How to Choose WordPress Theme for Your Travel Blog?

So, buckle up! We’re starting.

Criteria You Should Consider Before Launching a Good Travel Blog

Travel blogging is way popular field, hence the competition and standards are too high. If you are serious about your blog and want it to stand out in a crowd, you should know the following. Let’s see what I’m talking about.

1 Ascertain the Purpose You Start the Blog With

If you are the one starting a travel blog, I would recommend that you figure out what the purpose is. Whether you want to keep your close people to be updated on your trips, present the best of your photography, reach the other travelers and bloggers, or just get wealth and fame, the clear understanding of your goal will help you position and design the blog according to your needs.

2 Understand Your Target Audience

Your friends and family will always stay the most dedicated readers of your blog. However, over time, you may want to reach a wider audience and take your travel website to a completely new level. Thus, you’ll have to do some research in order to consider the target audience as well as its pains and gains, etc. When knowing well who your readers are, it becomes easy to write with them in mind. Consequently, your blog gets less about you and more about people you’re writing and offering the services for.

3 Give Your Blog a Unique Name

This tip seems quite obvious, doesn’t it? However, picking the name for a blog may become the major headache for you. If you decide to run a blog under your real name which is not that common, you may jump to the next paragraph. Those tending to choose a pseudonym for a blog may stay.

So, before selecting the name, make sure to do the following checks:

• if there is another blog with this name;
• if any social media network you want to advertise your blog on has the same name;
• if the URL is available (in the event you decide to buy a domain name).

And remember that “all the best names are taken” statement has nothing to do with reality. All depends on your creativity. If you’ve already tried hundreds of names and feel like none of them meets your needs, exhale, invite your friends for a glass of beer, and have a little brainstorming session. It’ll give odds that you hit on the best name.

4 Opt for a Platform

Sure, you can choose any platform for your blog. However, if I were you, I would go ahead with WordPress. This is a well-known CMS that has been started right as an open source blogging platform hence offering everything needed for running a blog. Free WordPress.com will be enough for the beginning. Further, you’ll have a chance to migrate to self-hosted WordPress.org to have more advanced functionality.

5 Think About Your Design

With the rise of versatile website constructors and drag-n-drop builders, starting a blog is as easy as pie. Although, many people launching a website go so excited about the process and forget about the major thing. Its design. I am not talking about website background or media content available on the site. First of all, I mean its ability to cope with the given task or, other words, its efficiency.

To design the site working for you, I recommend picking the niche and defining the main goal. For instance:

• If you plan to carry out the independent business activity on your travel blog, you couldn’t be without a full-fledged online store or booking gateway to achieve the goal.
• If you decide to create a web source with a myriad of offers for tourism or information portal with useful content, you’ll need a site-catalog to attract more clients.

As soon as you decide on your niche in the travel industry, you can confidently move on to designing the website.

Custom Design vs Ready-Made Template: What to Choose?

While ‘sofa critics’ keep on arguing about what is better, custom design or ready-made template, both of them have advantages as well as drawbacks. With that being said, they should be used in accordance with the purpose. Let’s see what you have to expect by choosing any of the options.

Custom design is the perfect solution for those being non-techie or IT novice who has an unlimited budget on creating a blog. Working with a reliable design agency you may get a multifunctional web resource with simple navigation, intuitive UI, and top-notch UX. Besides, the experts will be able to set up SEO correctly resulting in a better ranking. Whatever, start with discussing your needs and purposes and move on to prototyping in the early stages of cooperation.

You might have already understood that you’ll have to trust the design of your blog on the whole team of specialists like developers and web designers. Building a website from scratch will cost you a lot. Over time, you’ll need brand new functions and updates for your blog. Being non-techie or IT novice you may need to seek help from specialists again. Of course, any further updates will result in extra investments. This is one of the most significant drawbacks for those having a limited budget.

However, you have one more option to choose from. Let me tell you more about ready-made solutions in the form of website templates. Using pre-designed theme you can create an effective travel blog on your own without touching a single line of code. It is usually supplied with literally the endless number of functions intended to make the process hassle-free. Besides, most of them are SEO optimized resulting in a better ranking and visibility on search engines.

Even if you choose WordPress themes travel , it doesn’t mean yet that it will bring you success. Still, running a blog built on a ready-made template is hard work. Any mistakes made while setting up SEO, adding the content of poor quality, or missing any essential information may be reasons for failure.

Blog WordPress Themes. How to Pick the Appropriate One?

When looking for premium WordPress themes, it is critical to find a reliable provider offering high-quality templates. Without hesitation, I can recommend the TemplateMonster marketplace. This is a unique platform gathering the unlimited number of creative web products for all occasions under one hood. Depending on the goal your travel blog accomplishes, the price of WP themes varies from $50 to $80.

Still, you may wonder how to choose the appropriate template for your purpose. Let’s consider the steps.

1. Make a list of what you want to see on your resource (whether you need blog or store functionality, sliders on the homepage, SEO optimization, or adaptive design).
2. Check if the template comes with technical support including documentation, online consultation, and community support (let it be your safety net in case any issues occur during installation or further use).
3. Make sure the travel WordPress theme has an intuitive interface and powerful admin panel (where you’ll be able to make any changes with no hassle).
4. Check if the template includes page builders and other options, plugins, and extensions for content building (they will help you establish the site without writing code).
5. Make sure the theme is responsive and adaptive (in case you’ll want to provide top-notch user experience and reach a wider audience).

A Good Design and Your Website Effectiveness

Among factors affecting the usability of your blog are those influencing its form as well as functionality. Let’s consider what makes good web design and affects your website efficiency.

• Good web design always meets users’ needs.
• The information is easy to read and digest.
• The chosen typography is easy to read online.
• Complementary colors used together with contrast ones for text and background, vibrant – for buttons and CTAs, and white space enhance UX.
• The images are high res and correspond to your purpose. Using infographics, videos, and graphics improve communication with visitors.
• Logical page hierarchy, using bread crumbs, and designing clickable buttons make navigation more effective.
• Grid-based layouts lead to good-looking web design.
• High loading speed decreases the site abandonment etc.

Keeping these rules in mind while establishing a blog you have a chance to make it effective and reach a wider audience which you can convert into clients in the future.

Closing Thoughts

Building a travel blog is a way creative process which however requires at least basic knowledge and skills to obtain the effective result. The major challenge is to satisfy the needs and demands of your target audience. This can easily be done with a good design. If you tend to create a travel blog from scratch or upgrade the existing one, this post should give answers to many of your questions. In case you have the details to add, feel free to leave feedback in the comments below.