20 Best WordPress Themes For Small Business

Small business websites need to clearly reveal what the business is, what it does, who it serves, and where it’s located. They demand clear navigation and a functional layout.

While the best option is probably to hire a designer to create your site for you, that’s not always a practical (or affordable) option.

One extremely inexpensive or free alternative is to download WordPress, choose a theme and customise it with your own logo and content. If you or someone on your staff has a knack for computers and the web, this can be a viable option.

It can also produce very professional-looking results for little or no cash injection. In fact, with the right theme and a deft touch with small customisations, it’s not difficult to create a better result than you’d get from paying for a website from a designer at the cheaper end of the spectrum.

But what are the best WordPress themes for small businesses? That’s the question we’re here to answer. Here are the top 20 themes for creating a small business website (some themes are free; others are ‘premium’, meaning they can be bought for a moderate fee.

Vibrant CMS

Offering a choice of 20 colour schemes, VibrantCMS is an elegant WordPress solution for small business owners wanting to build a modern, attractive website. ($US70)


Thesis

Thesis is an extremely flexible WordPress theme that can be adapted for purposes as widespread as a simple blog through to a full-fledged business site. ($US87)


Revolution Pro Business

A stylish, dark theme designed with small businesses in mind, allowing for a professional-looking static homepage plus a corporate blog. ($US79.95)


WP Remix

WP Remix is an advanced WordPress theme suite offering a range of page designs and colour schemes; it’s very well designed and turns WordPress into more of a complete content management system than just a blog publishing tool. Provides a great deal of flexibility for the small business. ($US75)


Notepad

Notepad is a minimalist, clear WordPress theme designed to host a small business or brochure-ware type website, particularly businesses focused around a single professional, although it could easily be adapted for larger companies; it comes in 13 colour combinations. (Free)


Market

The Market theme allows you to easily run your own WordPress-powered marketplace (i.e. online ecommerce store). It’s easy to set up and run, and comes with numerous configuration options. ($US55)


Ecommerce

Ecommerce is another theme that allows you to set up and manage your own WordPress-powered store online, and comes with a choice of six colour styles. ($US49)


WP CODA

WP CODA is a gorgeous, unique WordPress theme perfect for a product showcase site (especially for computer software). This theme’s fluid navigation is a great way to showcase various aspects of a product or various sides to the services provided by a business. (Free)


Travailler

Travailler is designed with the small business in mind, making it easy to create a smart-looking, custom-branded, professional website with great typography and design. ($US38)


Mimbo Pro

Mimbo Pro is designed to create online magazine websites, however with a little creative customisation it could be used to showcase a company’s products and services instead of magazine stories and images. ($US89.99)


WP-Polaroid

WP-Polaroid is a modern, funky WordPress theme designed to serve as a personal website, however it could just as easily be put to use as a small business homepage, with information about the company at the top of the homepage, and a weblog of the latest news items down below. Choose from blue and pink versions, or customise with your own background image. (Free)


Colourise

Colourise is a beautiful weblog-centric theme with a large header image. If the header image were replaced with a large image detailing key information about a company or its key product, the theme could serve as a good small business homepage. (Free)


Natural Power

Natural Power features rounded corners, a dark background and a crisp, clear design. The large coloured area towards the top of the page could be customised to highlight information about your business, followed by a weblog containing the latest company news and information. You can also choose from a number of colour schemes. (Free)


Whitespace

Whitespace is a professional-looking weblog theme. Businesses that are comfortable with having their latest news and information front and centre could use this theme, and add their “About Us” details at the top of one of the sidebars. (Free)


The Unstandard

The Unstandard is an image-heavy WordPress theme that could make a high impact small business website. The ‘weblog’ area in the main column could be used to visually promote various products, while providing company information in the right-hand text column. (Free)


Wynton Magazine

Wynton Magazine is another magazine-style WordPress theme that could just as easily be used as a small business website. The key is to publish items promoting your products and services instead of magazine stories. This theme makes good use of thumbnail images on the homepage. (Free)


PocketT

PocketT is a minimalist WordPress theme which could prove attractive to a small business that wants to communicate regularly with its clients. It features a prominent “about us” text area, clear navigation, and a weblog-style news feed. (Free)


WP Contact Manager

Rather than being a WordPress theme to help create a small business website, this is a theme that can help create a more productive workplace, by providing a common area to keep everybody’s business contacts up-to-date. You just install the theme, and then start posting your clients’ contact details to keep them in a central repository. (Free)


Prologue

This is another WordPress theme that can act as a great tool to help small businesspeople run their company. Small teams collaborating on a particular project could use Prologue to effectively communicate about who is doing what and when. (Free)


Launchpad

Launchpad is a fantastic theme for WordPress, which newly formed small businesses can use when they’re in the process of creating their website, or a new product website. It’s a domain parking theme that creates a homepage saying “Welcome to ‘X’ site” and asking visitors to sign up for RSS or email alerts so they know when the site proper launches. Much better than an “Under Construction” symbol. (Free)


Don’t miss our full list of the web’s best WordPress themes, including the cream of the premium theme crop.

10 Free WordPress Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away

There are now more than 100 premium WordPress themes on the market but the quality of those themes varies greatly. In fact, some ‘premium’ themes don’t really deserve that title; they’re only ‘premium’ themes in that you have to pay to use them. In some cases, you’d have to be mad to do so.

At the same time, amazing free themes keep coming onto the market. Some of those free themes are far and away more impressive than some of those being offered up as ‘premium’ themes.

Here are 10 free WordPress themes that will knock your socks off. They’ll also blow many so-called ‘premium’ themes out of the water.

Brightness

Half magazine and half blog, Brightness is one of the most impressive free theme launches of recent times. Its modern, sleek look is reminiscent of some of the best in professional blog design, sites such as Freelance Switch and PSD Tuts.


Lightning

Lightning reminds me a lot of sites like Smashing Magazine, although it’s much more stripped back in its out-of-the box format. Nonetheless, with the addition of a custom header image and a little tweaking of the styles, this could easily become a professional, eye-catching blog theme.


Charade

Sprinkled with beautiful icons, packing visual punch and offering up stylish typography, Charade is a free WordPress theme that impresses.


Thematic

Thematic mightn’t look all that special but under the hood, this theme offers a wider range of simple customisation than pretty much any premium theme on the market.


MassivePress

With a main content column featuring thumbnails for each post, a central navigation-type column and a right-hand sidebar visually showing off featured articles, MassivePress offers a great degree of flexibility.


The Morning After

There can be little doubt that the creator of The Morning After could charge people to download. It’s a clean, mean magazine-style WordPress machine.


Overstand

Free from clutter but with beautiful visual style, Overstand delivers a magazine-style homepage combining large slugs, neat headlines and thumbnail images.


Thunderbolt

Another clean and simple magazine style, Thunderbolt offers a beautiful, customizable WordPress solution for moderate to advanced users.


The Unstandard

As the name attests, this is not your average WordPress theme. It catches the user’s attention with headlines set over the top of large images on the homepage.


Neoclassical

A three-column classic offering a central column for main content, rotating header images and picture-perfect typography.


Natural Power

It mightn’t have the flexibility of some premium themes but for stylish, modern blogging, Natural Power has all the bases covered.


Don’t miss our full list of the web’s best WordPress themes, including the cream of the premium theme crop.


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