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4 Reasons To Use Minimalist WordPress Themes

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Thesis Theme for WordPress: Options Galore and a Helpful Support CommunityI’m a huge fan of minimalist WordPress themes as you can probably tell by the look of my websites. In fact I stress the need for a premium WordPress theme to eliminate all the hassles of free themes however I never mention the fact that you need to keep it simple.

There are a ton of great reasons to use these simple WordPress themes, but in the spirit of minimalism, here are the top four reasons to use minimalist WordPress themes:

1—Minimalist WordPress Themes For Minimalist Devices

Every year more and more people are reading more and more webpages on their cell phones, tablets, netbooks, and other small devices. None of these devices has the screen space to fit three-plus columns of text, navigation, advertisements, and whatever else people try to cram into their websites.

Minimalist WordPress themes help you create sites which work well on all devices, from computers to tiny cell phones, and they do it in a way that doesn’t make your site look bad, as many homebrew attempts to fit a full site on a tiny device often do.

If you want people to read your blog on small devices, use a minimalist WordPress theme. This site is using Thesis and I have looked at all of my sites on mobile devices. They look great! I also have other sites using Elegant Themes and others using Authority Pro.

2—Smaller Is Faster

What happens when you get rid of all the junk on the typical bloated WordPress design? Your blog loads faster. That’s especially true for people who have slow Internet connections.

Every image on your site, every extra stylesheet, every extra Javascript inline, every embedded app slows down your site both on the server end and on the client (user) end.

Minimalist WordPress themes help get rid of that extra cruft. Consider how much of a benefit that can be, especially if your site sees thousands of page loads a month—every extra image you dump is thousands of extra images which don’t need to be served and thousands of extra images which don’t need to be loaded.

Also consider all the work the typical Web browser does to render your bloated non minimalist WordPress themes. First it needs to download all that extraneous material and then it needs to parse hundreds or thousands of lines of HTML and CSS to put everything in the correct place.

Rendering your website may take only fractions of a second on your double quad core home computer with 16 gigabytes of RAM, but it can take a considerable amount of time on mobile phones, first generation tablets, netbooks, and older computers.

And if it takes your blog a long time to load, some people will leave before it finishes loading and others will refuse to click on any internal links because they don’t want to wait for another page on your site to slowly load.

Keep your blog fast, use minimalist WordPress themes.

3—If You Make It Easy, People Will Use It

If you’ve learned nothing else from Apple products over the last 10 years, acknowledge this: people want simple products which are easy to use. If Apple used WordPress, you can bet they’d use one of the many minimalist WordPress themes.

Simple website themes invite people to use them. They’re not cluttered with excess information, so the most important links are easy to find—and what’s easy to find will be clicked.

I’m always telling my clients to run the following test: create a stripped-down version of your site using minimalist WordPress themes or some other method and then use Google Ads or a DNS trick to direct half of your traffic to the minimalist site for a day or so.

Most people (actually, almost everyone) who try this experiment discover that visitors are likely to stay longer on the site using the minimalist WordPress theme. In particular, they’re more likely to click links on your sites to additional articles or subscribe to your feed.

Consider what that can do for you site. If your income is based on ads, imagine how much more money you could earn if visitors, on average, stayed to read just one extra article. For example, if your average visitor currently reads 1.5 pages and visitors using minimalist WordPress themes click 2.5 pages, that’s a 60% increase in your total page views and, probably, a 60% increase in your income.

4—Minimalist WordPress Themes Look Better

Cleaner, simpler designs almost always look better than jam-packed, complex designs. And even if complex themes could look as good as minimalist WordPress themes, the minimalist themes would win because they’re easier to maintain.

When I started creating websites in the mid–1990s, everyone had to know HTML. Nowadays, very few people who create websites know much about HTML or other web design technologies—and that’s ok. But if you do need to customize your website, which do you think is going to be easier to customize, the complex sites or the sites which use minimalist WordPress themes?

But beyond customization, I’m convinced that beautiful websites lend credibility to the people behind them. You’re going to have to work very hard to create a beautiful complex site, but you can have any one of dozens of minimalist WordPress themes up and running in minutes, and you can use their inherent beauty to impress visitors to your site. Elegant Themes Package has many simply designed themes that are both beautiful and simple. One great example is Simple Press. Of course most of Elegant Themes products are in fact minimalist, including their WordPress business themes, therefore this must mean something?

Once again I encourage you to test this theory, and the test for it is very easy. Install one of the minimalist WordPress themes on the test version of your site and then show both the complex and minimalist versions of your site to your family and friends—and ask them which site they prefer. Also check out my article that shows ugly websites that make money.

I’m willing to bet money that in almost every case, people who get to see both versions of your website will prefer the version which uses one of the minimalist WordPress themes.

Comments

    • says

      Embedding the Youtube URL does not make your site too slow as it is served from Youtube. If you are serving the video from your own server it can slow things down..

    • says

      Yes I often check my sites on all devices, well most!!! It is not that easy when you have massive tutorials with screenshots though.. :)

  6. says

    I couldn’t agree with you more. I myself prefer to use a minimalist theme for my blog, it’s easy on the eyes and not too crowded.

  7. says

    I definitely agree with this. Being a designer myself, I find that minimalist themes are definitely the best. It’s crisp and clean. It’s easy on the eyes and definitely enticing. Too much details will just bore your viewer.

  8. Richard says

    could not be more true. If your trying to find information about a chosen subject, especially on a phone its so much easier if the site is laid out neatly with a simple back ground. Otherwise you get put off and go somewhere else
    Richard recently posted..F1 Review 2012

  10. Calra says

    Thank you for pointing out the reasons. I also think that using a minimalist theme for your WordPress blog is key to make it to the high ranks.
    Calra recently posted..Hello world!

  11. says

    I think what’s best about using a minimalist WordPress theme is that it avoids your theme to distract what you are talking about in your post. A colorful one may be appealing, but remember, it’s the content of your posts that counts.

  14. says

    I love minimalist themes. They are all about content. You can choose almost any minimal theme, put a great content, 1 featured image – and your website looks professional.

  16. cameron says

    Great and very important post. For those who’ve never come across WordPress before it’s a blogging tool that enables to easily setup and manage their blog. It’s very similar to Google’s Blogger software and the mobile version enables you to update and edit your block on your smartphone.
    cameron recently posted..Tips For Using Facebook in Your Job Search Hunt

  17. says

    What a joke of a website I had with Intuit! Oh boy than I found Mitz! She has introduced sooo much in a short amount of time. The Elegant Themes(she has now got me addicted to)have transformed my business into an local authority in one short year. More haters than ever, thanks Mitz…lol

    I had some website knowledge, but it is all because of Mitz! 2012 turned out to be a breakout season, and this is our 10th season!
    Bryan Ring recently posted..10 Years of Outdoor Service

  18. says

    Today is the age of mobility and Minimalist WordPress Themes are very useful for mobile technology.I think these are light weight and good look. These themes must have unique view on smart phones.
    Maja recently posted..Massage at Hair Salons

  20. says

    In my opinion, people are a little bit tired of difficult websites, full of various options, and minimalism is becoming more popular. That’s why the themes you offer can be much interesting for a huge number of users.

    Julia Spencer’s recent post.. 25 Standout Drupal Templates by ThemeForest Authors

  21. selena says

    Great post!
    I love minimalist theme,great,clean and focus on content.I’d been searching for the free WordPress minimal themes for a while.Your post would definitely help me build some free projects for my friends.
    Thanks a lot

  23. says

    let me know if you need any more thoughts about Standard Theme… i’m part of that team and would love to let you give it a whirl.

  24. Brenda Macalino says

    Hi there, I agree with the one commentator in here, that now we can open using smart phones..
    Brenda Macalino recently posted..holsters

  27. George says

    I use a free theme from wordpress and what interests me most is to be more accessible to visitors, because nothing I like admin panel, and visitors find it difficult to navigate.

  29. John Will says

    Hi Mitz!
    Its an excellent post.That solved my problem of “which theme to implement”.I go around the whole web searching for good themes for my tech blog but couldn’t get the idea which to apple.With the help of points i can now select themes to much extent.
    Chers!
    John Will recently posted..Live Cricket Streaming

  31. Javi says

    I agree, Minimalist themes DO look better! For WordPress, I go for Thesis every single time. As minimalist as it gets + great customization options + quick and very SEO-friendly. I honestly dont think you can do better on WP than Thesis for less than 100 bucks (this is not a sales pitch lol!).
    Javi recently posted..The Do’s and Don’ts of Being an Effective Blogger

    • says

      You have to read the thesis instructions to install it.. That is the earlier versions..Now they have 2.0 and it installs straight away.

  35. Aasma says

    There is no doubt that more and more people are using smartphones to surf internet, so it’s necessary to have compatible website for all devices.

    But Mitz, what’s the site for Minimalist themes? I even can’t find it on Google.
    Aasma recently posted..Paying Guest in Delhi for Girls

  36. Clarkmartin says

    Great themes! I am an old school website developer and would like to learn how to build websites using WP. It seems that many of the themes offered by WP are decked out with bells and whistles. I think I should start with a clean and simple theme. Which theme is the best for website developing?
    Clarkmartin recently posted..Obama support for Thai leadership

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