Why are minimalist WordPress themes secret to faster websites?
Minimalist WordPress Themes are those that have minimal designs and are light weight by nature to give the simple and faster site surfing experience. By focusing on simplicity and performance, these minimalistic themes eliminate unnecessary bloat, ensuring faster load times and an exceptional user experience.
It is found that if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 53% of your visitors will abandon your website. This statistic emphasizes the importance of speed on any website. Being a WordPress user, it is not exaggeration to say that the themes generally play a massive role in impacting your site’s speed and design. It is also found that users tend to stay longer, if the website is simple designed and loads faster.
This is why Minimal themes are becoming one of the most explored genres of themes among other categories. With clean codes and light weight resources, various minimalist themes like Astra and GeneratePress are rising through the popularity of WordPress users.
Benefits of using Minimalists WordPress Themes
Lightweight Design
Minimal Themes are lightweight by nature. They are built with very sophisticated yet simple resources to keep the size of the theme low. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll be enjoying less features in these types of themes. You’ll have all the necessary features available in your niche themes with minimalistic approach. and design.
But one thing you’ll notice in these minimalistic themes is that they have removed some unneeded features which will greatly reduce the bloating in your website. This will also ensure the swift response from your desired clean WordPress themes and faster user’s experience.
Streamlined Codebase
One of the trademarks of being a minimal WordPress themes is to have a perfectly clean and streamlined codebase. The unnecessary CSS and JavaScript will always have a bigger load in your servers impacting the speed of the site negatively.
But Minimal Themes streamlined codebase ensures load reduction in your servers with minified CSS and JavaScript resources and faster server response.
If you have any experience in optimizing your site in terms of speed and swiftness, you’ll know that how much important it is to reduce JavaScript and CSS resources and their rendering issues. Hence, using minimal WordPress themes will ease you in doing those tasks.
Furthermore, with clean and optimized codes of the themes, it will also be easier to integrate your website with various types of plugins. This will help you to add more plugins for enhanced functionalities.
Enhanced Mobile Responsiveness
It is found that 59.45% of global traffic are mobile users. Therefore, everybody understands that their website needs to be mobile and desktop friendly. This is where responsiveness comes in stage. One of the most important aspects to utilize for virtually every website on the Internet.
Minimalistic themes are designed to be responsive for every device. One of the important aspects to be considered a ‘minimal WordPress theme’ is to be responsive in nature. If you’ve also used any website in your mobile devices, then you might’ve noticed that the sites are generally loading slower than that of Desktop.
But with other characteristics of minimalism, like lightweight designs, a streamlined codebase perfectly matches mobile responsiveness, giving you a fast-loading and responsive website even in your mobile or any other device.
Real-World Example of Minimalist WordPress Themes
GeneratePress
GeneratePress is one of the primary themes to suggest when it comes to minimalist WordPress themes. It is one of the most lightweight themes known for its speed and efficiency. With the file size under 30 KB, GeneratePress offers excellent performance when paired with caching and CDN solutions.
Example
After venturing through various sites, we’ve come across the WDW News Today website. The site is very responsive and performs well on both mobile and desktop. The site is well functioning and loads very well without any resistance whatsoever.
Upon testing on Google Page Speed Insights, we’ve found that this website also remains in green signal for every core web vitals, which is a statement in itself.
Astra Theme
Well, this theme needs no introduction. Astra is one of the most popular multipurpose lightweight themes that you can find. One of the best features of this theme is that it is completely compatible with various page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder but still gives you similar performance on speed.
Example
As per Built With, Astra has over 2.6 million live sites; therefore, it is very hard to pick a perfect website. So, we decided to do overall testing of the sites that are built with Astra.
Throughout our testings, we find out various websites with different speeds and performance on overall core web vitals. By further analyzing the content-heavy sites are a bit slow to respond and have higher waiting times for resources to be loaded. But the overall performance of every website we checked performed well, giving you a faster browsing experience throughout the website.
Hello Elementor
Hello Elementor is one of the best minimal WordPress themes built by developers from Elementor with a mobile-first approach, ensuring excellent performance even on slower internet connections. One of the best things about this minimalistic theme is its accelerated mobile pages (AMP) compatibility. This will especially help the bloggers to perform well on their rankings and aim for high places in those SERPs.
Example
We’ve selected a website named clevercarbon.io for the testing of a live website with the Hello Elementor minimal WordPress theme. The website is animated and highly designed, quite opposite of what we were looking for. But we still chose this theme because we want to see how much a minimal WordPress theme makes websites like this faster.
Prior to the tests, the performance appeared to be quite fluid (no testing was done). When browsing the website, it feels fluid. It is rather pleasing to view the information when scrolling down and its animation because the website functions similarly to a one-page parallax website.
The website is verified to be developed from Hello Elementor, as we checked from the WordPress Theme Detector Website.
Upon testing the site on Page Speed Insight, every core web vitals was found performing well except for CLS (Cumilative Layout Shift). This may be due to images, fonts and animations within the website. Otherwise, the website seems to perform well on every aspect.
The mobile version was shown less than that of advertise. But fixing some minor issues and optimizing some resources might do the trick. Overall, the website seems pretty fun and gives a proper user experience while surfing through the site.
How were the tests done?
To check if the sites are really speeding up using the aforementioned minimal themes, we’ve gone through a few simple procedures. Here’s how we did it
- First of all, we checked the websites associated with the theme using websites like BuiltWith or Similar Tech.
- Then we confirmed the use of themes using a theme detector service website like WordPress Theme Detector.
- After the website was confirmed, we used the speed testing website like Google Page Speed Insights or GTMetrix to get the page speed score.
- When the speed test was done, we checked the developer tools Network section to see the loading of resources when the site is being loaded. (You can access it by right-clicking on anywhere on the page and clicking on Inspect Elements or just clicking F12 on the keyboard and going to Network tab section.)
Tips for choosing Minimal WordPress Themes
Prioritize functional design
Minimalist WordPress themes should focus on delivering a clean, functional design. Look for themes that emphasize readability, ease of navigation, and essential features rather than flashy, unnecessary elements. A functional design ensures better user experience, faster load times, and compatibility with various devices.
Check performance tests and updates
Before selecting a theme, review its performance metrics like loading speed and Core Web Vitals. Themes with regularly updated versions are more likely to include optimizations for speed, bug fixes, and security patches. Tools like GTmetrix or Pingdom can provide insights into how a theme will perform on your site.
Do not look for excessive features
Minimal WordPress themes avoid feature bloat, which can slow down your website. Instead of choosing themes packed with complex elements or multiple built-in plugins, opt for those offering only the essential features you need. This ensures faster loading times and reduces potential conflicts with additional plugins.
FAQ’s
What is a minimalist WordPress theme?
A minimalist WordPress theme focuses on simplicity, with clean design and lightweight code to optimize performance. These themes prioritize essential features, avoiding excessive elements to enhance speed, readability, and user experience.
Why should I use a minimalist theme for my website?
Minimalist themes improve website speed, which positively impacts SEO and user retention. They offer a clutter-free experience, making it easier for users to focus on your content or services. Additionally, they are easier to maintain and often more compatible with performance plugins.
Are minimalist WordPress themes mobile-friendly?
Yes, most minimalist themes are designed to be fully responsive. Their streamlined layouts and lightweight design translate well across devices, ensuring fast load times and a seamless user experience on smartphones and tablets.
Can I customize a minimalist WordPress theme?
Absolutely! Despite their simple appearance, minimalist themes often offer extensive customization options through theme settings or page builders. You can tailor colors, fonts, layouts, and more without compromising performance.