Best 7 Day Startup WordPress Themes (2016 Edition)
One of the key parts of launching your 7 Day Startup is getting your website live in one day using a low cost WordPress theme. I’m asked all the time, what are the best startup WordPress themes, so I wanted to dig into that this week.
While you don’t want to spend too much time on your site (you don’t learn until you launch), the fact is – like it or not – people will judge you on how it looks. Design matters.
[ctt tweet=”Like it or not – people will judge you on how it looks. Design matters. http://ctt.ec/Up4Zg+” coverup=”Up4Zg”]
That’s why the most important thing when coming to choose your WordPress theme is not a bunch of features you don’t need (if you do need a feature there’s plenty of free and low cost plugins for that), but the design.
And budget needn’t be an issue, there are now many WordPress themes for around $100 or less that look like they cost a lot more.
But rather than you wasting your time trying to find the top 1% among thousands of themes, I asked Nick Davis (WordPress theme expert and founder of Theme Valet) to give us his very latest selection of seven of the best WordPress themes for 7 Day Startup businesses in 2016.
Showcase (by JT Grauke)
I see a lot of landing page style themes and they can look samey, however I think Showcase is one of the best of the lot. In fact, it’s pretty perfect for most 7 Day Startup launches.
Digital Pro (by StudioPress)
StudioPress is known for its consistently high quality and often leading edge designs that rarely look anything like your ‘typical’ WordPress theme. Digital Pro is one of there newest and most popular releases perfect for many product and service launches and a nice mix of homepage sections.
Hype (by ThemeZilla)
Hype is the latest attractive theme from one of the strongest theme shops out there, ThemeZilla.
Aspire (by Appfinite)
An attractive theme with a lot of homepage areas to play with (you don’t have to use them all!), the top of the homepage leaves space for a large image and a very noticeable email signup box.
Glam (by Restored 316)
If your 7 Day Startup has a fashion or beauty angle then Glam might be the perfect fit, it’s also comes with compatibility with popular WordPress ecommerce plugin WooCommerce baked in.
Checkout (by Array Themes)
Another attractive theme but a slightly different look from some of the others I’ve included. It also stands out by being compatible with Easy Digital Downloads (a very popular WordPress plugin for selling digital goods) from the word ‘go’.
Jessica (by Web Savvy Marketing)
A great ‘all round’ ecommerce theme built to be compatible with WooCommerce out of the box (WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress ecommerce plugin and one of the most popular ecommerce systems on any platform).
Looking for even more WordPress themes?
Check out Nick’s original Top seven ‘7 Day Startup’ WordPress launch themes article for another seven WordPress themes perfect for your new product or service launch.
If you want more tips on choosing the right WordPress theme for your business you can also get notes and watch a replay of Nick and I discussing WordPress themes from the first 7 Day Startup challenge.
Or, join us in the 7 Day Startup Pro community, where members regularly swap tips and experiences of the best WordPress themes and plugins they use to power their businesses.
[cta_7DS_worksheet]
Hey mate, thanks for sharing my latest favourites, hopefully they help a few people choose the right theme!
If any of your readers would would like any theme suggestions or guidance just give me a shout.
Thank you!
There should be an extra one called “Meh”. Sorry, but these are as cliche’d as I’ve seen. They were kinda groundbreaking back at the end of 2014, but I wouldn’t tout them as the best of 2016. Studiopress are dinosaurs too. Woothemes Canvas, I haven’t heard much of but that was inspirational as is GeneratePress. The new WP 2016 is awesome, and AccessPress have a lot of great stuff too. Thesis needs a revisit soon to see what’s happening there too (though it was always so damn hard to fly!)
Sorry guys, I know I should be on top of this more than I am, but I still don’t get it. I don’t understand what part is the theme and then what part a web designer does.
Actually you know what I would love (just thought of this) and Nick I don’t know if you have already done this before or done similar and if you have, could share the link, but I would love to see two website side by side, actually maybe even done as a screenflow video, in which you see two websites, both with the exact same content and the exact same design, but with 2 totally different themes. So that I can clearly see what parts are done by a web designer and what parts are the actual theme itself.
Actually continuing on with that, you could then choose one of those themes and do two side by side comparisons again, still with the exact same content, but with 2 totally different designs, this way again, so you can see what parts you can get a web designer to change for you and what parts are just the theme and if you don’t like a particular part that is not part of the web design then you know you need to find a different theme.
As I say I know I should be on top of this better than I am, and I’m sure you just sitting there saying to yourself, dude it is so obvious what is the theme and what is the design, but you never know, if I don’t get it then maybe there are others out there as well that are in the same boat as me, maybe 🙂
Regards
Ben
Hey Ben,
I’ll try to break things down a little (and please excuse me if I’m telling you things you already know!).
So the content itself, your pages, articles etc are stored in WordPress and are independent of the theme.
For example, you have an About Us page. The title of that page, the content of that page and any images added to it are independent of your theme. For an article page (post), it’s exactly the same, except you have a Published Date, any comments associated with the article and the name of the author of the article as well. Again, all stored in WordPress itself, whatever theme you use.
The theme then controls where of these items appear on your website and how they are styled. In some cases the theme may not even show all elements (e.g. it might not sure the Published Date of your article, but it’s still there in WordPress).
So if you buy a theme and you don’t like the way anything is styled that’s where you could hire a web developer to tweak it for you (in some cases you could even do this yourself, but trying to keep the example simple for now).
Or say it’s not a style but the theme doesn’t show the publish date of an article on every article page and you want it to appear, again you could hire the web developer to customise this for you.
Ultimately there’s nothing ‘magic’ about a theme, every theme was created by a web designer and a web developer. The difference is, some themes are sold or given away for free and are used on thousands of websites. But some themes are just created for a single person, i.e. when you hire a web designer / developer to build a design (theme) just for you. It’s still a theme but it’s a theme just for your site (this is a service I also offer at http://designtowebsite.com, which as you can see is a completely different proposition (and price range) to https://themevalet.com which of course reflects the different amount of work and expertise involved).
One final point. While all of the above is generally true, one final thing to be aware of is some themes (let’s call them ‘bad’ themes) won’t work completely as I describe above, because they’ve not been built in this best practice way where the design and your content of your website has been kept separate.
For example, if you’re using a theme that’s bundled with some kind of drag and drop page builder inside the theme itself. You may find that when you switch to another theme that, not only do you lose your drag and drop layout, some of your content ‘disappears’ as well (it’s still there somewhere in the WordPress database you just may not be able to access or you can see the text but it’s in a mess.
This is not to bash drag and drop page builders in general, they clearly have their place. But if you’re going to use it’s generally better to use a page builder that’s provided by a plugin. That way when you change themes all your layouts and content are stored in the plugin (i.e. independent of your theme) and not associated with the theme itself.
(You can have 100 active plugins but only ever 1 active theme…) Chris Lema also talks about why you generally shouldn’t use the Divi THEME (note theme, not plugin) here: http://chrislema.com/divi-theme-forever/
Of course, if you’re just throwing up an idea for a new business and you’re not bothered about whether the content survives the change to a different theme then no issues, but if just to make you (and others) aware of it so at least it’s an informed decision.
All of the themes I’ve listed above are ‘good’ themes of course and don’t do this ‘lock-in’. (My recommendation for a drag and drop page builder if you’re looking for one is Beaver Builder, though there are many many others https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/).
Hope that helps but feel free to drop me a line via https://themevalet.com/contact if you like and I’ll be happy to answer any other questions.
Cheers,
Nick
WOW, @esanctuary:disqus thank you so much for going into so much detail there for me. I really appreciate it!!!
My pleasure, Ben!