If you’re a small business owner, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that one-third of internet users find local businesses online every day. If people want to discover a new spot, there’s a good chance they’ll consult the web before anything or anyone else.
However, it might surprise you that more than half of website visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on your site. For your local business site to capture interest and intrigue, it needs to look professional and engage visually, first and foremost.
WordPress users, that’s where your theme comes in. Given the importance of visual impression on engagement, your WordPress theme can mean the difference between a slow business day and a line out the door. So, let’s review our 20 favorite WordPress themes for powering local business and startup websites.
Best WordPress Themes for Local Businesses
- Astra
- Avada
- Salient
- Divi
- Sydney
- Uncode
- Massive Dynamic
- Bridge
- Entrepreneur
- X
- Corporate
- Startuply
- Grand Restaurant
- Kalium
- WoodMart
- Startit
- Linguini
- Jevelin
- Flat
- Wolverine
1. Astra
A leader in the WordPress theme space, Astra is an excellent option for local business owners in need of a powerful, stylish, fast-loading website. Built for performance, this lightweight option won’t weigh your site down with excess code. It’s also made to integrate with the Elementor and Beaver Builder page builders for drag-and-drop construction.
In addition to page builders, Astra can work with other popular plugins for ecommerce and search engine optimization. To get started quickly, dive into its multitude of full importable demo websites — there are options for many business niches, including some for local businesses. Install one and adapt it to your needs.
2. Avada
Another strong contender for the biggest and best WordPress theme, Avada has the ability to transform your rough website ideas into a fully formed online presence, complete with stunning layouts, font options, full-width images, and navigational interfaces.
Avada is a two-in-one product — alongside the theme, it includes a built-in page builder that’s acclaimed for its ease of use and the level of customization it allows. Avada also features an assortment of 83 impressive, ready-to-import demo websites for many small and local business niches.
3. Salient
For a gorgeous, minimalist WordPress website, look no further than Salient. This theme packs some of the most attractive demo sites of any WordPress theme, all yours with purchase. Plus, there are over 350 templates to build pages from scratch with little effort — leverage the modified WPBakery front-end editor to place your elements.
All of Salient’s designs are mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly for a better user experience across devices and a higher ranking in search engines, both of which are essential to get your local business on the map. Lastly, Salient comes with blogging and storefront features to extend your site.
4. Divi
Divi is a combined WordPress theme and page builder with powerful capabilities. Upon installation, Divi transforms your WordPress page builder interface into a drag-and-drop tool that lets you add just about any element you could want. This lets you craft the perfect site for your small business or startup regardless of niche, and there are over 100 full website packs designed for a range of business types.
Divi’s elements and layouts are built to be responsive, but the theme takes it a step further by letting you toggle between mobile and desktop viewing modes on the editor screen. If you’re looking to capture a mobile audience and turn them to your business, this is an invaluable benefit.
5. Sydney
Next up is Sydney, a WordPress theme for businesses and freelancers. This theme is ideal for getting started quickly if you’d rather produce a high-quality site fast instead of laboring over each and every detail. The Elementor-based theme provides what you need in terms of colors, fonts, layouts, and elements to churn out your next business site.
Sydney incorporates some nice visual touches as well. There’s a parallax scrolling option, native social buttons, flexible blog layouts, and an enhanced theme options panel where you can control your front end. Plus, being an official recommendation from Elementor can’t hurt.
Sydney offers both a free and Pro theme. In Sydney Pro, there are additional Starter Sites, page templates, footer elements, and more.
6. Uncode
Uncode has a visually stunning layout that is highly customizable, user-friendly, and completely codeless. This responsive theme best suits those creating business sites for agencies, restaurants, freelancing, blogging, magazines, portfolios, photography, and ecommerce. It’s likely that your small business fits into one of these categories, so why not give it a go?
A top seller in the ThemeForest marketplace, Uncode brings pleasing, colorful layouts to its demos and customization features. Included with the theme are over 30 homepages, 16 portfolio types, and WooCommerce integration.
7. Massive Dynamic
Massive Dynamic is a crisp and clean multipurpose WordPress theme. Centered on its own drag-and-drop Jenga Builder, the theme packs all essential features for constructing a responsive, user-friendly, SEO-friendly online business.
Massive Dynamic comes equipped with 70 importable demos to review. Download one, populate it with your site content, then take advantage of the themes WooCommerce compatibility, shortcode library, live text editor, flexible grid layout options, and builders for headers, footers, and sidebars.
8. Bridge
As the leading creative theme for WordPress, Bridge has a high bar to clear. Fortunately, the theme delivers on all fronts. Elementor and WPBakery-compatible, Bridge is focused on delivering minimal, striking websites to highlight creative work by businesses, agencies, and freelancers — this is clear from browsing its hundreds of demos.
Mobile-ready and optimized for search engines, Bridge’s layouts won’t be the perfect fit for every local business. But, if you’re the type to push creative boundaries and aren’t afraid to go the less traditional route with your site’s aesthetics, you’ll be glad you came across Bridge.
9. Entrepreneur
The Entrepreneur theme brings features you need to fuel your hustle. In addition to its page designs and layouts, this theme includes tools for scheduling and booking appointments, as well as handling payments. There’s no need to install additional plugins, saving you time whether you’re a coach, tutor, personal trainer, stylist, or any other professional with a tight schedule.
Entrepreneur is made to work with the Elementor builder. To support your site, it comes with over 20 page templates, over 40 premium widgets, WooCommerce compatibility, and a form builder for capturing leads. Lastly, the developers know you’re busy, so they’ve made installation and setup incredibly simple.
10. X
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X has made a name for itself as a truly unique WordPress theme for businesses and professionals. First off, it lets you customize the appearance of your workspace to match your workflow. This is thanks to its Cornerstone builder — exclusive to X — that gives you tight control over elements. It’s one of the best page builder alternatives for those who’d rather avoid the drag-and-drop approach.
X recently updated to a new version that revised the look of its building interface and added loopers, a tool for managing your repeating page content across your website in bulk. It also has several unique design styles, many layout and navigation options, and an extensions library that lets you customize your site even more to your liking.
11. Corporate
The name “Corporate” might imply a theme for enterprise websites, but this theme also makes an excellent companion for budding entrepreneurs and local business holders. Since startup owners need more attention, their websites must be visually appealing. Corporate meets this need by providing the fully optimized layouts that are fast, clean, responsive, and navigable.
The Corporate theme also has extensive backgrounds, sidebars, colors, shortcodes, parallax scrolling, hundreds of Font Awesome font icons, a pricing table section, and more. It’s SEO-friendly, professionally designed, and an all-around promising option for businesses big and small.
12. Startuply
Startuply is a cutting-edge theme crafted for small businesses, particularly oriented toward digital marketing and technology companies. The responsive design is suitable for presentation on any device, and its Visual Composer integration supports intuitive site-building. Startuply also functions well for online stores thanks to its compatibility with popular ecommerce plugins.
As far as features go, Startuply comes with seven homepages and 15 additional pages, the included Contact Form 7 (plus layouts and form manager), and an administrator panel for tweaking your front end in one convenient spot. Overall, Startuply might not be the most feature-dense offering here. But, for many startups, it will get a quality site quickly up and running.
13. Grand Restaurant
Grand Restaurant is a go-to WordPress theme for all things food. Whether you’re operating a high-end bistro or a food truck that’s loved by the locals, this theme will take your business online with class. Notably, Grand Restaurant offers a healthy amount of menu templates to showcase your offerings, as well as a reservation system.
It also includes benefits you’re come to expect from a premium theme: dozens of predefined page templates, a header and footer builder, a mega menu option, a WooCommerce integration, and a handful of high-quality demos with plenty of space for mouth-watering hero images.
14. Kalium
Looking for more minimalist designs? Kalium might be your best bet. This responsive multipurpose theme works well for businesses and freelancers who appreciate whitespace and want a website with visual impact. Powered by the WPBakery page builder, you won’t need coding experience to start from scratch or build off of an imported demo.
Don’t let the sparse visuals fool you, though — Kalium includes over 100 customization options and a wide range of options for building product showcases, portfolio sections, blogs, and stores. No matter your business, Kalium’s impressive designs and lightweight build could be just right for you.
15. WoodMart
The WoodMart ecommerce theme not only serves thousands of online stores, but can also support many other kinds of local businesses. It features more than 70 layouts for new site owners to quickly launch a professional website, whether you’re in the business of furniture, fashion, or even real estate.
WoodMart supports AJAX live search, header and footer customization, and integrations with leading plugins (including Elementor and WPBakery). In addition, WoodMart is light on code for better performance. Retail shops should definitely consider this theme, but those in other spaces may be drawn to WoodMart’s offerings as well.
16. Startit
Startit is our second WordPress theme dedicated to startups. Technology companies on the rise can leverage this theme’s many features, from its 21 homepages to its highly customizable page and navigational layouts to its integrations with Elementor and WPBakery.
Until you have the time to go all-out on your website, Startit gives you a solid foundation. Its demo designs are clean, modern, and professional, but don’t overwhelm users with gimmicks. Instead, this theme leaves it up to you to fill in the content and sway visitors.
17. Linguini
Before I get too hungry, let’s check out one more restaurant theme. Linguini is a favorite among WordPress restaurateurs serving up desktop and mobile-friendly layouts for your homepage, contact page, about page, and, of course, your menus.
Linguini also includes an intuitive reservation system and a system for posting and promoting your events, both reducing the need for additional plugins on your site. There are three demo sites to preview: Winery, Restaurant, and Bistro. All are sophisticated and sure to attract new patrons.
18. Jevelin
Rather than go the generic route with its demos and designs, Jevelin has taken the care to craft some exquisite pre-built sites for its customers. It’s worth perusing its demo list to get a sense of what I mean — any of them would make a strong base for a local business looking to grab attention.
Jevelin is another theme powered by WPBakery and based around drag-and-drop functionality. It also supports WooCommerce stores and lead capture with Contact Form 7. The element selection is also impressive and includes animations, video backgrounds, image carousels, maps, and social media buttons.
19. Flat
When it comes to WordPress themes, it doesn’t get more straightforward than Flat. This theme makes strong use of bold solid colors and clear text to make its impact. As users scroll down the page, the content can have various transitional effects such as fade-in, slide-in, drop-in, and fly-in. You’re also free to outfit your homepage with timelines, a team section, image galleries, and testimonials.
For ultimate simplicity, the Flat theme is a strong contender. Plus it’s backed by the Themify Builder, a well-known drag-and-drop page builder that lets you make your site as sparse or feature-rich as desired.
20. Wolverine
Wolverine is as catchy as its name. Its design is oriented toward a cozy, minimal feel that makes heavy use of grids and whitespace. This approach suits fashion brands and local retailers well, creating an air of comfort that visitors can feel immersed in.
Wolverine’s visuals set it apart from the rest, and its additional features are more consistent with what we’ve seen: WooCommerce compatibility, mobile-friendly design, a decent selection of demo imports, a Google Fonts integration, and handy elements like sliders and mega menus.
WordPress Themes to Grow Your Audience
Looks aren’t everything — ultimately, people will fall in love with the quality of your product and service, as well as your commitment to delighting your customers.
Still, the simple truth is that a professional-looking site will lead to more engagement, which in turn results in more conversions and customers. These days, it’s never been easier to launch a website of your own with WordPress. Any of the above themes can bring your business to life online. Now, it’s up to you to pick one off the shelf.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
