Review: Hazel – Multi-Concept Creative WordPress Theme

Blair Jersyer Creative Feb 16, 2020

Hazel is one of the most popular WordPress themes on the Envato platform. Present on the latter since July 2014, it has over time impose oneself through her 3 editions (Original, Gold and Glass).

It’s a theme multi-concept, creative and customizable at will. With a little more than 35 demos and an impressive number of functionalities, it seems with the experience gained over the years conquered the hearts of many customers. And this, despite the slightly high price of this theme. This price is worth it? It’ll be a question for us today to revisit this theme in order to experience this notoriety.

Feature List

  • Responsive retina ajax
  • Parallax image / Video slider
  • Unlimited headers layouts
  • Expandable Search Field
  • WPBakery Page Builder Plugin
  • Multiple Portfolio List and Single Layouts
  • Demo Content Import with One-Click
  • Free Lifetime Updates
  • WPML Plugin Integration
  • SEO Optimized
  • WooCommerce Integration
  • Child Theme Ready
  • Video Background Sections
  • Header with Logo and Menu centered

Mobile Compatibility

The strength of a theme is in the details. And mobile compatibility is a big part of it. Because it makes it possible to judge the alignment and the arrangement of the texts and the images of the theme on the different mobile supports. At this side, the developers are up to our expectations.

Indeed, on the simulation of the environment of Samsung galaxy s5 on Chrome, we discover perfectly centered texts, proposed images to the dimensions of the device and impeccable readability of the texts. And we observed it on a demo shop extra. The above results were the same on many other Hazel demos.

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What about the breathtaking animation that we discover in the various demos on a computer screen. Varieties of scrolling not only images but also texts, transitions, subtle highlights when hovering over the image gallery, intelligent and distinct distribution of different sections of the homepage. In short, Hazel’s environment, whatever it may be for an agency, a business, a shop and the like, actually presents dynamic interesting assets.

Design Review

In terms of design, we targeted a demo of business. What we notice first and foremost is the harmony of the colors chosen. For example, the image with a strong light brown color harmonizes well with the icons of social media. The fonts used are pretty and attractive. Unfortunately, exploration stops at the home page, to see more, you must do a purchase.

Speed Test Review

The speed test we performed on the Pingdom platform gives us a very average overall result (c, 73). It is a little dark point that we noted on the theme hazel. Indeed, on the tested demos, the average page sizes vary between 1.9 MB and 2.5 MB, but also the constant requests sent to the server (71 on average). By cons, the shop demo, in particular, reveals a loading time of 1.82 s. This is correct since the loading time is 3 s on average.

The essential element that lowers the general note of the theme is the excessive redirection of URLs. These are done using HTTP status codes 301 and 302. They tell the browser to go elsewhere. Inserting a redirect between the user and the final HTML document delays everything on the page because nothing on the page can be rendered and no component can be downloaded before the HTML document arrives. It’s, therefore, necessary to avoid them.

Also, when the browser requests a static image and sends cookies with the request, the server ignores the cookies. These cookies constitute unnecessary network traffic. To resolve this problem, make sure that static components are requested with requests without cookies by creating a subdomain and hosting them.

SEO Review

In this section, it is a question for us to test the visibility of the site through its referencing. To do this, we tested one of the hazel demos on the Neil Patel reference site. And according to the results published below, the main indicators are at the top. For example, we have 321 organic keywords.

Nevertheless, there are some points that can be easily resolved. Of these, the lack of sitemap.xml files. they can boost your ranking chances by making your theme easier for search engines to explore. Follow the link below to learn how to proceed.

Customer Support Review

If there’s one thing that Hazel’s developers aren’t fun about, it’s the customer service. Indeed on all the questions asked by the customers about the theme, all were taken care of.

The average response time is one day. Of these are customers who bought the theme who are entitled. And more purchase, customers are entitled to a free 6 months of assistance.

With such courtesy in the answers given to clients and precise answers, the general appreciation can only be excellent. Indeed, of the 317 reviews left by customers, nearly 65% ​​gave a rating of 5 stars.

We would also like to point out that the last update dates back to November 2019, it’s really recent. This just shows the willingness of Hazel’s teams to provide the best product to their many customers.

Supported Plugins

The theme we are studying today takes into account the plugins. And among the most important we’ll mention Woocommerce for shops and WPML for translations. And the proof is the different versions of Woocommerce supported by the theme on the Envato Platform.

Summarize

We had to study a lot of themes here, and among these, Hazel is part of the cream. It offers demos quite accomplished, very explanatory on what they propose. It’s a complete theme on both design and mobile compatibility. As for the small difficulties encountered, you can count on a customer service broken to the task. So don’t hesitate to acquire this theme, you’ll not regret the money invested.

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