How to fix empty heading on BigCommerce

Steps for BigCommerce

1. Go to Storefront → My Themes → Advanced → Edit Theme Files to access your Stencil theme source.
2. Search your Handlebars templates (e.g. templates/pages/product.html, templates/components/) for `<h1>`–`<h6>` tags that may output an empty string when a variable is undefined (e.g. `<h2>{{product.brand}}</h2>` where brand may be blank).
3. Add a Handlebars conditional guard: `{{#if product.brand}}<h2>{{product.brand}}</h2>{{/if}}` so the heading is only rendered when it has content.
4. For pages edited in the Page Builder (Storefront → Page Builder), locate Heading widgets with no text in the Content field, add text or delete the widget, then Publish.
5. Use the axe DevTools browser extension on your live store to confirm the fix.

<h2>Featured Collections</h2>

<!-- If text must be visually hidden but available to screen readers: -->
<h2>
  <span class="sr-only">Featured Collections</span>
  <!-- icon or decorative image here -->
</h2>

<!-- CSS for the sr-only class -->
<style>
.sr-only {
  position: absolute;
  width: 1px;
  height: 1px;
  padding: 0;
  margin: -1px;
  overflow: hidden;
  clip: rect(0, 0, 0, 0);
  white-space: nowrap;
  border: 0;
}
</style>

What is empty heading?

A heading tag (like `<h1>`, `<h2>`, `<h3>`, etc.) exists in your page's code but contains no readable text inside it. This can happen when a developer uses a heading tag purely for visual spacing, when a theme or page-builder leaves a placeholder heading behind, or when an icon or decorative image is placed inside a heading without any accompanying text. Screen readers announce headings to blind and low-vision shoppers as navigation landmarks — when a heading is empty, the screen reader either announces nothing or says something confusing like "heading, level 2" with no label, which breaks the shopper's ability to understand or navigate your page.

Empty headings directly violate WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships) and 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels), which are legal compliance benchmarks in many countries under laws such as the ADA (US), AODA (Canada), and EAA (EU). Beyond legal risk, screen-reader users rely on headings to jump quickly between sections — an empty heading wastes a navigation stop and destroys the logical outline of your page. Google also uses heading structure to understand page content hierarchy; empty or meaningless headings weaken your on-page SEO signals and can suppress keyword relevance. Finally, conversion suffers: assistive-technology users who encounter broken navigation are more likely to abandon your store.

See the complete Empty heading guide for every platform and the full background.