I'm a web designer working for a cctv company. the website is built with Joomla CMS and i'm working on it for almost 2 years. i have seo and speed problems with the template. i'm considering changing the template.
what items should be considered when choosing an eCommerce template?
what are the best tools to check the template seo-wise and speed-wise?
what else should be checked aside speed and seo?
what template providers do you recommend?
Speed
Speed is probably the main consideration when choosing a template for an e-commerce site as website visitors will browse away if they wait too long. Tools such as https://gtmetrix.com and https://tools.pingdom.com can provide a rough idea of the performance of a template. Run the speed test as close to the location of the demo website by choosing an appropriate server location when running the test. (Create a free account on GTMetrix to be able to choose a server location).
SEO
SEO features (page titles, page headings, meta descriptions) are built into the Joomla core rather than the template although some templates implement these poorly and should be avoided (e.g. early Artisteer templates implemented the page heading as a H2 heading rather than a H1 heading. There are also many third party extensions that can help with SEO.
Other Considerations
Choose a template from a template developer that offers ongoing support and updates so you are not left stranded when there is a major Joomla update etc.
Some templates are specifically designed to integrate with one or more e-commerce extensions and this may be useful if you are using one of the more popular e-commerce solutions.
Template Recommendations
Recommending specific templates may turn this into a community poll so all I'll suggest is to choose a fast template from an established template developer. It doesn't have to be a template specifically designed for e-commerce but any e-commerce extension specific styling is probably a bonus.
