You know I recommend working with professionals to make sure that your online image looks as polished and engaging as possible.
But I also understand that sometimes, you just need to get something up there and out into the online world.
And excellent website design can take months of back and forth with a designer to tweak and perfect. You don’t want nothing up there in the meantime — you want something simple, clean, easy to navigate, and filled with only the essentials about your business and your brand.
Oh, and you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg to put it together. (After all, you’re already paying for your awesome designer, right?) You’d like it to be relatively inexpensive — or even free!
If you need a clean, responsive, professional design to tide you over while you creating the website of your dreams, look no further. I’ve rounded up a few of my favorite WordPress themes for small businesses in various industries.
Note: I don’t think a DIY template can replace a professional design. Let’s be honest, they are just never going to look as nice. But when you are just beginning to move your business into the online world, sometimes you need a simple, inexpensive solution. And sometimes, that solution is a good-looking website design theme.
Blogger
Free – Quidus
Quidus is a free, responsive WordPress that provides some customization options for those who want to play around with their design a little. These include different color combinations, six types of posts, sidebar options, and various widget layouts. It is also compatible with WooCommerce and several contact forms. It is clean, simple, and easy to use, with plenty of white space to make reading and browsing easy.
Low-Cost – Soledad ($49)
If you want to get a little fancier, Soledad is beautiful theme with tons of customization options for you to play with. There are over 2oo possible combinations of slider and blog posts for the home page, 3 sidebar layouts, 5 post layouts, and multiple styles for portfolio or gallery pages. You can play around with colors and photos, of course, but the main design is bright, white, and easy to integrate with social media or a small ecommerce shop.
Creative Entrepreneur
Free – Spacious
Spacious is a responsive theme designed for businesses. It’s ability to integrate blogging and portfolio pages make it a great option for entrepreneurs and creative businesses, while multiple layout and color options give you some room to play around and customize the look of your website. It’s also compatible with WooCommerce, making it an incredibly popular option among free themes.
Low Cost – Vulcan ($49)
Vulcan is a minimalist, responsive theme with enough customization options to make it an excellent choice for creatives and entrepreneurs. It allows you to choose between 5 different color palettes, 3 slider variations, various custom page templates, and plenty of widgets. There are also spaces for client testimonials and portfolio options. It’s a straightforward option, with a clean, professional look.
Ecommerce
Free – Pinnacle
Pinnacle is a responsive ecommerce theme that integrates several different design options. It combines ecommerce features with an elegant portfolio layout, as well as having multiple layout possibilities for your business blog. Its customization options are unfortunately limited, but it does have a great contact page with the option to include a Google map — making it a great choice for businesses that want to encourage both foot traffic and online shopping.
Low Cost – ClickBoutique ($59)
ClickBoutique offers you a WooCommerce theme with plenty of customization options, though the main layout is suited for fashion and style oriented businesses. You can choose between several custom color palettes and page layouts, as well as several different checkout options for customers making purchases. It is a mobile-friendly responsive theme — and helpfully, the main website offers several video tutorials to help you get the most out of your purchase.
Learn more about ClickBoutique.
Restaurant
Free – Auberge
Auberge is the perfect choice for a small restaurant, coffee shop, or café — responsive, retina ready, and easy to put together. The homepage options include plenty of important information that your customers will want to see quickly, while the overall theme includes several options for color and layout. It is also compatible with various JetPack plugins to allow you to share your menus.
Low Cost – Amici ($49)
Amici is an elegant theme for any restaurant, café, or wine bar. It is responsive for mobile devices, as well as having many options for customizing the colors and page layouts. The WordPress editor includes a menu generator, and the theme integrates with Open Table to allow for online reservations. The animation and transitions between pages are particularly elegant, giving the final website a very polished look for a low-cost theme.
Wedding Vendor
Free – Sugar and Spice
Though its customization options are limited, Sugar and Spice provides a simple, pretty, clean website design for any wedding blogger, vendor, or even bakery. It does have some options for different color palettes and page layouts, and the menus and sidebar options are incredibly easy to both design and navigate. It is also fully responsive, so you know you’re mobile visitors will be satisfied.
Learn more about Sugar and Spice.
Low Cost – Quinn ($79)
Quinn is a chic, bright theme designed for wedding and event professionals that allows you to showcase your work with impressive style. There are several options for customized sliders, colors, and page layouts, as well as helpful features like promo boxes to guide visitors through your pages or spotlight calls-to-action. There is also a built-in option for a newsletter sign-up in the footer, which integrates with MailChimp.
Local Brick-and-Mortar
Free – i-Excel
For a free theme, i-Excel provides an impressive variety of options, including infinite colors, custom page layouts, social media integration, promo boxes, testimonials, and SEO-enabled headings. It is mobile responsive and integrates with WooCommerce, which is excellent if you are trying to expand your local business into online shopping as well. And unlike many WordPress designs, you can switch between themes without losing your content.
Low Cost – Brick & Mortar ($44)
Yes, the theme’s name really is Brick & Mortar — which tells you exactly what kind of business it is designed for! Brick & Mortar. It’s great for personal service professionals, like tutors or teachers, or larger small businesses, like spas and florists. The homepage slider is particularly attractive, and the services lists allow you to create small descriptions that link to larger, more descriptive pages. It has several custom page layouts, as well as 35 custom shortcodes to give your site a more professional look.
Learn more about Brick & Mortar.
Financial Service
Free – Accounting Lite
Simple and straightforward, Accounting Lite is a great option for those who aren’t looking for anything too flashy or complicated in a website theme. It does have customization in the form of color and layout options, as well as several call-out boxes and excellent services spotlights. The various header and footer options also make it easy to share your contact information with visitors, perfect for a business that relies on direct client interaction.
Learn more about Accounting Lite.
Low Cost – Accounting ($59)
Accounting’s many customization features are easy to use thanks to it’s great drag-and-drop composer, allowing you to literally piece together your ideal page layout. It is mobile-responsive, with many useful elements, including contact widgets, services spotlights, various header layouts, calls-to-action, and a the ability to either quote or sell services directly through the site.
Fitness Pro
Free – Fitness Lite
Fitness Lite is a responsive WordPress theme designed for gyms, trainers, and coaches. Though the default design is a little less modern than some other free themes, it makes up for that with some color and layout customization options. It is compatible with WooCommerce, allowing you to sell products or services directly through your site if you want, and has a great slider option for your homepage.
Learn more about Fitness Lite.
Low Cost – Health Coach ($59)
Health Coach is designed specifically for coaches, fitness teachers, and trainers. It is mobile responsive and easily customizable, with a great drag-and-drop page builder interface that is easy for non-designers to use. It has several blog and call-to-action options, as well as an attractive slider on the home page and a WooCommerce compatible shop option if you sell products or services.
Learn more about Health Coach.
Photographer
Free – Fukasawa
Fukasawa is designed to put the whole spotlight on your portfolio with a minimal gallery design. It does have several customization options, though, through various accent colors, gallery layouts, blog post designs, video posts, and slideshows. It is responsive and mobile-ready, without losing too much photo quality on mobile devices.
Low Cost – Moon ($59)
Designed just for professional photographers and creatives, Moon is a highly customizable responsive theme that puts the spotlight on your photography and projects. Great features let you play with your gallery, include video posts, share your travels, connect to your social media accounts, sell your products online, and even book appointments or consultations. It also has password protected galleries that you can build for clients, and loads incredibly fast for a theme that showcases so many images.
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Still a little unsure about how to put together your best website? You might want to check out:
How to Audit Your Website for Errors and Improvements
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