Identifying Great Simple WordPress Themes

1. Simple WordPress themes are easy to use

It’s not just about style, great simple WordPress themes are really easy to use.  Look past navigation, towards clear directive design.  By this I mean the eye is naturally drawn to important elements on the page and not to useless graphics.  The user should naturally know how to progress through the site because they are drawn to the “next step”.  For some sites this is a “read more” link.  For others it is a “donate” button.

2. Simple WordPress themes are spartan

This doesn’t just mean they’re white or monochromatic.  Each component in a spartan theme has utility and purpose.  Some theme designers are baiting customers with a ridiculous number of theme variations.  This is helpful for some people but not for those looking for a simple theme.  A simple wordpress theme has no need for anything without a purpose toward either the content or user experience.

3. Simple WordPress themes are fast

Small file sizes, compressed and minimal images create fast themes.  Why have a simple theme with the speed of a complex one?  Look for the right image types and compression.  Also look at the load speed of the demo installation.  Even a dedicated server will load a bulky theme with a slight delay.  Look for tableless designs that rely almost entirely on CSS and image sprites.

4. Simple WordPress themes are smooth

A simple theme takes advantage of the natural flow of the eye and human intuition.  Jagged and blocky designs make the user work to find what they need.  Smooth designs have a flow that is almost imperceivable unless it is managed poorly.  Sites with many different contrasting colors and no logical layout work against a smooth user experience.  Consider these two examples.

This design is smooth. Despite the color contrast is has a clear message ("War Destroys Children's Lives") and a clear action step ("Donate").

This design is not smooth. Professional? Yes. But smooth? No. The user doesn't know where to go next, and has to work for the content.

Now that you are equipped with four steps for filtering out great simple WordPress themes from the junk, here are some examples using the methods we just identified.  These are both free and premium themes.  Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this post, please share it!

Bueno (Free)

Gridlocked ($40)

The Style (Club membership $29)

The Design

Pre-packed designs

The Victory Framework political WordPress package comes with three complete designs for your customizing pleasure.  In the vein of omnipartisanship, you can choose from red, blue and white themes.  Of course, these are completely customizable in a completely new way (see color-match technology).  The themes are all professional and different enough to ensure the competition isn’t using the same design.

The best part of the pre-packed designs is that the framework is ready out of the box, with minutes of setup.  Candidates can choose to use an image based logo, or enter text for instant customization.

Color-match technology

One of the coolest features of Victory Framework is the color match system.  Campaigns often choose color schemes very carefully to reflect their districts, beliefs, even the tone of their campaigns.  The color match system lets the webmaster enter colors in the control panel which instantly customizes the design.  Now that is a powerful feature.

Layout

The power of Victory Framework is not in a groundbreaking front-end layout or user interface, it’s in the ease of use and back-end features.  Even well funded campaigns could use Victory Framework with a completely custom design, while taking advantage of the functional features.

The layout is clean and functional while reflective of the traditional campaign site layout.  Content and media are prioritized (see media management) and lead/conversion is a close second.  All three designs that come with Victory Framework have top navigation featuring dropdown menus.

Below the fold the layout mimics the WordPress powered blog we all know.  This is where a traditional campaign website often falls short, communicating real information beyond position statements and tweets.

The Features

Powerful Dashboard

Victory Framework comes with a powerful dashboard that lets you customize Victory Framework in almost every conceivable way.  This includes the design, slider, footer, blog options, featured news, announcements, events and even custom CSS and tracking codes.

Custom widgets

The Victory Framework comes with some custom widgets that help the out-of-the-box readiness.  They include a “Take Action” widget that inserts buttons with any links you choose.  This is helpful for signing up users for events, donations, etc.  The buttons direct to pages of your choosing.  From there you can use any plugin you see fit to provide the actual feature.  Our hope for a future version includes built in functionality for these things

Other custom widgets include social media sharing, Twitter and Facebook widgets to build a true community using Victory Framework as a hub.  These can be infinitely expanded upon by leveraging the massive WordPress plugin repository or, our favorite, the Themeforest Plugin Marketplace.

Pre-packed framework

Rather than filling the content structure from scratch, you are prompted to run a “quick setup” after installing Victory Framework.  This quick setup fills in sample content, pages, posts, etc. so you can hit the ground running.  Just don’t forget to update each piece of content lest people will know you’ve used a pre-set solution!

Media management

Victory Framework (all three pre-packaged designs) comes with a powerful media management feature.  This includes an incorporated media slider with tons of customization options.  You can select the width, slider engine, transition effect, transition speed and lots more.  This is an indispensable tool for campaigns that need to showcase candidate faces and photo ops.

Our conclusion

Overall, Victory Framework is the best solution we’ve seen short of completely custom systems.  If you’re on a tight budget (read: every campaign except national) then Victory Framework can deliver all the features  of the expensive solutions, in an easy to use format.  All for less than $200.  The features are there, the coding is clean and the designs are fresh.  Here’s what we’d love to see in upcoming versions:

• More designs
• Integrated features like event management, donation management and constituent capture

When asked about their intentions with Victory Framework, the developers had this to say:

Our intention is to help local politicians be more effective online.  This goes beyond just having a pretty looking- Victory will soon incorporate tools to manage all the data collected from these sites.  Ultimately, we want campaigns to spend less time managing an online campaign and more time listening to and engaging with voters.

In a way, our customers are really the voters themselves.  We want to make it incredibly easy for you to know who your candidates are and what they stand for.  And if you're up for it, to get involved.  We believe that the more information and transparency a candidate offers, the better those candidates will serve the public.  We aim to help those types of candidates get elected with our tools.

We think they hit the mark.  You can check out Victory Framework here, including a full working demo download.

Currents

Wikeasi

Canvas

eList

Evolution

5 PRO-CONVERSION tips:

• Simple layout, catchy design. Make the form simple by using the minimum number of fields and a one-column layout. If you plan on building a more complex form (e.g. a survey), it’s best to group fields into separate topic sections. Forms are powerful elements and their design should match the overall image of your blog. That’s because our vision usually sorts out the page elements that do not harmonize with the ensemble and ignores them. So leave grey aside and be creative. In terms of words, you can use humorous or teasing messages to spice up your forms.
• User-friendly validation. Fields that prompt for e-mail addresses or phone numbers should have some simple hints below, stating which the desired input format is. This may seem redundant, but mistakes may occur in rush. If your form doesn’t have an autofill option, users should be aware of what they should pay attention to. This kind of interactivity is a must for a contact form, as well as for an order form for WordPress or any other type of web form that requires user input.
• Non-alien CAPTCHA. Have you ever stood dazzled in front of a hieroglyphic CAPTCHA saying to yourself: “Gosh, I don’t have the keyboard for that”? Oh yes, so did we. There’s no reason in chasing away visitors by using an IQ test when a simple CAPTCHA will be equally successful in preventing spam. The even better solution is smart CAPTCHA, which only shows up when there is a sign that the form has been abused (e.g. multiple submissions from the same IP address).
• Efficient error handling. Another means of good interaction with users is optimized error handling. A friendly way to do it is by highlighting the fields that contain errors, so that one can notice easily what needs to be corrected.
• Custom “thank you” message. Even if this comes after the objective of having the form filled out has been reached, it’s best to send a warm message to users, thanking them for their time and announcing that your feedback on their message is on its way.

5 ANTI-CONVERSION practices to avoid:

• Design clutter. Without a powerful motivation, users would be distracted when faced with a cluttered form and they wouldn’t fill it out. Keep forms stylish, yet clean and simple.
• Typing stress. Bad questions are the ones that don’t go straight to the point and call for too much typing. Use simple statements and include radio buttons or Likert scales, if suitable.
• “Reset” button easily mistaken for the “Submit” one. There are few cases when a “Reset” button is necessary at all. Don’t use it when you don’t actually need it because, when hit accidentally, it will lead to users losing data and, naturally, giving up the form.
• No interactivity. Users need guidance. If they spend more than 5 seconds all alone wondering what to do next, the following step will be leaving your page. Of course, you don’t have to stuff the form with explanations. Use them with generosity, but also with purpose.
• No motivation. You have to point out why you’re asking users to fill out the form on your blog and/or what they will gain by doing this (even if it’s just a big Thank you).

How to build a highly customizable form using the 123ContactForm plugin for WordPress

123ContactForm is a WYSIWYG form generator that creates any kind of forms and surveys in 3 easy steps. No programming experience is required as a drag and drop form builder handles the entire process of form generating. Features of 123ContactForm include 3rd party apps integration (SalesForce, MailChimp, VerticalResponse, WebHook, iContact, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups), payment processing (integrations with PayPal,
Authorize.Net, Google Checkout). At any degree of complexity, your WordPress online form will blend perfectly with the image of your blog as 123ContactForm allows full CSS customization.

Let’s see the wizard in action!

Install the 123ContactForm plugin for WordPress:
1. Download the 123ContactForm plugin from the WordPress plugins directory.

2. Install the plugin to your WordPress database:
a. Unzip and move the folder 123contactform-for-wordpress to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins directory;
b. Visit your WordPress dashboard. In the Plugins tab, click on the Activate button for the plugin named 123ContactForm for WordPress.

Create your WordPress contact form:
1. Login/signup to www.123contactform.com.
2. In your Dashboard, go to Create New Form and choose Contact form.

3. Choose your fields (you can use the preexistent ones) and edit them to set the validation rules, label text and positioning etc.

4. Go to the next step – Form Settings. Here, you can customize the “thank you” page, choose the email address where notifications will be received and set the security options (anti-spam features include: CAPTCHA, smart CAPTCHA, password protection, country filter). This is also the step where you can customize the form theme or even the CSS code to style the form in any way you wish to.
5. The final step – Publish Form. To post the form on WordPress, choose the WordPress option in the menu on the left. It returns a line of code. In the Publish section, you can also opt for using SSL encryption for the data sent through your form.

6. Go to your WordPress editor (either in the visual or HTML mode) and paste the code in the place where you need the form to be displayed.

There is a second way of publishing forms on your WordPress page, which is particularly helpful if you have more than one form to embed, because it gives you access to all the forms at once, without having to copy the code for each one. This technique works as follows:

• Log in to 123ContactForm and go to your My Account section. Under Account Details, there is an API Key. The initial status of it is none. Press Create now. Copy the API Key that has been generated.
• Go to your WordPress dashboard and edit your post. Make sure you are in the Visual mode (not HTML). The 123ContactForm icon was added to your menu when you installed the plugin. Click on it, paste the API Key in the lightbox that appears and press Connect.

• Here, you can see a dropdown list containing all of the forms you have created with 123ContactForm. Choose the form that you want to publish and press Embed. You can edit the form at any time, to keep up with the updates in your blog design.

Authored by LAURA MOISEI

Being part of the team at 123 Contact Form, I enjoy keeping up with the latest trends in design, as well as with tech news, and share my discoveries.

Lightbox is a powerful but simple script that overlays images on top of the current page.  It has become the standard for portfolio and gallery pages.  Protecting your WordPress site from “viewer fatigue” means preventing unnecessary clicks and back button usage.  Lightbox allows you to do this by preventing the user from leaving the page to get a closer look at your media.

Lightbox is free and works in all modern browsers*.  Because the script is lightweight and universal, it has been seamlessly integrated into tons of WordPress themes.  These WordPress lightbox themes are the top of the line, and allow you to show off your media efficiently.

*No version of Internet Explorer is considered “modern”.

• Social networking aspects – Tumlbr makes connecting via social media sites very easy
• simplicity – Tumblr is very much an open and blog platform aimed at those that don’t want to know the guts of what is going on behind the scenes.
• Easy management from your phone – The iPhone Tumblr app is much better than the wordpress one.
• Can have you own domain – Tumblr still hosts it though….you can’t actually take your content else where like you can with a self hosted wordpress install.

Advantages of WordPress

• The ability to be self-hosted – This is big. It costs, but means you actually have complete control of your content.
• Large community with lots of addons & customization – The amount of free and premium WordPress themes and plugins is amazing. There is so much functionality in this regard.
• Great for SEO – Because WordPress gives you more control over your platform, you can seriously optimize every aspect of your blog, from URL structure, meta tags, pinging, and internal links, right down to theme structure.

Reasons to use Tumblr

• The thought of setting up and paying for hosting doesn’t appeal to you.
• You want to be blogging right now, and you don’t want to worry about the technical side of things, you just want to get your thoughts out there, so others can connect.

Reasons to use WordPress

Obviously we are big fans of WordPress here at Pingable, we are a wordpress blog, and we blog about wordpress related content. However, that doesn’t mean we won’t recommend another platform if we thinks it’s better.  Wordpress is going to be the better platform for most blogging professional, and business bloggers. It gives you more control, and you own your content. Tumblr however, is probably a better platform for those looking for simplicity. It’s a great platform for beginners, and those of us less technology minded.

Google have introduced a new feature into their search where logged in users have search defaulting to SSL. Supposedly this is only meant to be affecting 10% of statistics, as apparently only 10% of queries to google search come from signed in users, however, we are seeing a much higher value for pingable. Sites that target a more technical audience will likely see similar statistics as us, where this number might become quite high.

Here’s is Googles official announcement on the topic.

What does this mean for web masters?

Obviously less data. The number 1 referral to pingable.org is now a keyword called (not provided). As annoying as this is, I guess the positive way to look at it is that it just scales down the data you can get from users. Overall, keyword referrals should be similar, however they will seem slightly lower, as you will not be getting the full picture.

The roll out has been taking place over the last few days, take a look to see how it is affecting out data:

So nothing to be too worried about. Your keyword performance is not dropping, Google are simply hiding the data from you.

A good WordPress showcase theme is clean and minimalist, allowing the reader to move directly to the content being showcased, not the design. Another component of good WordPress showcase themes is easy user interface. This means the user can navigate the content easily and quickly. Quality WordPress showcase themes have a unique and tested user interface that uses AJAX, pure javascript or css menus to allow for easy browsing of content.

Click on any image to go directly to the theme page, and remember, there are more pieces like this all over Pingable. You might want to subscribe to our email newsletter to get updates. Don’t worry, we never spam or share your contact info.