BigCommerce Stencil Theme- All You Need to Know

What Is BigCommerce Stencil?

Stencil is a unique theme-based search engine offered by BigCommerce. BigCommerce Stencil platform incorporates advanced features to leverage the benefits of tech-specific practices, design standards, and SEO (search engine optimization). Stencil, BigCommerce's theme platform, facilitates BigCommerce developers to build stunning eCommerce websites that engage shoppers and encourage them to make purchases using different devices. Online sellers and eCommerce developers have an array of options to choose the best e-commerce responsive template in line with the particular business plan or build a custom eCommerce site.

Eight Key Features of BigCommerce Theme Stencil Platform

BigCommerce Stencil Themes updates the changes in real-time allowing users to stay competitive. Stencil automatically updates the latest data irrespective of the device you use. The key BigCommerce Stencil features that make it a preferable choice over BluePrint. The multiple additional features provided by Stencil to create and manage more beautiful and functional online stores are-

1.      Developers Friendly: The open-source platform allows developers the verify theme codes without disturbing the cloud-based environment. It allows developers to view, test, and update the developed eCommerce stores without delivering any impact on the production version.

2.      Provides Google AMP Support: Google AMP supports to optimizing mobile web browsing and minimize page loading time. Mobile-friendly themes created by Stencil improve UX considerably.

3.      Automatic Image Optimization: Stencil is equipped with Akamai Image Manager – a strong automated image optimizer. The images resize automatically to fit any device.

4.      Support Rich Snippets: BigCommerce Stencil supports rich snippets allowing the search engines to understand the web page content faster; therefore, eCommerce stores developed over the Stencil platform are considered more SEO friendly.

5.      Page Builder Tool: Stencil’s Page Builder tool allows eCommerce merchants to customize their storefront's look and UX without having expertise in coding. Merchants can alter colors, banners, headings, typography, footer, carousel, etc by self.

6.      Handlebars.js: Handlebars.js, the lightweight templating language, allows BigCommerce developers to embed dynamic and conditional logic into storefront pages effortlessly.

7.      Support for Sass and SCSS: Stencil themes provides developer-friendly Sass and SCSS support to use CSS properties, mix-ins, and variables with the extended facility.

8.      YAML Front Matter: It allows developers to define the page content render faster with fewer keystrokes.

Stencil Framework Components

BigCommerce stencil makes some much-needed changes to the BigCommerce legacy Blueprint platform. BigCommerce stencil has three components:

1.      Developer Toolkit: It allows the BigCommerce specialists to edit themes as per the requirements in line with local marketing parameters without disturbing the ongoing operation of the storefront.

2.      Theme Editor: It empowers BigCommerce designers to customize the theme the design quickly without requiring intensive coding knowledge.

3.      Storefront: It allows theme-sellers and BigCommerce designers to get new themes, apply these to under-development storefronts, and edit for customization in a hassle-free manner.

BigCommerce Stencil Vs BigCommerce Blueprint

There is a buzz about BigCommerce Stencil among eCommerce merchants having their store developed over BigCommerce. The powerful SEO friendly features and theme integration facility make the Stencil theme a favorite choice of developers. The numbers of online stores are hiring eCommerce development company with specialization in BigCommerce development and migration support services to facilitate them revamp their storefronts from legacy BigCommerce Blueprint to new Stencil theme engine. Here are a few comparative reasons-

 When Should You Move Your Blueprint Storefront To Bigcommerce Stencil?

·        You experience a drop in SEO results

·        You experience losing competitiveness in local marketplace to get new customers

·        You experience a drop in user engagement because of low-quality UX

·        You experience a drop in the conversion rate of leads and traffic   

·        You experience high expenditure in customizing products placement

·        You experience more engagement and investment for customization for local promotion

·        You plan to add more numbers of products quickly and frequently     

6 Benefits of Upgrading Blueprint Storefront to BigCommerce Stencil

Why should you move your eCommerce store to BigCommerce Stencil? Here I list six benefits that justify upgrading eCommerce stores from BigCommerce Blueprint to Stencil-

1.      It offers more than 160 variations while BluePrint theme offers only 58 variations 

2.      It offers industry-specific themes like for grocery stores, sports stores, fashion stores, etc. 

3.      It offers faster themes optimized for peak performance (10-15% more efficient)

4.      It offers BrowserSync feature that allows to see changes in real-time

5.      It offers support for local testing through CLI

6.      It offers Cornerstone’s native AMP compliance that accelerates page speed improving user experiences

Five Stencil Supported ‘Handlebars Helpers’ That Faster BigCommerce Development

Handlebars, a templating language, facilitates developers to build semantic templates faster by using a template and an input object to create HTML or any other text format. The use of “Handlebars” powers your template do multiple things simultaneously. The Handlebars template looks like regular text with embedded expressions. Here I list five most used Handlebars Helpers that simplify faster eCommerce development over BigCommerce Stencil platform-  

1.      {{json}}: It converts a JavaScript object into a Json string.

2.      {{moment}}: It is used to calculate and format dates.

3.      {{concat}}: It is used to link to interchangeable URL and join strings from the context of a page. context.

4.      {{filter}}: It is used on the product page to determine if a custom component should be displayed within the description or with additional product details.

5.      {{jsContext}}: it is linked with the {{inject}} helper. It bridges the information on an app with a particular page’s context.

FAQs for BigCommerce Stencil

Q. Does moving to BigCommerce Stencil hurt SEO?

It is a misconception because of not having proper understanding of the process. ECommerce site migration, if not done professionally by experts, may hurt SEO prospects but move to Stencil is not a migration. It is the same website and platform but driven by better codes. When Google’s bots crawl your Stencil e-store, these assess the content faster because of better-streamlined coding and a modern user-friendly design. The result is a boost in SEO performance.

Q. Is it possible to keep add-ons and customizations after moving to Stencil?

Yes. Even your existing add-ons and customizations work better on Stencil. BigCommerce Stencil experts develop customization by modifying its base code defining default behavior telling your Shopping Cart about what to do.   

Q. Does moving to Stencil need changes to BigCommerce back office?

No. You do not need to make changes to the existing back office objects like categories, prices, descriptions, and products.

Q. Is it possible to copy the Blueprint eCommerce site to a new Stencil theme?

No. The coding in Stencil and Blueprint is different. The developers “translate” Blueprint’s codes for conventions into Stencil codes.