I know it’s a safe bet to go for the best selling premium theme but, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any other choices to pick from. Especially those which couldn’t make it to the top charts!
Bridge is one such theme which deserves attention and today, we are going to find out why exactly it’s popular. For starters, it’s a premium product at ThemeForest with about 70k sales.
In last three years, the product has been updated regularly and currently it’s in 10th version. If you check the Live Demo, it will definitely look promising to you.
Bridge Theme Review
Let’s find out if this theme is really that good as 70k users believed, or not.
Highlight Features
- It has dedicated built-in support for WooCommerce along with e-commerce Demos. Ready to setup online shop in a couple of minutes!
- Visual Composer is included for free, allowing quick customizations by simply dragging and dropping elements.
- It has multiple customisation options for Header and Menu areas.
- The layout is responsive and Retina ready. Also, it uses modern technology, i.e., HTML5 and CSS3.
- Over 200 pre-ready Demos are available and the package involves one-click setup toggle too.
These are the highlight features, making the theme count good enough for the price. It’s time to get into the details to find how well these all features work together.
SEO and Performance
Proper compatibility for SEO norms has been checked by the developers behind. It’s a useless thing to look inside a modern theme, as the SEO norm compatibility will definitely be there.
I have personally worked on a blog using Bridge theme, and it managed to rank quickly, even for the competitive keywords. Of course, there are multiple other factors which are behind the SERPs rankings. But, it’s good to know that from theme’s side, everything is sorted.
To match the modern performance scoresheet, Bridge packs a bunch of tweaks under the sleeves. Also, it is not that heavy as other themes in the competition, managing to stay lightweight.
These are enough to have a good score during all performance tests, which further helps in the overall SEO score.
To further help the overall SEO score and attract more traffic, social media integration is taken care of. You don’t need to install a third-party plugin as social media buttons to quickly share a post is already installed.
If the social proof part of a blog is rock solid, there is no way that post isn’t going to rank on Google. This is because the search engine giant considers social proof as a ranking factor.
Design
Once installed, go to One-Click Import option and choose among the available 200+ Demo sites. The import switch will automatically bring the visual and functional settings from the Demo and will apply that on the website.
If you’ve custom requirements which don’t match the available Demos, then set everything using the Options Panel and you can design a particular webpage using the Visual Composer.
Visual Composer is one of the most popular drag & drop page builder tools out there. It works perfectly with the Bridge theme, as the compatibility thing is taken care of. You can click on a New Post, trigger the Visual Composer and start designing the webpage from scratch.
There are available elements which can be simply dragged and dropped anywhere on the webpage. Later, you can add details to those elements, if required, and the setup is good to go.
The 200+ Demo sites is a huge number for a theme to pack. It means you’re already sorted for most popular niches. Just import the Demo and start pushing the content.
No matter which customization you pick for the website, its layout will always remain Responsive and Retina ready. Because of HTML5 and CSS3 behind, the layout is cross-browser compatible, modern and lightweight.
From typography to parallax scrolling to custom made 404 error pages, Bridge has covered everything which is important to maintain the overall user experience. All these small elements add value to the overall user experience score, which is a make or break factor for the authority image of a blog/website.
In my opinion, there are newer themes available offering better and even modern designs but, Bridge still manages to be a good choice in 2017. Yes, even after being a three years old product!
Theme Options Panel
The Options Panel behind is one of the important parts of Bridge theme. It puts all the available features under a single roof, aligned in a way to function properly in harmony.
There is no reason why you should be looking for a user guide, just to learn to operate this Options Panel, as it is all simple. Unless you’re a total newbie!
Everything is well mentioned and properly labelled. The overall look of the Options Panel is clean and there are no performance issues, whatsoever.
It can even allow you put the website in Maintenance Mode with a single click. There is an option to reset everything and start fresh. The theme supports WordPress’s default Live Customizer but, a bunch of customization options are available at the Options Panel as well.
In short, the Bridge theme has got it all covered and the experience delivered is of premium standard. What else you expect?
Over to You
Like I said in starting, it’s a popular product but, still not in the top 5 list at ThemeForest. After going through these details, do you think it deserves a better position?
Forget the ranking, will you pick Bridge theme for your next project? Let me know what do you think in the comment section below.