2023 BigCommerce Themes Guide: Best Themes for Optimal Conversions

The best BigCommerce themes provide a positive user experience for your customers while streamlining your business needs.

By Gentian Shero

The start of the new year is the perfect time to refresh your BigCommerce theme. New year, new goals, and a new theme to help you achieve your eCommerce goals and more.

On the surface, changing your theme might seem like a purely aesthetic enhancement—meaning, how the store looks to your customers—but it’s not. Your theme communicates your brand and creates the layout for user experience.

Ecommerce businesses that care about how users navigate and interact with their sites will carefully consider their theme choice and choose themes that will improve the customer experience and brand.

So why is upgrading your theme important? Here are six reasons:

Branding

Your eCommerce theme is part of your brand. You could jeopardize buyer confidence if you’re not updating your theme every 2-3 years. Buyer trust starts with a modern, technically sound, well-branded site that can safely handle transactions.

Customer Suggestions or Complaints

If you’re gathering customer feedback—and you should—it could provide valuable feedback on what customers like, don’t like, and any pain points that need immediate resolution straight from your customers’ mouths.

Page Load Times

Want a low-ranking site that frustrates customers, causing high cart abandonment and low sales? A slow site will do the trick. Read our guide on [Page Load Post] to learn how to improve page and site speed.

Mobile Experience

Mobile is King—especially in eCommerce. With more than 50% of eCommerce traffic done on a mobile device, mobile eCommerce design can’t be an afterthought. When considering upgrading your BigCommerce theme, always think mobile first.

Navigation

Navigation on an eCommerce site should be logical and seamless. Customers should be able to move between content and products with ease. Choose a theme with navigation that helps customers easily find and buy your products.

Shopping Cart Experience

The end-to-end shopping cart experience—from adding products to cart to post-purchase thank-yous—should be a friction-free experience. Friction equals obstacles, resulting in fewer conversions and sales. Can your customers easily purchase your products from your store without jumping through hoops? If not, an upgrade is needed.

Still not sure you should upgrade your theme? Check out BigCommerce’s Critique My Site group. You can post a link to your eCommerce store there, and the community will provide valuable feedback on areas to improve your site.

Now that you understand when and why you should upgrade the BigCommerce theme, let’s look at what we’ll cover in this post:

Ready to learn more about upgrading BigCommerce themes? Let’s get started.

Where Can I Find Free BigCommerce Themes?

The best place to find free BigCommerce themes is on BigCommerce’s Theme Store. There, you can filter for free themes. As of this writing, there are five main themes with several variations, as shown below:

  1. Cornerstone:
    • Cornerstone Warm (3 styles)
    • Cornerstone Bold (3 styles)
    • Cornerstone Light (3 styles)
  2. Vault:
    • Vault Natural (3 styles)
    • Vault Cool (3 styles)
    • Vault Bright (3 styles)
  3. Roots: Original (1 style)
  4. Lifestyle: Default (1 style)
  5. Fortune:
    • Fortune Highlight (4 styles)
    • Fortune Contrast (1 style)
    • Fortune Bright (1 style)
    • Fortune Minimal (1 style)

The benefits of using BigCommerce’s free themes are:

(1) they have been tested to ensure they work well on BigCommerce’s platforms

(2) they’re easy to install, and

(3) they’re updated regularly to keep up with technology trends and platform changes.

Alternatively, you can do a Google search for “Free BigCommerce themes” to can find free themes to suit your needs. However, remember that third-party themes may not go through the same level of testing.

Now that we’ve looked at some of the free themes let’s look at some of BigCommerce’s paid Stencil themes next.

What Is BigCommerce’s Stencil Theme?

BigCommerce has two main theme platforms. The Stencil theme is the current platform, and the Blueprint theme is the older legacy platform.

But what’s the difference?

According to BigCommerce, the Stencil platform “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.”

What are the features and benefits of the Stencil theme?

E-commerce optimization: Stencil themes are optimized for small and large catalog sizes, different verticals, promotions, and content.

Responsive Designs: Fully optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop browsers

Easy-to-Use Content Management System (CMS): With The Page Builder, you can customize and manage the Storefront without coding. You can change colors, fonts, and number of items displayed.

Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Easily move content like text blocks, images, videos, and products using widgets, making updates quick and easy.

Optimized Checkout Experience: Desktop- and mobile-optimized checkout is designed to reduce cart abandonment rates and increase conversions and sales.

How do you know which theme platform you have?

In the control panel, go to the storefront menu. If you have the Script Manager in the menu, you are on the latest platform, Stencil. On the other hand, if you don’t see the Script Manager on the control panel menu and instead see Mobile Theme Settings, you are on the legacy platform, Blueprint.

Additionally, if you have any of the following themes, you are on the Blueprint platform and should consider upgrading to get the latest features:

22 Savile Row*MercanteBlack Beauty
Connecticut       AscendFresh Cottons    
IndianaCraze Boutique
AberdeenAthletic*Fun ‘n Games
ConvertDarkroomParts Warehouse*
JewelryMunchenBride to Be
AlaskaBeautification     Gift Centre
Cookies & CreamDusk & DawnPrettystore
LookzMusikBright & Bold
Artify*BedazzledGood Vibes
Covent Garden*eWorldRapid Center
CaliforniaGrease MonkeyRise
ClarityRunway*Classic Free
HawaiiClassic HipHealth and Beauty
SamonikaClassic NextHipster
Cloud StoreHome iQSugar & Mint
CoffeeWine StoreOhio
MinimalOutdoorShine
Haute ChicSammot 

NOTE: The asterisks next to the themes use the legacy Blueprint platform but have been developed for the new stencil platform.

Source: BigCommerce support: Which theme do I have?

Checkout BigCommerce’s free themes here.

If you purchased your theme from a third party site, you are most likely using the Stencil theme.

Please note: BigCommerce is not responsible and does not provide support for third-party themes. Any customer service issues should be addressed directly with the theme’s developer.

What Are BigCommerce Premium Themes?

Premium themes are paid themes. With premium themes, you get additional functionality and UX features.

Premium themes are broken into categories and you can further filter by:

(1) Collections (like small catalogs, large catalogs, or B2B)

(2) Industry (like Food and Beverage or Health and Beauty

(3) Price (free or all)

What Are the Best BigCommerce Themes?

The best BigCommerce themes will enable customers to buy from you with ease. Additionally, you should be able to easily tweak your site, like changing theme colors, fonts, and other design elements.

The best themes enable you to grow your eCommerce business.

With that said, the best BigCommerce themes will give you the following:

Design flexibility: The design is flexible enough to allow you to make design customizations on the fly. Simple changes to color, layouts, and font can freshen up a site in between upgrades without the heavy lifting of a complete website overhaul.

Safety and security: Customers buy from businesses they trust. Your theme should enable buyer confidence with trust signals like SSL certificates, customer reviews, contact information, and trust badges. These identify trustworthy and credible sites customers can feel confident buying from.

Stability: A stable site is reliable. Meaning it works when you need it to, and that means all the time. Your eCommerce platform needs to have a 99% uptime or higher. You risk losing sales and customers if your site is constantly down or burdened with technical issues.

Ecommerce Optimization and Storefront Management: With built-in best practices, most new themes allow you to scale, optimize, and manage your store easily. From an optimized checkout process to increasing conversions, choose a theme that supports your business goals.

Here are five of the best BigCommerce themes to consider:

1.    Cornerstone – Styles: Warm, Bold, and Light (BigCommerce)

2. Brooklynk (Theme Forrest)

3.    Milano (Optimized for Small Catalogs)

4.    Vogue (Fashion)

5.    Beautify (B2B)

How to Edit, Customize, or Upgrade a BigCommerce Theme

How to Edit a Theme:

1. To edit a theme, go to Storefront >> Themes >> Advanced >>

2. Make a copy of the theme

3. Save a copy of the theme

4. In the copied version of the theme, click on the Action icon and Customize to open in PageBuilder or Edit Theme Files to open the in-browser editor.

5. For Pagebuilder (Customize), click on Theme Styles

How to Update/Upgrade/Change a BigCommerce Theme:

1.    After saving your edited theme, go to Storefront >> Themes.

2.    On the copied theme, click on the Action icon

3.    Click Apply

4.    To see the changes, go to your Storefront

For more information on how to edit or upgrade your Stencil theme, go to this BigCommerce support documentation page for more details.


Need help making updates to your BigCommerce theme? With our BigCommerce development services, we can customize your theme to your specifications. Contact us today for a consultation. 

Chief Strategy Officer at

Gentian, CSO and co-founder of Shero Commerce, guides the company and client digital strategies. He's an expert in technical SEO, Inbound Marketing, and eCommerce strategy.