What is JamStack, Gatsby and how it can improve your Web Experience?

What is JamStack, Gatsby and how it can improve your Web Experience?

Are you tired of the constant struggle to improve site performance due to continuously evolving modern standards? Do all the server settings for various events and the security headaches because of your web resource give you nightmares?

And is the constant obsolescence of your technology stack, which causes even the best programmers to give up working on your site, making you lose faith in all the good in this world?

Well, we’ve got great news for you!

A new technique has emerged that can combine all these capabilities in one place and provide you with a fast transition from your existing platform without any significant waste of time or money.

What is JamStack?

The JAM in JamStack stands for: «J» — JavaScript, «A» — API, «M» — markup.  

Based on the decryption of the abbreviation, it becomes clear that to create a static site that won’t be inferior to a dynamic one we need only 3 components:

  • JavaScript, which enables interactivity to the site;
  • API, which is the source of information used by the site;
  • Markup, which is some kind of content generator or, as some people call it, a “template engine” that allows you to create page layout. 

JamStack is not about specific technologies. It is a methodology or approach, offering a variety of tools for the creation of static sites. It’s a new way of building apps and websites that results in better performance, a lower cost of scaling, higher security, and a better developer experience.

Why JamStack? 4 Benefits

Works Better and Faster  

It can generate pages at deploy time instead of building them on the fly. Plus, it minimizes the time to the first byte by pre-building files over a CDN.

Makes Your Site Scalability Easier and Cheaper 

You can swap one technology for another without needing to replace your whole website: no need to kill your APIs, your hosting strategy, all your builds, or the massive amount of content you store in your CMS.  

No Worries About Security

As you delegate your server-side processes and database operations, you reduce the risks and vulnerabilities of your web site.  

Makes Things So Much Easier for Developers 

Developers can now focus on the Frontend part and debugging without needing to maintain architecture. It ensures their work is done faster. 

What Is GatsbyJS?

Gatsby is a free and open-source React-based framework that helps developers build rocket fast sites and apps using JamStack. You can shift from any existing web project built on Drupal, Magento, WordPress, and more to GatsbyJS by simply re-writing all the Frontend based on React. Eventually, you’ll get a blazing fast, scalable, and safe project you can place on any CDN in any part of the world.

6 Main Benefits of Gatsby

Modern web tech, no headaches.

Use the power of the latest web technologies, such as Webpack, React.js, CSS, modern JavaScript, and more

Pull your data to build

Thanks to the rich data plugin ecosystem, you can build sites with the data you want, either from one or many sources. You can take data from APIs, SaaS services, headless CMSs, databases, and file systems, etc. and put it directly into your pages with GraphQL.

Scale it to the moon and back   

Gatsby.js is exceptionally scalable. No more complicated deploys with databases and servers, no more expensive and time-consuming setups. Forget about maintenance and scaling fears. Gatsby.js builds your site as “static” files that can later be easily deployed on dozens of services.

Your website is ready for the future

The future of the web is rapidly changing. It is mobile, rocket fast, and highly scalable. There’s no more division between websites and web apps. Gatsby.js is a universal JavaScript framework that will make your websites future-proof. 

Power up with PWA 

Gatsby.js is a Progressive Web App generator. Every site is an app, and every web app is a site. Users get a top-notch user experience and can save sites right to their home screens. Offline access, extreme speed, user-friendliness. 

Speed past the competition

Gatsby.js builds the fastest possible website. It loads only the essentials – HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and data. It pre-builds pages and puts them into a global cloud of servers, ready to be delivered instantly to your users wherever they are. This makes clicking around the site feel blazing fast. 

Gatsby’s Restrictions

If you are wondering if there are any limitations to the technology, the answer is  yes. Gatsby’s central principle of operation is the generation of static files, so this process can take quite a while, depending on the number of pages. So sites that have fewer than 5,000 pages can easily switch to Gatsby. However, those sites with 10,000 pages may need more time, advanced settings, and some hassling around to transit to Gatsby. To ensure stable operation, larger sites may need to be divided into smaller ones, so that the generation time does not exceed the allowed limits.

If you want to take full advantage of the modern technology stack, but you have a big website exceeding 10,000 pages, check out why you need server-rendered technologies in your project.

Major Cases and Uses

Today, more and more tech giants are using JamStack to ensure seamless and fast operation of their websites. These companies will undoubtedly experience supremacy over their old-fashioned competitors quite soon. 

Food Delivery & Restaurants

Impossible Foods had a monolithic CMS and problems with $$$ hosting, security problems, high maintenance costs, delayed Frontend technology, difficulties in hiring experienced tech people.

After React + Gatsby introduction:

  • + 92% page views 
  • + 61% unique users
  • 4.1M unique users
  • 26% bounce rate

Sainsbury’s Food to order

  • Less than 1 second First Contentful Paint
  • Over 200k visits per day

Coffee Collective

  • Less than 1 second First Contentful Paint
  • Multilingual
  • Multi-currency store with subscriptions

Bookings & Subscription Services

Housecall Pro went from building several pages a week to building dozens of pages a day with professional content creators. 

  • ​973% organic blog traffic increase
  • ​56% website landed on page 1 for many Google search terms
  • decreased developer time 
  • high speed of page creation 

Youfit Health Club decided to use Gatsby for its rebuild due to its proven track record of building blazing fast sites. 

Before:

With old technology, they had a slow site with a 60% bounce rate on the initial page load, which led to potential customers being lost. 

After:

From the relaunch of the website, they’ve experienced:

  • 22% increase in organic traffic
  • 50%+ increase in accessibility score & they’ve climbed in Google search ranking 
  • An immediate 10% decrease in bounce rate 
  • 60% increase in lead conversion rates  

eCommerce Stores

Stri Vectin migrated from Magento to Shopify + Prismic sCMS + Gatsby and React stack on Frontend.

After:

  • A dramatic decrease in the volumes of the codebase – from around 20,000 to around 300 files.
  • A rapid drop in hosting costs – from $2,000/month to just a few dollars per day.
  • 20% of immediate and sustained increase in organic traffic 

https://www.danielwellington.com/global/

  • A Gatsby platform is planned to support many markets and locales (currently around 40 and counting). 
  • Going down from 50k to 10k pages.
  • Less than 1-second first Contentful Paint.

Ritual

  • More advanced SEO
  • Higher page load times
  • Greater integration
  • Better code

Flamingo Shop also saw a significant improvement in lighthouse performance scores (Google’s developer tool for measuring website performance).

  • Better SEO
  • Greater performance
  • Higher page speed 
  • No additional work from the development team 
  • Improved Google search ranking – they were soon the top result for all of their branded terms with no outside consulting.
  • Minimal time on-site maintenance 
  • No or few calls to support about site issues from users 

With headless eСommerce, you’ll gain true sustainability. It’s a valuable tool for re-engaging with your customers as it brings a unique mobile experience.

Education Businesses

Design Code were looking to grow from being a site with downloadable digital books to a subscription-based e-learning platform. Because of the large volume of new courses, they needed a system that would support content growth and enhance the business side of subscriptions. 

Thanks to Gatsby, their launch was a success. They ended up with Design+Code at #1 on Product Hunt the first day of the launch and #2 for the entire week.

  • Lighthouse scores of SEO at 100
  • Best Practices at 93 
  • Performance at 97 out of 100

Corporate Sites and Content Resources

Large enterprises can use JamStack to rearrange vast volumes of data and thousands of pages into more light-weight resources and ensure it will all work lightning fast. What’s more, thanks to continuous user load, these websites require security guarantees. 

Corporations that already use JamStack:

ReactJS (the most popular basic technology developed by Facebook. Today, it’s one of the most popular Javascript Frameworks. 

Airbnb 

Capital One

Design Systems

Nike

Terms & Costs  

The terms and costs of development depend on a few significant factors: your existing tech stack and the possibility of switching to modern technologies without Backend experts.

The process: 

  • Discovery phase (up to one month)
  • Development phase (1-3 months)
  • Deployment phase (up to one month)

How much would it cost to develop a website with JamStack and GatsbyJS?

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