Upgrade your Stencil-Based Storefront to BigCommerce Catalyst to Future-Proof your Business
Gone are the times when having an eCommerce strategy was optional. Today, even a strong online presence is insufficient; businesses must deliver seamless, personalized, and lightning-fast shopping experiences to attract and retain their customers. Customers expect high levels of responsiveness, fast page loads, experiences tailored to their preferences, easy navigation, and frictionless checkout.
The traditional monolithic architecture, with its template-driven systems, has served well in the past. But today, eCommerce sites built on these older systems struggle to adapt to meet today’s business demands. They suffer from slower performance, reduced scalability, and a lack of adequate third-party integration. They struggle to incorporate the latest features and functionalities, and future-proof businesses.
This is where upgrading to headless commerce comes in. It decouples the frontend from the backend and has APIs in its core to carry out every function. It allows rapid innovation, enhanced customer experience, and robust future-proofing. For businesses running their online stores on the BigCommerce platform, upgrading storefronts involves migrating from a theme-based legacy setup built with Stencil to a flexible, API-driven commerce solution, namely BigCommerce Catalyst.
This article outlines the need for upgrading from legacy systems to modern headless platforms. It covers the differences between BigCommerce Stencil and Catalyst, and lists the steps involved in upgrading to BigCommerce Catalyst.
What is Upgrading and When Should You Upgrade?
Upgrading in eCommerce refers to the process of migrating your storefront from a legacy architecture to a more modern one. Upgrading does not involve completely discarding the platform or redesigning everything from scratch. In fact, it retains your trusted backend systems while transforming the storefront into a future-ready experience.
For some businesses, even legacy platforms with monolithic architecture are adequate, especially when they do not require scalability, frequent UI design changes, new functionality and features, or third-party integrations. So, it is crucial to identify when you should upgrade your storefront.
By observing the following signs, you can identify the need to upgrade. You need to upgrade your storefront when:
- Your storefront performance is not enough, and your site suffers from lag and slow loading times, affecting conversions.
- You wait for developers to implement necessary updates and delay/postpone marketing campaigns, missing precious conversion opportunities.
- Your site cannot handle an increase in traffic as you scale, and your storefront architecture is holding back growth.
- You are losing your competitive advantage due to your struggles with technical debt, as competitors outperform you, delivering faster and more engaging user experiences.
Upgrading vs Replatforming vs Rehosting
Upgrading, replatforming, and rehosting are similar terms in eCommerce. However, they have significant differences and are suitable for different use cases.
| What does it mean in today’s eCommerce landscape? | When is it suitable? | |
Upgrading | Upgrading involves modernizing the storefront while retaining the backend platform as it is. The site is migrated from an older architecture to a newer one, and the platform remains the same. Example: BigCommerce Stencil to BigCommerce Catalyst | When you have a stable, solid backend, but your frontend needs rapid development and iteration, speed, and design flexibility |
Replatforming | Replatforming involves migrating the entire eCommerce site to a completely different eCommerce platform. Example: Magento to BigCommerce | When your backend is limited, preventing you from scaling and adding features and integrations |
Rehosting | Rehosting is the process of migrating an existing architecture to a new infrastructure without redesigning or making modifications to the storefront. Example: Moving the setup of a storefront built on Magento and hosted on-premises to cloud infrastructure like AWS, without changing application code | When your architecture and applications are stable and performant, but your infrastructure is creating bottlenecks, you should rehost |
Why Upgrading is the Best Option for Many Businesses
While replatforming or rehosting may be necessary for some businesses, upgrading is the best option for most. Replatforming can be disruptive, expensive, and time-consuming, and rehosting cannot solve your architectural problems.
Upgrading strikes the perfect balance between the two. It brings the latest features and functionalities, enhancing customer experience and team productivity while retaining your existing backend setup and the resources you have invested in it.
Benefits of upgrading storefront include:
1.Enhanced Performance and Speed: You can achieve lightning-fast page loading, enhance customer experience, and improve conversion rates and SEO with modern frameworks like Next.js.
2.Increased Developer Efficiency: Developers can innovate faster and spend less time and effort on maintenance, with the headless commerce architecture.
3.Simplified Marketing: Marketers can develop and deploy landing pages, campaigns, and content without any technical assistance from developers. Tools like Makeswift make it possible for non-technical teams, giving them autonomy and agility.
4.Scalability: API-driven commerce enables you to integrate your existing business systems, such as ERP, CRM, marketing automation tools, etc., using APIs. With these integrations, you can scale your operations effectively.
5.Reduced Risk: Since upgrading does not entail complete migration, only the storefront architecture changes; the backend remains intact. So, the transition is less disruptive and carries reduced risk of data loss and other problems compared to replatforming.
For businesses that built their storefronts on BigCommerce Stencil, upgrading to BigCommerce Catalyst makes a significant difference in terms of adaptability to fast-changing market conditions while maintaining operational stability. So, how are these two different?
BigCommerce Stencil vs Catalyst
| Feature / Aspect | BigCommerce Stencil | BigCommerce Catalyst |
| Type | Theme-based architecture/ templating system | Headless storefront framework built on Next.js and React |
| Architecture | Monolithic architecture with frontend tightly coupled with the backend | API-driven composable headless architecture, with frontend decoupled from the backend |
| Technology Stack | Built on Handlebars.js, SCSS, and JavaScript | Built on Next.js, React, and GraphQL Storefront API |
| Storefront Designing Tools | Theme editor for basic customization of Stencil themes | Visual CMS tools (Makeswift) and other modern frontend frameworks for a fully custom design |
| Hosting | Fully hosted directly on BigCommerce, with built-in CDN and caching | Backend hosted on BigCommerce, while the frontend can be hosted independently on cloud platforms like Vercel, Netlify, or custom servers |
| Integrations | Limited to apps and extensions available in the app marketplace; hard/impossible to achieve deep integration with modern SaaS tools like headless CMS, advanced analytics, CDPs, or ERPs | Can directly connect third-party tools like Contentful (CMS), HubSpot (CRM/marketing automation), Segment (analytics/CDP), or even custom back-office systems via APIs and SDKs |
| Flexibility | Limited customization of storefront; template-driven | Highly flexible, component-based, API-first |
| Performance | Good performance via CDN and caching | Optimized performance with SSR, SSG, and edge deployment |
| Marketing Tools | Content changes require developer input and intervention; takes time | Visual page builder (e.g., Makeswift) enables marketers to manage content and the pages autonomously without developer support |
| Best For | Small to mid-sized merchants with simple needs and limited resources, prioritizing initial setup speed over long-term flexibility | Mid-market players with scaling requirements to enterprise merchants needing scale, customization, and speed |
While Stencil works for smaller merchants, Catalyst is the future-ready choice for ambitious mid-sized companies and large enterprises that want a performant, flexible, and scalable headless commerce platform.
8 Steps to Upgrade from BigCommerce Stencil to BigCommerce Catalyst
1. Audit Your Storefront
Take an audit of your storefront and identify its current limitations, such as slow site speed, performance issues, inability to integrate your business systems, limited design capabilities, or challenges with content management. Assess whether those limitations and challenges can be addressed by upgrading to BigCommerce Catalyst. If you are a large enterprise, or a medium-scale business with plans for expansion into new markets, product categories, or a previously unreached audience, then BigCommerce Catalyst will suit your needs.
2. Define Your Strategy
Once you identify your needs and set your goals, prioritize your upgrades. Since upgrading to BigCommerce Catalyst does not involve migrating your backend, you can plan your migration in phases by gradually adding third-party tools and integrations. While you must redesign your storefront on BigCommerce Catalyst since you cannot carry over the elements from a BigCommerce Stencil storefront, you can still plan a phased rollout for different regions or products. It will ease the transition process. In contrast, you can also do a full migration.
3. Set Up the Catalyst Starter Project
BigCommerce Catalyst provides a starter project, a pre-packaged storefront with all the core features and components required to run a eCommerce website out of the box. It includes core eCommerce components like product listings, checkout, shopping cart, and account pages. With this starter project, you do not have to design everything from scratch; you can use BigCommerce’s official CLI (Command Line Interface) to get this project and start customizing the codebase instantly. The project has built-in connections to BigCommerce APIs, so your store talks directly to your backend.
4. Customize and Integrate
You can start customizing the storefront and tailoring your UI by building React components based on your brand’s design guidelines. You can add all your third-party tools and integrations, such as checkout, product catalogues, and marketing automation, and connect them with APIs. You can ensure efficient data delivery by configuring the GraphQL Storefront API.
5. Empower Your Marketing Team
Ease of managing the site and adding content to it is one of the most significant benefits of BigCommerce Catalyst. Non-technical staff, including the marketers, can design campaigns and add content using the Catalyst visual editor with some training. This reduces bottlenecks, accelerates campaigns, and gives marketers complete control over content creation.
6. Test Thoroughly
Test your site and compare its performance with the previous Stencil-based storefront. Also, benchmark its performance against the competition. Conduct user acceptance testing and ensure SEO and accessibility compliance. Verify whether the site has met your objectives and whether it will deliver all the benefits of migrating from BigCommerce Stencil to BigCommerce Catalyst. Tweak the site to meet the goals and prepare it for launch.
7. Deploy and Launch
Once you have thoroughly tested the site and ensured its effectiveness, you can deploy it via platforms like Vercel, which enable global scalability, edge caching, and lightning-fast performance.
8. Monitor and Optimize
Constantly monitor the performance and analytics of the site, and refine the UX based on the insights. Future-proof your site by adding new integrations that enable new features and functionality. Look for any drop in performance and optimize page speed.
This structured approach ensures that businesses not only migrate successfully but also unlock the full value of BigCommerce Catalyst.
Final Thoughts – Future-proofing with Catalyst
The eCommerce landscape evolves fast, and businesses need a next-gen API-driven commerce platform to keep up and accommodate future needs. Legacy systems like Stencil cannot keep up.
For most businesses, upgrading storefront from BigCommerce Stencil to BigCommerce Catalyst makes a significant difference. It does not have the risks associated with a full replatforming to an entirely new system. At the same time, it offers all the benefits of a modern headless platform without the complexity. It enhances speed and performance, as well as agility, scalability, and autonomy. It enables personalization and innovation.
By leveraging the flexibility of a headless platform, the power of API-driven commerce, and the ease of marketer-friendly tools, you can future-proof your business for the next decade with BigCommerce Catalyst.
To upgrade your storefront with BigCommerce Catalyst from Stencil and future-proof your business, contact Arizon Digital. With a dedicated team of experts and a proven track record of successfully migrating numerous online stores to BigCommerce Catalyst, Arizon Digital offers platform upgrading services tailored to meet your unique business needs.
FAQs
1. What is the difference between upgrading, replatforming, and rehosting in BigCommerce?
Upgrading involves modernizing your storefront while keeping the backend intact. Replatforming involves migrating your entire online store to a different eCommerce platform. Rehosting involves migrating only the hosting infrastructure without significant architectural changes.
2. How do I know if my Stencil storefront needs upgrading to Catalyst?
Slow performance, limited flexibility, or delayed marketing campaigns due to slow development are symptoms of a site that needs an upgrade. If you want to scale in terms of size, traffic, and reach, or integrate advanced tools, you will benefit most from BigCommerce Catalyst.
3. Is BigCommerce Catalyst only suitable for enterprise businesses?
No. Catalyst is suitable not only for enterprises but also for fast-growing mid-market merchants who want to improve performance and reduce dependency on developers.
4. How long does it take to upgrade from Stencil to Catalyst?
A complete migration to Catalyst typically takes weeks to months, depending on the complexity of your storefront, integrations, and custom features.
