Premium Theme – Choosing The Right One

Recently IamNTB was upgraded to a premium theme. Before making the transition, I did a vast amount of research. One of the major reasons for the change was that the original blog design looked too plain for my liking. Now I know that you don’t need to buy a premium theme just to change the look of your blog but I figured that since I was going for a new look, I might as well go premium and utilize the advanced features that are associated with them.

The search for a premium theme begins…

The first step of my journey began with checking for unbiased user reviews. This was a task in itself. So many people who were writing about the themes were trying to get an affiliate commission through hype instead of really providing useful information.
Another source of information I tapped into was the support forums. Unfortunately some of the premium theme forums are only available after you make a purchase. The ones that were open provided a great deal of insight into:

How the community used the theme
What issue they had
How the developers responded to user technical problems

One of my main concerns was the amount of support available. If I had a problem with the theme and implementing any of its features, I needed to know that there was going to be someone to help me. I know that there are tons of resources available for general problems one might encounter, but it is much easier to be able to go to one place for your answers.
The next thing I was looking for was what specific features the premium theme offered that set them apart from the rest. Some offered great SEO built in, there were the ones that incorporated the use of galleries for portfolios and some were geared specifically towards people doing affiliate sales. I wanted something that could be customized to suit each of my needs as they arose.

Even if a premium theme offers you the world, it is totally useless if you have to fight the user interface anytime you want to make a change. Don’t get me wrong, all of the prospective themes had their strengths and weaknesses in this department. As long as the learning curve did not impede my ability to make any and all customizations then it was a fair trade off.
Some of the themes were based around just dragging and dropping what you wanted. These were great but some of the customizations were limited. Other themes worked harmoniously with drag and drop along with coding. Now I am not a coder, but my abilities to figure stuff out dissolved any potential hesitations.

The last concern was how the premium theme was going to affect my pocketbook! Each themes qualities had to be added up and I put a mental value to each one. I also looked to see if upgrades were free for life or if there was a charge each time I wanted the latest and greatest.

Hopefully some of my choosing process might help you by suggesting some questions you might not have thought to ask yourself before going with a premium theme for you blog.