Kadence Divi WordPress Themes

Two Stellar WordPress Themes for Coach Websites

Kenn Schroder

Two great WordPress Themes that I’ve been using for creating coaching websites are The Divi Theme (opens in new window) by Elegant Themes and the Kadence Theme (opens in new window) by Kadence WP.

In business, it’s good to stay focused.

I’ve finally figured out why I love them both, can’t get go of either, even though I want to force myself to use ONE because.

In productivity and business, you’d best use one of the themes (both will do the trick well). So my biz-success-devil on my right shoulder tells me to just talk about one. My technical side.

The heavenly-creative-angel on my left shoulder says go play with both. My creative side.

So I’ve learned that I’m split personality. Heh 😉

Really, the way I’d have YOU CHOOSE which one to use is simply this:

  • If you’re a visual, artsy person, and creative mind go with Divi.
  • If you love the tech, slickness, less-is-more (which is also a beauty unto it’s own), go with Kadence.

Let me share some of my experiences with both …

The Divi theme I was turned onto a few years ago.

I was looking for a simple, cutting-edge, easy-enough-to-use, and fun theme that I could let myself get lost in.

In researching, I often play with technology, see how it’s marketed presented. Is what I’m being sold what I’m getting? And Is it what I need? And if they do a good job of that, I buy.

What I love about Divi (opens in new tab):

  • Their marketing and inspiration about the product, clean, good, positive, elegant.
  • The “front end” design tools. It’s a WYSIWYG, meaning What you see is what you get. It’s clever, slick, logical.
  • Over time they added a library, layouts and presets so you can save your designs and reuse them easily.
  • They are paying attention and improving things as they go. That’s big in my book.
  • A lot of designers/developers love Divi, so there’s a lot of stuff being created and expanded for it.

What I don’t like about Divi:

  • It’s a bit heavy on software, meaning older laptops and browers and slower speeds will make it hard to use. Though, I’m noticing it run faster lately (2021), so I think they are addressing this aspect — good on them!
  • It is “design software” for techies, so it’ll require some learning and patience. For the average web user, I’d get a course or hands-on training to ramp you up quickly. Learning WordPress is a bit of a force to reckon with, even for the most die-hard of the DIYers. If you’re going in cold to learn it, good luck. I’ve taken coaches as students in a training course, and that worked out well. You really should have someone upskil you.
  • It’s easy to get lost as there are many ways to edit things. There are lots of options under the hood.

Here are a few coaching websites that I built/updated on the Divi theme:

I’d recommend the Divi theme if you’ve got a tech thumb, patience in learning, and can get some support, a trainer, or a course to learn it.

This year, 2021, I discovered Kadence Theme for creating coach websites.

Oddly, my website here, CoachingSitesThatWork.com was built on the Canvas Theme by Woothemes who you might know by their main focus, WooCommerce, a top e-commerce theme on WordPress.

They let the Canvas theme die-off many years ago, gotta be about 10 years ago. And I had this website running on it for about 5+ years after it was defunct. A little clever coding kept me afloat without having to do a heavy time-consuming redo.

As my site got clunkier, it came time to migrate to a new theme. So, for some fun learning, I scoped out the landscape and discovered the Kadence theme.

At this point, I was mainly interested in:

  • A theme that was light-weight and fast.
  • It worked with Gutenberg, the new-ish (2018) buit-in block editor for WordPress which is replace the previous old Microsoft Word style editor. I wanted work with WordPress’s core environment minimal but essential designing. A master doesn’t use every tool, just a few ones well.
  • I could easily migrate from my dead theme, and also create new great websites with ease.

I started with Kadence blocks, a plugin that gave me the tools to convert my website quickly. I mean, like nearly instantly.

Then, I installed the Kadence theme and was nearly done with my website conversion. It was painless — perfect!

Pros and cons of Kadence (opens in new tab):

  • Pro – It doesn’t create a new editor but works off the one that’s there, so less to learn.
  • Pro – It’s lightweight and my sites run fast.
  • Pro – You only need to get the Kadence Blocks to start using it. It’s easy to get started.
  • Con – You’ll need some conceptual understanding of the settings as it’s not a WYSIWYG style but rather a bunch of numbers and checkbocks you need to click through. So there’s a learning curve (as with all powerful technology)
  • Con – The theme providers are getting excited about expanding it, which worries be because then things get slower and more complicated. So a little nervousness about losing what’s quite fabulous as it is.

Here are two coaching websites that I built on Kadence:

Both are clean, fresh, professional, and running fast.

There are a lot of themes out there.

Many themes will do the trick when creating a professional, clean, good coaching website. I love the Divi (opens in new tab) and Kadence (opens in new tab) themes.

I’m using the Kadence theme more these days as I pay attention to simplicity, speed and narrow it down to the few that matter most in my work with coaches — which is both about getting websites up and getting visible so that new clients can find you.

If you’re hiring a techie to do your design work, I’d worry more about their ability to get work done, use current tools, and communicate with you.

If you’re going to do your website yourself, I’d encourage you to get training on WordPress to speed up learning and pay a lot of attention to the content (my coaching website ebook can help).

I’d love to hear form you, comment below.

What theme are you using? Are you considering? What have you found with the various themes out there.

And don’t forget to include your website address in the comments. You’ll get a little boost in SEO for it too.

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