Still on the outdated BigCommerce Blueprint framework? With faster page speed, cleaner code, and better SEO, now’s the time to move your BigCommerce site from Blueprint to the Stencil framework. Whether you want to recreate your existing design or try something new, we have a Stencil move package for your business.
Stencil isn’t just a different BigCommerce framework: it’s a better overall foundation for your ecommerce site. As BigCommerce releases new features for Stencil themes, the list continues to grow.
Over 50% of users will leave a website if it doesn’t load within 3-5 seconds. Stencil uses modern standards and efficient code to speed up web pages, helping you build trust and drive conversions.
Stencil works better because its actual code is better – more minimal, more efficient and easier to customize. For merchants, this means less cost associated with setup and customization.
It's inevitable that merchants on Blueprint will experience broken features and functionality, leading to a decline sales. With support for Blueprint fading, it's imperative you take action and update.
More payment options, trust seals, and other marketing features allow merchants to customize storefront attributes easily. Use Stencil's Page Builder tool, to update theme’s colors, typography, banners, and more with no coding required.
With an update to Stencil, you can have confidence your online store is optimized to engage and convert shoppers across all devices. Stencil uses modern standards and efficient code to scale better on phones and tablets.
Factors like page speed, efficient code, and mobile-responsiveness all affect page ranking. Thanks to its many baseline improvements, Stencil is optimized to boost your site’s SEO and make it more visible across search engines.
We hired IntuitSolutions to build our customized BigCommerce store from the ground up. We had no previous design, no experience with BigCommerce, and really no experience with a storefront. We had been selling through the online marketplaces for years and decided it was time to start promoting our brand and driving traffic to our own site… Intuit laid out a full project timeline and worked with us to iron out these details. They were patient and extremely thorough in explaining even the most basic fundamentals of putting the storefront together.
I needed some bespoke work done on our BigCommerce site, and was looking around when Intuit Solutions kept coming up as a knowledgeable company. I dipped my toe in the water with them, and was blown away by their helpfulness and their in-depth expertise. Where I may fear to tinker with the details of our site, this lot will have the bonnet (hood) up and be deep-diving into code in order to optimise everything. Make no mistake, Intuit Solutions know what they’re doing, so you can take comfort in your site being in safe hands.
We recently moved our website to the Big Commerce Stencil platform. Our site required some fairly extensive customization and Intuit was able to help us through the integration process with no problems. They were great through the whole experience. We had a very successful launch in September followed by a great Holiday sales season. I’d recommend them to anyone! A+++
They have done several development projects, SEM, SEO, and other random projects. Always a pleasure to work with, thoroughly scoped out the projects, and completed professionally.
I’ve been working with IntuitSolutions for nearly 3 years and only have great things to say. They’re a tight-knit group of responsive, passionate, and intelligent developers and project managers who have made my professional life just that much easier. When we need to execute quick changes or backend pivots on the fly, they’re always available and ready to take on the task…If you’re looking for a partner with true BigCommerce experts, look no further. IntuitSolutions has got you covered.
Stencil is BigCommerce’s current theme platform that incorporates the latest best practices in technology, design standards, conversion, and SEO. A common misconception is that Blueprint and Stencil are just different styles of BigCommerce theme. In fact, the differences between them are much deeper. Stencil and Blueprint are different frameworks.
A framework is the foundational code base that a website is built on. It’s like the engine that powers a car. Stencil outperforms Blueprint because its “engine” (code base) is better.
As stated by BigCommerce, “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.”
When it comes to Blueprint and Stencil, the actual code is different. Our developers have to “translate” what was coded according to Blueprint’s conventions into Stencil’s framework.
Stencil’s code is written in a much more modern and developer-friendly way than Blueprint’s. Not only will this improve site performance and SEO, it will save you money in the long term when it’s easier for your developer to make further changes.
This is a common misconception based on a misunderstanding about what it actually takes to move your site to Stencil. Site migrations – such as moving a site from another platform, like Shopify to BigCommerce – can interfere with your rankings if not done properly (and, even when done properly, usually still have a temporary negative effect).
But a Stencil move isn’t a migration. It’s the same website and platform, just with better code. So, while Google’s bots will have to recrawl it, they’ll encounter streamlined code and a user-friendly, modern design. This will actually boost your SEO rankings, which has been the experience of our clients that move to Stencil from Blueprint. Across the board, we see that clients who move to Stencil see SEO improvements.
This is one of the most common questions that we get from merchants thinking about moving to Stencil. The short answer is: yes, you can, and they’ll perform even better on Stencil. The slightly longer answer has to do with how these customizations are developed.
Stencil allows developers to create customizations by making modifications to its base code. This is the best and most efficient way to create a customization. For example, if you wanted a make a change to your your Shopping Cart, the developer can write code that works with Stencil to tell the Shopping Cart what to do.
This isn’t the case with Blueprint, where the code base cannot be modified. Customizations written on Blueprint must work against the existing behavior, resulting in bulky code that slows down your loading time. For example, if a developer wanted to make a change to the Shopping Cart on Blueprint, they couldn’t just tell Blueprint to do it. They’d have to stop Blueprint from executing its default behavior before being able to tell it to do the new behavior. This is far less efficient.
How do you know which platform your BigCommerce store is on? The easiest way to tell is by going to the back office of BigCommerce, and within the control panel go to the “Storefront”. If you see “Footer Scripts” listed then your store is on Stencil, if not, then you are on Blueprint. Learn more about how to check your theme here.
No! This is one of the most convenient things about a Stencil move. Migrating from Blueprint to Stencil does not mean you will need to reimport all of your data or rebuild products, categories, etc. Since it’s the same website, your inventory can stay the way it is. Moving to Stencil only affects the customer-facing part of your site.
Unfortunately, there is no copy and paste method to convert a store. You can simply choose and apply a theme, but that does not guarantee that everything on your store will work correctly, and any customizations that you currently have will not exist anymore.
The best method to convert a store from Blueprint to Stencil is by getting BigCommerce experts to rebuild your BigCommerce theme on Stencil.
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