Stencil is BigCommerce's current theme platform that incorporates the latest best practices in technology, design standards, conversion, and SEO. It allows you to build a stunning storefront that engages shoppers and encourages checkouts on any device. Merchants and developers can choose from the best responsive ecommerce templates on the market, or build a completely custom site.
Features
Themes Marketplace
- Five free themes (one with four style variations, two with three styles, and two themes offered in one style)
- Filter themes by industry or by paid and free themes, and sort by newest or featured themes
- Preview themes with your store
Stencil Themes
- Themes optimized for various catalog sizes, verticals, promotions, and content
- Fully responsive designs optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop browsers
- The Page Builder, which allows you to customize and manage storefront attributes such as colors, fonts, and number of items displayed, with no coding required
- Drag and drop content like text blocks, images, videos, and products using widgets
- Mobile-optimized checkout designed to reduce cart abandonment rates
Theme Development
The only hosted solution to offer:
- Flexible local theme development that allows your developer to use your storefront’s assets, without disrupting your live store
- Development in languages and standards developers know and love (e.g. Handlebars, YAML conventions, Sass/SCSS)
- Out-of-the-box Browsersync to preview changes across mobile, tablet, and desktop
Stencil vs. Legacy Blueprint
Blueprint, our legacy theme framework, was built on a rigid, proprietary codebase, making it difficult for developers to customize and extend theme functionality. Stencil themes are built on non-proprietary, open-source code to minimize the learning curve for developers and to provide access to the best developers in the industry.
See the table below for a comprehensive comparison of Stencil and Blueprint themes.
| Feature | Stencil | Blueprint |
|---|---|---|
| Industry-specific themes | ✓ | ✗ |
| Theme Features | ||
| All free and premium themes fully responsive | ✓ | ✗ |
| Display payment icons in footer | Easily configured via Page Builder | Requires HTML/CSS customization |
| Toggle 'Powered by BigCommerce' in footer | Easily configured via Page Builder | Requires HTML/CSS customization |
| Add a GeoTrust SSL Seal to Your Store's Footer | Easily configured via Page Builder | Requires HTML/CSS customization |
| "On Sale" Buttons on Products | ✓ | Only on select themes |
| Toggle select social media icons in footer | ✓ | ✓ |
| Theme Configuration | ||
| In-browser access to theme template files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Download and upload theme template files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fine-tune color palette | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ability to choose custom fonts from available list | ✓ | Only on select themes |
| Merchandising controls (listed below) saved on a per theme basis | ✓ | ✗ |
| Support for Product Filtering (Faceted Search) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Number of featured products displayed on the home page | Easily configured via Page Builder | Must be configured in Store Settings |
| Number of most popular products displayed on the home page | Easily configured via Page Builder | Must be configured in Store Settings |
| Number of new products displayed on the home page | Easily configured via Page Builder | Must be configured in Store Settings |
| Number of blog posts displayed on the home page | Easily configured via Page Builder | Must be configured in Store Settings |
| Preview storefront while customizing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cross-device preview (mobile, desktop, tablet) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Preview checkout while adjusting theme configuration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Checkout Experience | ||
| Access to checkout template files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customize checkout page colors and fonts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customize “Thanks for your order” page colors and fonts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Store logo links to the homepage | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ability to add trust seals to checkout page | Easily configured via Page Builder | Requires HTML/CSS customization |
| Ability to add Google Analytics tracking code | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ability to add non-Google Analytics tracking codes to checkout page | ✓ | Requires HTML/CSS customization |
| Ability to add tracking codes to “Thanks for your order” page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Support for multiple shipping addresses | ✓ | ✓ |
| Access to Digital Wallets, PayPal Credit and other payment methods | ✓ | Only with Optimized One-Page Checkout |
| Performance (Page Speed) | ||
| Desktop | 90 (best in class) | 79 |
| Mobile | 74 | N/A |
| Responsive Images | ✓ | ✗ |
| Theme Marketplace | ||
| Ability to buy themes from third-party marketplaces | ✓ | ✗ |
