Companion is a high-performance theme for high-powered companies and organizations who need to impress clients with a powerful and professional online presence.
Developed by Stylemix, a top-trusted Power Elite Author on the popular Envato Marketplace, the theme certainly has all the credibility you’d expect from a top WordPress business theme, but is it the right one for you and, if so, how do you go about putting it to work as a dynamic asset for your business?
You’ll find the answer to these questions -and more besides- in this complete Stylemix Companion theme review.
Stylemix Companion Theme: What is it and Who is it For?
The great thing about WordPress themes is that they can be customized for just about any industry. There’s nothing to stop you from buying a theme aimed at restaurants and fine-tuning it for your recording studio if that’s what works for you, just as there’s no reason why you couldn’t use Companion for any type of website you may need.
Truthfully though, this theme is designed with corporate entities in mind. If your business falls under one of the following categories, you’ll find a lot to like about this theme:
- HR firms
- Recruitment companies
- Financial institutions and accountants
- Business consultants
- Marketing consultants and advertising agencies
- Manufacturers
- Auditing services
- eCommerce businesses
- Digital and creative agencies.
See Companion in Action
Companion Theme Key Features
Why is Companion such a good choice for these types of businesses?
Simple, it contains all the key features you need to create an attractive, functional corporate website, including:
- 8 x demo sites
- 40 x inner-page templates
- One-click demo import
- Service page templates
- Cost Calculator
- Book professional appointment booking tool
- eRoom tool to manage webinars and online meetings from your WordPress dashboard
- WooCommerce compatibility for selling products and services
- Multiple portfolio layouts
- Custom header and footer builder
- Compatibility with WPML to translate into any language
- 30+ unique blocks for Elementor
- Integration with third-party tools such as:
- Contact Form 7
- Mailchimp
- YoastSEO
- bbPress
- WP Super Cache.
How to Set Up Companion WordPress Theme
1. Download and Install the Theme
After purchasing and downloading the theme, head to your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance – Themes – Add New – Upload Theme.
Select the theme (saved as a zip file) from your desktop, then upload it.
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You’ll need to head to the Companion dashboard and click the activation button to activate it.
2. Install the Required Plugins
As such a high-performance theme, you’ll need to install multiple plugins to make the most of Companion’s outstanding functionality.
Fortunately, once your theme is activated, you’ll be presented with a list of all the plugins you need, which you can install in bulk by clicking ‘begin installing plugins.’
3. Import the Demo Content
Even after you’ve activated the theme and installed all the required plugins, you’ll notice that your website looks nothing like it does on the demo site.
Don’t worry; this isn’t a problem. All you need to do is import one of the six demo options, which will add the theme layouts, styling, and content for you.
To do this, select ‘Companion’ from your main dashboard menu to access the theme options, then click ‘Install Demos’ from the top menu.
As you’ll see, there are several attractive options to choose from here, but for this tutorial, we’re going to go with the ‘Corporate’ demo simply because we feel it’s the most visually impressive.
Whichever demo you decide to use, simply hover over it to bring up the ‘import demo’ button.
Click that, and then click ‘Start Import’ on the next screen to import the entire demo.
4. Customize Your Theme with Elementor
Being such a feature-rich package, Companion takes a little longer than the average demo import to complete which can be a little frustrating, but once it’s done, you’ll be left with a stunning site that’s ready to be customized.
To do that, head to your website and select ‘Edit With Elementor’ so that you can customize the site using the popular Elementor visual site builder.
Using Elementor, you can click on any aspect of your site, from the title to the background images and everything in between, and use the intuitive editor to change each one.
For us, a highlight of this particular template is the ability to create custom counters to show off details such as how many clients you’ve worked with or how many projects you’ve completed.
Click on the element, and not only can you change the text and numbers of the counters, but also animate the counter to create a really unique dynamic feature that captivates your visitors.
Elsewhere, we’re also a big fan of the ability to create gorgeous pricing tables. With WooCommerce integration, these tables allow customers to buy services and products directly from your site.
You can use Elementor to customize every element of every page, including these attractive service grids…
…Pages for both online and offline events…
…And more besides.
5. Setup Bookit
One of the most impressive features of Companion is that it comes with Stylemix’s own appointment booking tool, Bookit.
With Bookit enabled, customers can book and pay for consultations and other sessions directly from the site.
To set this up, choose Bookit calendar from your WordPress dashboard menu and use the settings to configure the length of appointments, the style of your booking calendar, and other key options.
You’ll then need to head to the services tab and create a new service for each type of appointment that you want customers to be able to book.
Once you have your calendar looking and functioning the way you want it, simply return to the settings to generate a shortcode that will let you add the calendar to any page on your website.
To be honest, this barely scratches the surface when it comes to the excellent functionality and customization options of the Bookit Calendar. If you’d like to know more about what a useful and easy-to-use tool this can be, check out our complete review of Bookit here.
6. Set up Your Cost Calculator
If you offer your services on a sliding scale or you offer multiple services as part of a bespoke package, you’ll probably love the addition of an easy-to-use cost calculator.
You can access this by choosing the ‘Cost Calculator’ option from the dashboard menu, then either editing one of the two existing calculators or creating a new one.
We wrote this comprehensive review of the Stylemix Cost Calculator to show you exactly how to do that.
7. Configure eRoom
Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell you about the excellent eRoom tool, which allows you to run live webinars and meetings directly from WordPress.
Choose ‘Eroom’ from the dashboard menu, and you can set up new virtual events with a host of customizable details, including:
- Meeting agenda
- Meeting host
- Approved or denied countries
- Time, date, and timezone
- Meeting passwords
- Waiting room options and more.
You can then sync eRoom with Zoom to launch your new event.
How Much Does StyleMix Companion Theme Cost?
As if there wasn’t already enough to like about Companion, another big advantage is that it comes at a relatively low price for such a high-quality theme.
For the time being, Stylemix is offering their newest theme for an introductory price of just $39 via ThemeForest. However, once this limited-time offer ends, the price is likely to increase (for comparison, most of Stylemix’s themes clock in around $59), so it’s worth picking it up sooner rather than later.
Alternatively, if you’re a WordPress developer looking to use this theme on your client’s websites, an extended commercial license will cost you $1,600.
Companion Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Comes complete with several useful plugins such as Bookit Calendar, ERoom, and StyleMix Cost Calculator. Buying these plugins separately would cost you almost $105, more than double the cost of the theme itself.
- Easy to customize every aspect of every page with Elementor
- Affordable price for a WordPress business theme.
Cons:
- The demo import took longer than average when we installed Companion on our test site.
- A choice of more demo templates would be nice. However, the eight included templates are still of great quality.
Stylemix Companion: Much More Than Just a WordPress Theme
We all know that WordPress themes are meant to make your site look attractive and function flawlessly, but Companion goes well above and beyond that.
With the addition of Bookit, ERoom, and Cost Calculator, your WordPress installation can become much more than just a website to promote your services, it can become a powerful online platform that allows you to engage and interact with customers in multiple ways, making it one of the most important assets your business owns.
Keep reading the article at Learn WordPress with WPLift. The article was originally written by Team WPLift on 2022-10-07 08:50:44.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.