Migrating to a new tech stack means change for the entire team, from development to content. While some team members may be excited about the prospect of moving to a new system that offers more flexibility, others may be hesitant to make the move, wanting to maintain their current workflows and toolset. This guide will break down the benefits of moving to the Jamstack in a way that will make clear why the Jamstack is an excellent choice for many use cases, even to the more hesitant team members.
#Benefits of Jamstack
There are many benefits to Jamstack, but we decided to keep it simple for this guide and highlight just three of the key benefits of the stack. I tried to look at the benefits from three perspectives, the end-user, the development team, and the content team. Each group is considered in this breakdown as they all serve as a valuable piece of the decision-making process.
Faster performance
The faster performance promised by Jamstack implementations is due to several things. First, the data is globally distributed on CDNs which serve the webpage to the client. Because the clients are able to receive the data from the CDN server which is closest to them, page load times are drastically reduced.
The second consideration when it comes to performance is that the webpages are pre-rendered and cached on the CDN servers in the regions closest to where they were called by the user. As long as there are no changes to the webpage, the CDN will serve the cached, pre-rendered site. With the Jamstack, teams can store the data close to the users, and pre-rendering the webpages create faster page load times leading to a better user experience.
Modern tooling
Modern toolsets offer more flexibility and opportunity to create a customized stack without having to build everything in-house. The Jamstack community is a diverse, far-reaching community that has built many projects in a public-facing way. Teams are able to evaluate their potential tool stacks based on community feedback but still have the freedom to build a performant stack based on up-and-coming technologies.
With the Jamstack, teams are able to build a static site with a headless CMS, modern frontend frameworks, CDNs, analytics tools, or static site generators. We dive into what an architecture for a modern website could look like in a recent post. Using the Jamstack, teams can reach a globally distributed audience with the content to match that audience’s needs and enabling them to quickly deploy localized content.
Better user experience
The Jamstack enables a better user experience from the developer, to the content editor, to the user. Developers benefit from the Javascript-focused, modular tooling that enables them to specialize and work quickly with tools in their skillset. For devs that want to take time learning new tooling and approaches, the Jamstack lets them flex their creative muscles. These elements can be essential for hiring and retaining highly skilled web developers.
Content teams benefit from the Jamstack as well. While it may not be the page builder they are used to, content teams benefit from the greater flexibility enabled by a headless CMS, a key element of the Jamstack architecture. Content teams can integrate additional tooling into the backend to give them the insights they need to create successful content and reach their audience.
Users benefit from the faster page speeds and the reliable user experience. Because Jamstack sites are more secure than their decoupled counterparts, users have a highly reliable user experience.
#Understand your use case
With any tech stack, it is important to have a good understanding of the end product and the needs of the team along the way. In development, there is a near-constant stream of new products coming to the market with various levels of hype surrounding them.
While some of these tools and approaches may be validated in the long run, it is important to define which context is the ideal use case. Ideal use cases help ensure that teams are choosing the best toolset for what they actually need, rather than just riding the wave of what is popular. Jamstack is an excellent approach for teams looking to build static sites, quickly but it can become clunky when teams try to build a site with a high level of dynamic content. There is a certain level of dynamic content that may be expected with almost any site; however, sites that need a high level of dynamic content to provide a high-quality user experience may want to consider another approach.
There are many workarounds or integrations for creating dynamic content within the Jamstack, but you may find that other stacks provide more native support for dynamic content.