplicity seriously, all without sacrificing the set of features that customers usually expect from a reliable ecommerce site.
Shopistic Lite puts your products first, offering a beautiful homepage grid view and a set of product filters. The design doesn’t steal the spotlight from the products being displayed, so you know you can convert a lot of traffic into visitors with such an effective ecommerce site. Support for reviews, multiple product photos, and seamless WooCommerce integration is also present.
Highlight Features
- Grid homepage view
- Customizable product views
- Built-in gallery support
- WooCommerce integration
- Dedicated blog layouts
- CSS animations
- Extensive customization options
Astra
We really cannot talk about free themes for small businesses without talking about Astra. This WordPress theme isn’t just good for creation corporate websites, but it is also flexible enough to use on portfolio sites, business profiles, and even personal websites. Astra is also designed to be compatible with WooCommerce, which means you can use it to set up your own ecommerce site.
Astra offers compatibility with all of the popular page builders, including Elementor and Visual Composer. The site supports multiple color options; in fact, Astra features one of the most extensive customization options you can find on a free theme. There are even ways to customize your sideboards independently.
Highlight Features
- WooCommerce Ready
- Support for Elementor and Visual Composer
- Multiple color options
- Sticky header
- Responsive with good performance
- Compatible with Retina plugins
- SEO-friendly
Ripple
A lot of good small business websites are one-page landing pages designed to convey information in an effective way. Ripple is the theme for the job if you want to create a beautiful one-page website for your business. For starters, it supports CSS animations and lazy loading, which means you can create a landing page that performs well and delivers good UX.
Ripple also handles responsive design cleverly. You can configure the homepage with smooth scrolling. There are several pre-made layouts, so designing a homepage is easy. Ripple is also designed to work with the native WordPress customizer, allowing even the most inexperienced user to create functional homepage and supporting pages easily.
Highlight Features
- Good performance
- Pre-made layouts
- Compatible with native WordPress customizer
- Responsive design
- SEO-friendly
- Support for portfolio and blog posts
- Included slider
OceanWP
OceanWP is one of the newest small business themes available on the market. The theme is available for free and designed to offer maximum flexibility when used to build websites that represent your brand. You can have a master head or an interactive form above the fold, and you won’t have to jump through hoops to set it up.
OceanWP isn’t just designed to be flexible and beautiful. It is also fully responsive and works with Google AMP natively. Performance is never going to be an issue because the theme is tested extensively. There are also SEO features built into the theme, so you don’t have to rely on multiple plugins to optimize your site.
Highlight Features
- WooCommerce ready
- Native cart and checkout pages
- Built-in slider
- Off-Canvas elements
- Support for Elementor
- Rated for high performance
- Premium features for free users
Sydney
Sydney is a free theme that you can add directly from the WordPress repository. Despite being a free theme, it is still a powerful theme that allows you to create a website that really represents your business. It focuses on creating an engaging front page that will keep visitors glued to your content. Just like many other themes, Sydney also supports Elementor.
Design-wise, the full-width slider and the layout options offered by Sydney are incredibly handy when you are trying to create a small business website with great visuals. You don’t have to worry about making the site readable or adding a consistent navigation menu either, because Sydney supports fluid header and all Google Fonts.
Highlight Features
- Full control from WordPress customizer
- Support for Google Fonts
- Support for Elementor
- Layouts for business and personal users
- Sticky post with unique design
- Capable Blog features
Foodica
The last theme we are going to discuss in this article is designed for a specific type of business – the culinary business. It started life as a theme for foodies and food writers, but it now offers features that make it perfect for restaurants, food delivery businesses, and other small businesses in general. The clever use of whitespace has been commended by numerous designers.
Foodica is simple and clean indeed. Even when you have a lot of content to display, Foodica offers layouts that keep the site usable in the eyes of users. Foodica works seamlessly with the WordPress live customizer, so you can create a site that works without writing a single code or fiddling with plugins. It is a good choice for businesses who want to keep it simple.
Highlight Features
- Clean design with plenty of whitespace
- Functional navigation menu
- Social icons and built-in social sharing
- Support for multiple content types
- Custom templates for content types such as recipes
- Easy WooCommerce integration
Which of these themes are good for your business? Each theme has their own unique style and advantages, but you can never go wrong with any of them.
