If you already have Bigcommerce store but want to make your website faster, better and more accessible then it’s best time to upgrade to new stencil theme. It will bring number of benefits to old BigCommerce store owner by switching to new stencil theme.
- Speed Performance
Speed performance is a measurement of how quickly a webpage opens on different hardware devices such as desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile. Customers attract towards fast loading sites thus produce more conversion rates. Bigcommerce uses bundler to reduce network request for JavaScript and CSS files. For image optimization bigcommerce uses Akamai’s automated image optimization technology. - AMP (Accelerated mobile pages)
Bigcommerce allow store owners to enable AMP for category and product pages which help to boost ranking on Google Search. AMP pages appear with an icon while searching on a mobile device. AMP enables the development of ads and websites in such a way that it works high in performance and loads fast on all devices. - Dynamic Image processing with Akamai image manager
BigCommerce stores with Stencil themes come with Akamai Image Manager. This will automatically optimize all images on the store for the best combination of size, quality, and file format suited for each image and device and offloads the artistic transformation of derivative assets to the cloud. - Store Credit card management system
In stencil themes user can save their card details for future purchase on the website which simplify the purchasing process for regular users on the store. - Local development
Stencil CLI enables local development and customization with the API keys. So, we can easily do development on local machine without affecting the live store. Once the development is done we can bundle the theme and upload using theme uploader in Bigcommerce admin. Without interrupting the functioning of the live website developers can update the site and once the copy of the theme is created on local machine the changes are done right there. - Theme editor
Bigcommerce stenciltheme comes with theme editor which helps store owner to make changes using the simple interface. You can change color, number of products, fonts etc. using editor. Also, new editor options can be added by developer for store owners that eliminate the dependency on developers for small changes. Each theme follows best practices in terms of design, conversion and search engine optimization. - Localization
Legacy, blueprint themes don’t support multilingual stores but stencil theme comes with localization option. So, you can update entire website content in different languages of your choice. - Build for mobile
Its responsive design optimized for mobile, tablet and desktop browser. - Access to stencil only apps
There are tons of app available for different features for stencil themes which allow store owner to add new features without thinking about the limitation the hosted platform. - Access to new Bigcommerce features
All above features are available only for stencil theme users. If you are still using the legacy, blueprint theme it’s a right time to switch to new technology. The added features on stencil include Customization, Scalability and security, unparalleled bandwidth and fast speed and extensibility and integrations.
