If your site doesn’t load fast enough, your visitors may decide to leave instead of waiting to view your pages. Whether your goal is to gain subscribers or sales, every second counts. Using one of the fastest WordPress themes could boost your efforts.
Speed is a decisive factor in creating a smooth user experience and can have a massive impact on your conversions. A fast-loading website is also a must if you want to rank highly in Google. Luckily, there are many lightweight themes that can help you achieve your goals.
In this roundup, we’ll take you through ten of the fastest WordPress themes. We tested each of them ourselves using the same hosting provider and a standard set of demo content. All of them have a high-quality code and are adaptable to any niche. Let’s go!
Ten fastest WordPress themes (tested and compared)
1. GeneratePress
GeneratePress prides itself on being lightweight and accessible. Its high coding standards keep it stable and secure. It’s also search engine optimization (SEO) friendly, giving you a head start on improving your Google rankings before you even add your content.
This theme comes with advanced customization options as well. You’ll be able to tweak all layout elements, install demo sites, and more. It’s also compatible with Elementor, which will enable you to modify both desktop and mobile versions of your website.
2. Neve
Our modern theme is ultra-fast and easy on your server resources. Neve is optimized for mobile devices, too, giving you an extra SEO boost. Best of all, you can start customizing it almost immediately without digging into the code by installing one of its pre-built designs.
Neve is compatible with all popular page builders. You can easily customize various elements of your website and see real-time changes as you edit. Overall, this theme is super flexible and user-friendly, which makes it a perfect solution for beginners or advanced users who want to work more efficiently.
3. Astra
Astra is one of the most popular WordPress themes. It’s optimized for performance by eliminating jQuery dependencies, which often causes delays. It also enables you to pick individual modules to include on your site so you can edit your content more efficiently.
This theme comes with a real-time customizer so you can see your creation unfold in front of your eyes. It’s integrated with popular page builders such as Elementor and Beaver Builder. It’s also packed with an expansive library of demos and numerous customizable elements, including header design options.
4. Zakra
Zakra is a multipurpose theme that is well suited to online stores. It’s optimized for speed, thus maximizing your chances for conversions. It’s also fully responsive and AMP ready, so your website will look its best on any device.
The developer provides multiple demos for this theme, including several eCommerce starter sites. It integrates well with Elementor so you can fully customize your content as well. Moreover, Zakra works seamlessly with WooCommerce and is SEO-friendly, making it an excellent choice for online retailers.
5. Customify
As the name suggests, this theme’s primary focus is advanced customization. You can begin with one of many starter sites or demos and tweak it to suit your needs. You can even make changes to the footer and header thanks to Customify’s dedicated builder. Last but not least, it’s compatible with Elementor.
Customify is fast, lightweight, and super responsive. Its SEO-friendly design should help you secure high search engine rankings. Also, this theme is compatible with popular plugins such as WooCommerce.
6. Mesmerize
Mesmerize is another flexible theme that lets you create a unique website with a drag-and-drop builder. It comes with various starter pages and header designs, as well as a wide selection of customizable content blocks. You can also add modern effects such as video backgrounds while maintaining your website’s fast loading speeds.
Mesmerize is responsive, so you can rest assured that your website will look fantastic even on mobile devices. It’s also compatible with WooCommerce and provides several eCommerce pages to kick-start an online store.
7. X Theme
The X theme boasts a stunning design that attracts many users. Its drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to create your website without coding experience. It also comes with a template manager, a choice of content blocks, and complete demos to further customize your website.
This theme comes bundled with several premium plugins, including Slider Revolution. It’s also retina ready and fully responsive, which will make your content shine on any device. Last but not least, X supports WooCommerce, so it’s a robust theme for any type of business.
8. Blocksy
Blocksy is another brilliant multipurpose theme. You’ll be able to design your pages easily with its drag-and-drop functionality. It’s compatible with popular page builders such as Elementor, too. You can also customize individual features of your website with numerous color and layout options.
Blocksy integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, making it an excellent theme for online stores. It’s also SEO-friendly and super responsive, which should positively impact your conversions.
9. OceanWP
Like Astra, OceanWP lets you select individual modules to include on your site so you only have to edit the elements you need. It’s compatible with popular page builders, and comes with handy extensions to further boost the functionality of your site.
You can also start with one of many unique OceanWP demos and layouts to quickly build your perfect design. This theme includes WooCommerce integration, making it an excellent lightweight option for online retailers. It’s SEO-ready and fully responsive to boot.
10. Hestia
Our final suggestion is Hestia, our slick one-page theme that uses Material Design principles. It boasts simplicity while being super flexible, and its live customizer makes it suitable for both beginners and advanced designers.
This theme works effortlessly with page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi. Hestia’s lightweight structure is an excellent match for popular plugins such as WooCommerce. Also, it’s SEO-ready, so rest assured that search engines will love your site.
Which is the fastest WordPress theme?
A theme that’s optimized for speed can help you secure high search engine rankings. It can also boost your efforts to generate traffic, and most importantly, convert your visitors into customers or subscribers. However, with thousands of free and premium WordPress themes on the market, choosing one can be overwhelming.
In this article, we gathered ten of the fastest WordPress themes and took them for test drives. GeneratePress and Neve are two of our top picks, but as you can see from the performance testing results above, any of these themes should serve you well.
However, there’s more to creating a quick-loading WordPress site than just your theme. You’ll also need to choose high-performing WordPress hosting and implement performance best practices to make your site load as quickly as possible.
Do you have any questions about choosing the right theme for your needs? Ask us in the comments!
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Keep reading the article at ThemeIsle Blog. The article was originally written by John Hughes on 2020-08-13 04:51:00.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.