Times have changed, though, and now there are plenty of good-looking themes — but don’t judge a book by its cover — poor coding, slow speeds, search engine optimization issues and poor user experiences still exist.

To help you pick a great website theme for your particular business needs, make sure to take into account these four things.

1. K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Keep it simple, stupid” — one of my favorite sayings when it comes to modern-day website design. Several years ago, websites were very loud, and companies wanted flash animation, fancy features and other bells and whistles. Now flat designs with a minimalistic approach are popular.

2. Developer support availability

This is something that not many people take into consideration when selecting a theme. It’s very rare that you will be able to install a theme and not have to make updates as the platform you are using changes and advances. This could be due to feature changes or security issues — no matter what you are using, from WordPress to Shopify and every other option, you need to anticipate there will be updates required to keep your theme from breaking.

3. Mobile readiness

Almost all popular modern-era website themes are responsive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are guaranteed to provide an excellent mobile experience. There are plenty of websites that will pass Google’s mobile test, yet provide such a poor user experience that they are worthless on smaller screens, in terms of conversion potential.

4. Available plugins, apps and extensions

It’s very rare that you will run a website theme in its stock version — you will customize the look and feel to match your brand, as well as add special features to enhance the user experience and turn more traffic into leads, sales and revenue.

WordPress has over 54,000 plugins available, Shopify has thousands of apps and WooCommerce has Extensions available to help enhance your website theme.