A theme can be changed any time. It’s okay if you like something better than what you have. People do it all the time. However, if you’re changing your theme too much, and you’re trying to build a consistent brand, you may be alienating some of your visitors. At first, people accept your choice to choose something new. In fact, they may find it a novelty. So, how frequently should you change your WordPress theme?
To give a little insight, I’m going to speak from my experience. I’ve been around in WordPress and the blogosphere for many years. For me, as a web designer, I’ve changed my theme quite frequently back in the day. I’ve changed my theme so much to the point that I had one for each month, and occasionally had a holiday theme too! I even had a theme changer where visitors could choose any one of 7 themes to view my site as. I kid you not!
It was actually a novelty for my visitors to see what I could come up with. However, after a while, I kind of got burnt out and also, I was spending more time designing and developing for clients. So, I had to start focusing on branding myself to have a more consistent look. That’s just my experience.
For you, it may be that you’re a lot newer to blogging or running a website. You may even be new to running a business. Because of these scenarios, I’ve had to consider this question from a different angle, specifically from observations of former and current clientele, as well as blog and web design peers.
How Frequently Should You Change Your WordPress Theme?
Frankly, if you’re trying to build a brand, and also gain more subscribers and buyers to your website, you’re probably going to only want to change your website for the following reasons:
- You need better website conversion.
- Your theme’s code is not up-to-date.
- Your theme’s design is not reflecting where you want to be as a brand.
You need better website conversion.
Anyone who has a website is trying to get people to do something on that site. If you’re currently not bringing in subscribers, commentators, social shares, or buyers, then you’re probably going to try to change your theme to include elements that will call people to those areas that you want them to be visiting.
Your theme’s code is not up-to-date.
Technology changes, and so do website markup. Your code could become deprecated or become a hazard to yourself and your visitor. Having a theme that is secure, and that has the most up-to-date code is important.
Your theme’s design is not reflecting where you want to be as a brand.
This is always going to be big for a lot of people. If you’re not happy with what you have, then you don’t want to keep it around and start feeling embarrassed about showing people your website.
Don’t be in a hurry to change your theme in a moments notice. Sometimes you can work with a theme and add more functionality to it through coding or even plugins.
If you want to change your theme frequently, that’s your choice, but you may find out that you should only make subtle changes to areas like colors and logo to ease your visitors to accept the new changes while not being alienated from your brand.
In the end, do what you believe is best and what works. It might not seem like the most helpful advice, but everyone has an opinion in this world. If you listen to everyone who tells you to change your theme once a month or twice a year, or once a year, then you’re going to probably follow that advice, and have it down on a schedule.
Case in point: You may find that you end up one day with a perfectly great theme that does well for your brand, and converts outstandingly, but one day switch to something that won’t convert well. That would really suck, right?
How frequently do you change your WordPress theme?
Yeah I think we’ve all been there with a different theme every day of the week, I mean month ;). For a long while I’d change mine more than I should’ve because I couldn’t get the look that I wanted. Now that I have, I’m now looking to move all of my files into Amazon S3 to speed things up a little. Not really sure how that works with things needing updating, but for a faster site its worth a go.
lol… those were definitely the days, right, Sarah? We really didn’t think so much then about conversion… the design and science behind it as much as we do today.
Hi Nile.
I was stubborn as can be, for years. Then I got to changing my theme, and like you and Sarah, I couldn’t stop 😉
After getting really clear on the direction of my blog and brand I’ve been able to tweak my theme and design without changing it much.
Now, subtle works just fine for me. I’ll make edits here and there but I feel no need to overhaul my site because it’s doing well as is.
Thanks for the share.
Tweeting through Triberr!
Ryan
Thanks Ryan! I’m at the point brand-wise that I like what I have. It only needs to be tweaked as I focus on each area I need to emphasize on. A lot of people just got wild with changing their website, and it’s not always so necessary, as both you and Sarah have also realized. 😀
At the moment I will only change my theme due to some of the reasons you cited like when its not converting or not up to date. I do not like the work that comes with changing the theme.
I’ve actually been struggling with this issue lately, Nile, not for my blog, but one of my other sites.
I built it with Optimize Press 1.0 and that seemed cool, but since OP came out 2.0 version, weird things go on with 1.0 like I can’t make banners appear in sidebars, no matter how many widgets I code. OP 1 just doesn’t seem to be getting updated any longer, so I guess I need to swap it out, but since I built all my pages on it, I’m afraid to have to rework everything.
So, sometimes it can be a simple thing to change themes, but when you have membership structures, live products and things like that, it can really be a challenge. I guess I’ll take the plunge one day when I feel especially adventurous, and redo the site.
Thanks for the tips and encouragement.
Hi Nile,
I start blogging with a low quality theme And conversion rate was really low. So, few days ago, I changed my blog theme and it works better for conversion rate as well as provide better user experience.
Hi Niles,
an interesting look at themes and whether to change them.
I really appreciate having found one that is updated a lot and gives me lots of options to play with. So many that I only have made use of maybe 10 percent of it.
Your post has given me questions to contemplate.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Cheers,
Yorinda
As someone that works in WordPress all the time the temptation to change themes is huge. This year alone I changed twice. I really liked the idea of the tiles in the Themify Metro theme but grew tired of it after a few months and switched to Woothemes Shoutout because it has better responsiveness and looks more professional.
It’s important to note that changing themes is usually a lot easier if you stay with the same theme developer – especially if you are using the built in shortcodes.
I agree with you about keeping it the same except for minor changes in things like color and header/logo unless there’s a major reason for the change. The “no longer works for my branding” reason will be why I change mine . . . not yet, but probably in 2015. I use Thesis and have used it for about 4 or 5 years, but I want to move to a look that I just can’t achieve with it.
Hello Nile! I do think this is great advice and will try to keep this in mind when thinking about changing my theme again! I do think I may finally have found the right one, but then again it is a new year ahead LOL
Thanks for sharing.. Chery :))
My first blog had a similar experience to the beginnings here: frequent theme changes. I think it’s a natural part of learning how to design blogs or websites to go through a number of themes to try out looks and figure out what works for your viewers. Eventually, however, you have to pick a direction and go with it, at least for a stretch of time. By the time I set up my professional website I had a good idea of what worked for conversion and a convenient design and went looking for a theme that matched my vision rather than pasting different themes on the site to see which designer’s vision I wanted to adopt.
I love shopping around for themes and trying different live previews, but generally there are very few I really like. My first blog (2003-2009) I stayed with the same theme, but added graphics for a pretty background after the first couple of years.
My second blog (2009-2014), I changed once after a couple of years, and then stayed with the same free theme (Suffusion).
I really like Suffusion, and wanted to use it for my new writing blog, but it IS a free theme, and hasn’t been updated in 17 months. So just recently I started using Genesis Prose for my new blog (which will be online soon).
Excellent advice Nile!
I’ve pretty much tried to avoid changing themes, unless there’s some sort
of issue with code.
But I don’t have a problem or need to change themes, strictly for appearance considerations.
But I really think your advice is spot on, even though I was sort already abiding by it, but for different reasons.
Thanks!
I like your advice Nile, about changing themes. Fancy changing yours so often years ago – that would’ve been disconcerting for your visitors. I remember my first wordpress blog theme, so glad I can’t see it now. I used to change the code all the time, to create it how I wanted, but it was NOT very pretty LOL!
Hi Nile,
Your one post is more important than another. You are doing well. Thank you very much. Sometimes I face problem in changing pluggings.
Anyway, can I submit my worldpress site to my personal domain with all other my post?