Themes/plugins

One great thing about WordPress as a CMS is that it’s extremely customizable. There are limitless themes and plugins available for use that allow you to create virtually any type of website that you want. Because of this, when buying a website, you’ll want to know what these things are so that you have an understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes of a site.

First, let’s consider a website’s theme.

When analyzing a website’s current theme, you’ll want to think about the cost, style, and performance of said theme.

In terms of cost, I wouldn’t recommend a paid theme at all. There are so many amazing free themes that a paid theme is simply a waste of money. If a website is using a paid theme that’s on a subscription, changing it to a free one is a way to cut costs.

For style, it honestly doesn’t matter how a website’s theme looks before you buy it. If it’s ugly or hard to read, you can just change it!

And for performance, I love finding websites that are using themes that have poor performance. Changing to a lightweight and speedy theme from a bloated one is a great way to get easy page speed wins.

Next up, plugins.

When I first started building websites, I thought the more plugins, the better. However, it’s really the opposite. You want to use as few plugins as possible to reduce bloat on your website.

If a website that I’m buying is using a lot of plugins, I’ll always consider which plugins can be safely deleted. Page builders or other visual plugins are often unnecessary and very taxing on load times — and not to mention pricey!

Now, most websites will have some plugins that are essential for their functionality. In this case, since they can’t be deleted, I’ll want to factor their cost into my evaluation, as well as their overall effect on website speed and experience and if I can optimize them in any way.

Once again, bloated websites are our friends. If they’re ranking well with poor performance, imagine how they’ll rank by providing a good user experience!