Earlier, many BigCommerce store owners used the Blueprint theme to design their online store. But, a lot of them are now shifting to BigCommerce Stencil Theme. This is because it offers advanced features unavailable in the Blueprint theme.
In simple words, BigCommerce Stencil is a theme engine that offers advanced themes for designing and personalizing online stores. It allows developers to choose from a range of 21 themes with more than 83 variations.
In this blog, we will explore the salient features of BigCommerce Stencil Themes that make it a perfect choice for developers to build stunning and high-performing online stores.
Let’s get started.
Unlocking the Power of Essential Features of BigCommerce Stencil Themes
Let’s understand the top 10 features of BigCommerce Stencil Themes in detail.
1. Developer Friendly Framework
BigCommerce Stencil themes allow you to verify the codes without disturbing any cloud-based setup.
Using BigCommerce Stecil themes, you can even test, update, and view the storefront locally without disturbing the production version. These themes are more developer-friendly than BluePrint.
2. Google AMP Supported
In this mobile-centric world, having Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) support is important.
Stencil themes support Google AMP, guaranteeing that your eCommerce store loads quickly on mobile devices. It makes your website more user-friendly and gives it a boost in search engine rankings.
Hence, with Stencil Themes and AMP, your eCommerce store becomes lightning-fast and search-engine friendly on mobile devices.
3. Seamless Image Optimization
High-quality images are extremely important in an eCommerce website, but your website will become sluggish if you do not optimize them right.
Stencil Themes provides excellent image optimization tools that compress your images without losing quality.
Stencil themes are based on Cornerstone 4.0, or the latest version that lets you use the srcset attribute to manage the responsive images.
It will automatically optimize all the images in the best size and quality suited for each image and device. It means even if you have uploaded a big-sized picture, it will be adjusted to be more manageable for online viewing.
It means your web page loads faster, giving your customers a better experience and boosting your website’s SEO. This is one of the reasons why many BigCommerce stores are upgrading from Blueprint to Stencil theme.
4. SEO-Friendly
Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for eCommerce businesses, and BigCommerce Stencil themes make it easier.
These themes are built with SEO in mind, providing customizable title tags and meta descriptions. This means you can enhance your website to appear more prominently in search results.
The clean code of these themes also plays an important role, assuring your website functions seamlessly and loads quickly, which search engines prefer.
5. Support Rich Snippets
Rich snippets are essential for boosting your online presence in search results. You can use rich snippets to offer extra details about your products, such as ratings and prices, right in the search results.
This additional information makes your products more eye-catching and helps potential customers quickly understand your offerings. It increases click-through rates, driving traffic to your eCommerce site and boosting sales.
6. Hassle-Free Customization
Customization is important for making your eCommerce store stand out and represent your brand effectively.
Using Stencil Themes, you can easily customize your site’s look and feel without coding skills. This hassle-free process allows you to modify the overall appearance through a user-friendly interface.
You can adjust colors, fonts, and layouts to match your unique style, making your eCommerce store truly one-of-a-kind.
7. Page Builder Tool
Stencil Themes has a user-friendly page builder tool that makes personalizing your website easy. With its drag-and-drop functionality, you can effortlessly design your store’s pages without coding skills.
It puts the creative power in your hands, allowing you to easily arrange elements and design a unique, appealing layout for your online store.
This tool simplifies the process, making it accessible to anyone, regardless of their technical expertise.
8. Handlebars.Js Lightweight Templating Language
Stencil Themes depend on Handlebars.js, a user-friendly templating language that streamlines the template-building process.
It is favored by developers for its simplicity, making it easy to develop dynamic templates for eCommerce stores.
With Handlebars.js, developers can quickly and efficiently design templates that adapt to different data and content. This lightweight tool is invaluable for designing flexible and responsive themes for eCommerce websites.
9. Support For Sass And SCSS
Stencil themes support both Sass and SCSS. You can use these tools to develop well-structured and maintainable stylesheets for your eCommerce store.
With Sass and SCSS, you can leverage features such as variables, nesting, and mix-ins for seamless CSS development. These preprocessors make handling and updating your styles easier, leading to more efficient and organized code.
10. YAML Front Matter
BigCommerce Stencil Themes uses YAML Front Matter, which gives complete control to developers to develop a BigCommerce store.
YAML Front Matter helps to define which store resources you want to render. So, developers can seamlessly embed only those objects needed in the eCommerce website. It also increases page speed and allows developers to define content and deliver it in just a few clicks.
Final Thoughts
At last, BigCommerce Stencil Themes provide various features and tools that make it a top choice for developers and businesses looking to design outstanding eCommerce stores.
Stencil themes offer everything you need to succeed in the eCommerce industry, from developer-friendly capabilities to SEO optimization to rich snippets and hassle-free customization.
