Responsive WordPress themes are themes that adapt layout according to the specifications of a user’s device or browser. For example, switching from single to multi-column layouts as a screen grows in size. This article explains the advantages of using responsive themes and reviews the top free responsive WordPress themes for 2020.
Advantages of Responsive WordPress Themes
There are several advantages to using responsive WordPress themes, beyond just complying with web design best practices.
Improved User Experience
Responsive designs typically lead to better user experiences since the content is customized to best suit how a user is visiting your site. Responsive themes can rearrange navigation menus, resize buttons, and serve different image crops to reduce the effort needed from users to interact with your site.
Likewise, responsive themes can alter the content provided, serving lower resolution images or video. This reduces the bandwidth requirements of pages to the maximum useful amount, decreasing load times. For example, there is no reason to waste bandwidth serving a high-resolution image to a small screen since the detail is lost unless a user zooms in. Faster load times lead to better user experience and increased site use.
An Increase in Mobile Traffic
A significant portion of web traffic comes from mobile devices that require drastically different layouts than laptops or desktops. Responsive themes ensure that your sites are compatible with and optimized for these mobile visitors. When sites are more comfortable and usable on mobile devices, your traffic naturally increases and your abandonment decreases.
Easier Maintenance
Responsive themes enable you to effectively combine multiple sites into one. You still gain the benefits of having sites customized to user needs but only have one site’s worth of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. This makes maintenance easier and faster since you can apply changes to all versions at once. Additionally having one multi-use site reduces your storage and security requirements, leaving you less to manage on the whole.
Top Free Responsive WordPress Themes
There are many excellent WordPress themes out there for you to choose from, many of which are both responsive and free. Below are just a few examples that are worth considering.
1. Good
Good is a minimal theme designed for creative portfolios, blogs, and magazines. It includes features for brand customization, SEO optimization, unlimited menus, localization support, and performance optimization. You can extend it with a plugin for forms. The theme also provides continual updates to ensure that your page stays in sync with the latest WordPress version.
2. VMagazine Lite
VMagazine Lite is a multi-layout theme designed for news magazines. It includes features for customization and localization and is based on SiteOrigin Page Builder. You can extend VMagazine Lite through eight different widgets and integrate it with WooCommerce. To get started with VMagazine Lite, you can download the four demo layouts and customize each according to your needs.
3. Agency Lite
Agency Lite is a multipurpose theme designed for use in portfolio, blog, and business sites. It includes sections for FAQs, blogs, sliders, about us, product features, teams, and service descriptions. Agency Lite also offers localization and eCommerce support as well as a live preview feature.
4. Ember
Ember is a one-page theme designed for startups, freelancers, creative agencies, and small businesses. It incorporates parallax design features in the header to make pages especially eye-catching. Parallax design creates a sense of depth perception and movement by offsetting background and foreground elements. Ember also includes features for customization, real-time preview, and zero code modifications.
5. Sydney
Sydney is a theme designed for business pages or freelancers. It is based on Elementor, a free WordPress page building tool. Sydney includes a range of features for customization, including access to Google Fonts, layout control, logo uploads, full-color control, header images, a full-screen slider, and sticky navigation. It uses a parallax background and is translation ready for global users.
6. Zakra
Zakra is a multipurpose theme that you can use for blogs, eCommerce, or business pages. It includes features for team pages, client logos, testimonials, and a full-width header with space for a call to action. It supports the use of the Gutenberg WordPress editor and the Elementor page builder plugin.
Zakra is also customizable via color, layout, typography, and header style. You can start with over 30 demo layouts and adjust configurations to meet your needs.
7. Phlox
Phlox is a flexible theme that you can adapt to almost any site purposes. It includes a wide variety of pre-made demos that you can adapt to your specific needs and over 40 ready-to-use templates. Phlox also includes over 30 Elementor elements, including features for image galleries, collapsible sections, tabs, forms, image sliders, and timelines.
You can integrate this theme with both Google Fonts and WooCommerce. If you don’t want to start from a template, you can use the included page builder tools to drag and drop individual elements.
8. Neve
Neve is a theme for businesses that is built on Elementor. It comes with over 80 demo templates with a customizable layout, header, and footer. Neve includes features for pricing tables, overlay content blocks, lazy loading, and parallax backgrounds.
9. Flash
Flash is a multipurpose theme based on SiteOrigin’s page builder. It includes features for drag and drop building, custom widget building, color and typography customization, image sliders, and integration with social media. You can extend Flash with the Flash Toolkit plugin and 11 custom widgets. It integrates with WordPress Live Customizer and WooCommerce.
Conclusion
Since 2011, mobile internet usage has seen a 504% growth. That means more and more traffic flows to your site from mobile devices, rather than laptops, PCs, and tablets. To enable mobile users to easily browse your site, you need to design with responsiveness in mind. You can easily do that with free WordPress themes that are already designed for responsive usage.
About Gilad David Maayan
Gilad David Maayan is a technology writer who has worked with over 150 technology companies including SAP, Samsung NEXT, NetApp and Imperva, producing technical and thought leadership content that elucidates technical solutions for developers and IT leadership.
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Keep reading the article at WP Mayor. The article was originally written by Gilad David Maayan on 2020-03-12 07:00:00.
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