Enabling reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a Google-developed anti-spambot feature used on submission forms to prevent bots from signing up for accounts. The reCAPTCHA feature on BigCommerce is built into all themes available in the Theme Marketplace. If your store is using an older Stencil theme, see our developer documentation for Stencil.

If your store is experiencing lots of orders or account sign-ups that you suspect to be automated or fraudulent, enabling reCAPTCHA may help to mitigate some of that spam.

Enabling reCAPTCHA will help prevent spam on forms in your store including account sign-ups, reviews, and contact forms. To make sure you have it enabled, go to Settings › General and look under the Security & Privacy tab.

If you would like to see reCAPTCHA data in Google Analytics, enter your reCAPTCHA API key pair via the Site Key and Secret Key fields. Doing so is optional. If these keys are not specified, the BigCommerce reCAPTCHA keys will be used instead.

If your store is not live yet, you can add a reCAPTCHA prompt to your store preview landing page by checking the box for Enable reCAPTCHA on a storefront pre-launch login page.

Checkout

reCAPTCHA can also be enabled for the checkout page to help prevent bots from creating orders. It is disabled by default as it can affect your conversion rate due to increased checkout friction. See Checkout Settings in Optimized One-Page Checkout and Legacy Checkout to learn more.

Many of our current themes already incorporate v2. If you are using any of the following marketplace theme versions or higher, no further action is necessary:

Older Stencil themes, third-party themes, or custom themes are likely to still use reCAPTCHA v1. Follow the instructions in our Stencil developer documentation to update the code for your theme.

How can I tell which version of a theme I have?

If you go to Storefront › Themes, the version of your current theme will be located right below the theme's name.

If you're using Multi-Storefront, each storefront's themes are located in the storefront-specific settings within Channel Manager. See Single-Storefront vs. Multi-Storefront for more information.

Why are my customers getting reCAPTCHA errors when creating product reviews or storefront accounts?

reCAPTCHA errors can occur on product review and account signup forms if your theme is using reCAPTCHA v1. This can be fixed by updating to reCAPTCHA v2 in your theme.

If you are using your own reCAPTCHA API key pair, this error can occur when a customer attempts to create an account from the checkout page if your key pair is not enabled for Invisible reCAPTCHA. This can be resolved by creating and entering a new key pair enabled for Invisible reCAPTCHA, or by using BigCommerce's reCAPTCHA keys. See Google's documentation for more information on the different types of reCAPTCHA.

How can I tell which version of reCAPTCHA my site uses?

One of the easiest ways to tell is to go to your storefront and click the link to create an account. When you scroll to the bottom of the account signup page, you should see a reCAPTCHA box.

If it only asks for you to check a box, then it's v2. Anything else is an outdated version of reCAPTCHA and will no longer work.

Can I add reCAPTCHA to my store's Reset Password page?

In newer stores, this is available by default upon enabling reCAPTCHA on the storefront from your Security & Privacy settings. Once enabled, the reCAPTCHA checkbox will appear underneath the email address field when a customer resets their password.

If you do not have reCAPTCHA on your store's Reset Password page, you can request it by contacting our Support team. Your store must use a theme based on Cornerstone 6.3.0 or newer before this can be enabled.