Are you looking into SEO for your website, desiring more traffic, and wanting to progress to the next level? Believe it or not, your choice of website actually plays a significant part in determining your keyword-friendliness and Google Panda/Penguin readiness.

Most new website designers make a choice based on the price (or perhaps looking for a free website) and based on the color scheme. That makes sense…you do want an attractive color scheme, and the standardized themes for WordPress are oftentimes very alluring. However, it’s also important to remember that WordPress themes are all customizable. You can manipulate colors and text position by accessing the CSS files in the editor tab on your dashboard, or if you have a user-friendly theme, you can just select your color choices automatically with theme settings.

Of course, you don’t really want to go at it alone if you have no web design knowledge. This is precisely why many website owners choose these “prefabricated” themes, because of the elegant design and feel of the site.

However, when it comes time to choose between all of the themes that you generally like, you have to consider more than just visual elements. Let’s consider five important points.

1. Easy Customization
   It’s no coincidence that most commercial themes allow plenty of customization, while free themes only give you the bare minimum. Easy custom design features are always a priority on all users’ lists, which is why designers allow so much freedom on the paid versions. It’s not just a matter of color either. Users want the ability to design their own layouts, their own column/frames features and their own widgets. And the fact that they use CMS software just proves they don’t want to mess heavily with CSS code—which is comparable with HTML in terms of technical terms.
2. E-Commerce
   Chances are, your company can’t afford to promote a promotional site alone—you want sales, and the best way to get sales is to create an online store. While there are plugins for online stores available, the best store features (with graphics and java scripts) are usually included with commercial WordPress themes.
3. SEO Plugins
   Your site needs plenty of SEO help, and the more plugins you have to install, the more time it takes out of your busy day. Therefore, you might try to choose a WordPress theme that provides all sorts of SEO help for you—without any extra installations. The best SEO features might include meta tags and descriptions, as well as automatic keyword density measuring tools, and perhaps even special plugins that help you evaluate the competition, and your own site’s SEO-readiness.
4. Excellent Customer Support
   Free WordPress themes don’t offer much of anything besides a free ride—but commercial WordPress themes mean serious business since a lot of money goes into these projects. This is why the best themes all include customer support, just in case you have a technical issue with your theme. Don’t just settle on a knowledge base…make sure the company offers an online forum, email support and a live phone number. This will ensure you keep your site in perfect working condition.
5. Dynamic Content
   Lastly, why pay for a boring theme? All the little touches go a long way in professionalizing the look of your company, whether you’re looking for sliders (which can rotate through several of your favorite product pictures), or separate index pages apart from the blog site, or even custom post sites, that let you design individual pages apart from one another.

Remember, you don’t pay for colors or for fancy design ideas…you pay for the functions you need to do business.