Optimizing Headless CMS Performance in a Next.js Application

Have you clicked on a website and waited for the website content to load? You know how frustrating that experience is. Slow API responses, inefficient rendering patterns, and a general lack of optimizations are headless CMS performance challenges that often cause this.

Next.js, a popular frontend framework, offers a good web experience, especially when combined with a headless CMS platform. However, using this tech stack can lead to a poorly performing website if not done properly.

In fact, Google suggests that users expect a website to load within 3 seconds, which means that if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, you risk losing potential customers.

In this article, we’ll look at different performance issues in a headless CMS-powered environment and how to fix them.

It's no secret that optimizing your headless content management system website will lead to a good user experience and better SEO. But before that, let's first understand the various performance challenges of a headless CMS-powered website.

Headless CMS platforms deliver content mainly through APIs. And API responses can be slow due to several things, including network bandwidth, complex queries, and the strength of the connection.

As a result of these slow responses from your headless CMS API, the load time of your website will be much longer than you want, especially for content that changes often.

Latency is simply the delay in making a request and receiving a response. High latency means more time for your users to see your website's content delivery. This is bad for SEO, UX, and most importantly, conversion rates because happy users are paying customers.

High latency is often caused by the distance between your users and your web server.

APIs, if not called with the right filtering, deliver the largest possible data they can. As a result of this large data, more time is needed to process it, which often leads to your websites taking time to load.

This is known as over-fetching—you fetch data that you or your users don't even need.

And for limited bandwidth connections, over-fetching can lead to an unnecessary increase in your cloud bills (yes, cloud providers often charge for bandwidth).

Caching is a tricky concept in web development, and developers know it. Cache everything; you serve outdated content to users. Cache nothing and you unnecessarily query your APIs, resulting in a burden on your server.

In a headless CMS architecture, images are often stored raw, i.e., without any form of optimization whatsoever. And these images are sent as they are stored, unoptimized.

As images are often the largest parts of a web page, serving the unoptimized images in your website will drastically affect how your website performs.

Having looked at common performance challenges of headless CMS-powered websites, we will learn how to improve the performance of a headless CMS-powered Next.js application from a Next.js standpoint.

Static Site Generation (SSG) is a rendering technique where your HTML pages are built once when your application is first generated. When users request these pages, the already-generated pages are served to your users.

Think of it this way:

You visit a local restaurant that serves rice and stew and order a plate. The restaurant is not going to start cooking the rice and stew from scratch; rather, the waiter will bring you the food that is already prepared (provided the food remains intact and is in good condition). This saves both you and the restaurant time.

In SSG, your users get an "already-prepared" HTML page, which makes your website feel faster and reduces the load on your server.

Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) is a rendering technique where parts of static content are updated without rebuilding the entire content. In ISR, your server serves the static content to your users and updates it in the background if there have been any changes since it was last sent.

SSG and ISR can be combined to improve your website’s performance. SSG is often employed in pages that don’t change most of the time such as:

Use ISR to update the static pages whenever there has been a change in the page content.

Using these techniques, you can serve fresh content to your users without sacrificing performance.

Here's how to implement SSG and ISR in your Next.js application:

SSG:

ISR:

Server-side rendering is a technique where your webpage's content is rendered on the server instead of the client.

One way of putting it is this:

You visit a coffee shop that brews coffee per customer demand and request a brew (maybe a Cappuccino or Espresso). The waiter sends your order to the brewing department and waits for them to make your coffee. The waiter serves you your coffee as soon as the brewer finishes brewing your coffee. There's nothing else to do aside from consuming the coffee.

Similarly, in SSR, your users wait for the pages to be built and sent to them.

Keep in mind that how long it takes to generate the pages impacts the experience of your users.

You should keep in mind that static site generation (SSG) and server-side rendering (SSR) are not the same. One key difference is that content is sent from a "storage", while in SSR, each request generates a new version of the content.

Learn more: SSG vs SSR

Caching involves storing frequently accessed data in a place where the data can be easily and quickly accessed. Cacheable data include:

There are three main ways of implementing caching in your headless CMS Next.js application:

When you cache on the browser, you store assets on your users' browsers. Subsequent requests load the assets from the user's browser, eliminating the need to re-download them.

In the same light, when you cache on the server, you store data in your server's memory. In effect, you eliminate unnecessary computations for the same data.

Caching on the edge is storing data on servers that are geographically close to your users.

Code splitting is a technique that allows you to break components or pages into smaller, manageable chunks. These chunks are loaded on demand, which improves the overall performance of your website.

Next.js makes it easy to implement code splitting using the dynamic() function from the next/dynamic library.

However, it’s important to note that Next.js implements code splitting on your routes. This means that your routes are treated as different JavaScript bundles and are loaded when needed. You can manually code split page components.

Lazy loading is a technique that allows you to defer the loading of resources that are not required for the initial page load. This means that resources are loaded only when they’re needed, which can improve performance.

Implementing lazy loading in Next.js is done using the lazy() method.

Streaming allows you to break down HTML pages into smaller chunks and then send those chunks from the server to the client as they load. Streaming improves perceived web performance by reducing Time to First Byte (TTFB) and Time to Interactive (TTI) as page components are sent as soon as they’re ready without waiting for the entire page to load.

There are two ways to implement streaming in Next.js:

Creating a loading.tsx file in the root (same level as the page.tsx) of a route will display a fallback UI as your page content loads. This makes your website look responsive as your users are not left in the dark as your content loads.

The Suspense component can be used to stream individual components. For example, if you have a component that fetches data before rendering, you can wrap that component in a Suspense. Suspense accepts a fallback prop, which is the component that is displayed as your other components are loading.

Headless CMS, such as BCMS, uses APIs to manage and deliver content. In effect, optimizing your API calls will lead to better web performance.

With that said, in this section, we're going to look at some strategies for making your headless CMS API perform better for you.

The response time of your APIs largely depends on how you make API requests. The following techniques are ways to improve the way you fetch data from APIs:

Batching your API calls means grouping them into one. In essence, instead of making API calls one at a time, you make all of them at once. As a result, your network overhead and latency are reduced.

You can use the batch API calls using either Promise.all() or Promise.allSettled() functions.

Store frequently accessed static content in a cache for faster retrieval. Faster retrieval means a faster website, and, in turn, happier users.

GraphQL lets you fetch the exact data that you need, which reduces over-fetching and the load on your headless CMS server.

Reduction in the payload sent through the API makes for faster response times.

Use query parameters in the BCMS REST APIs to filter the data you need:

Compress data sent to the client:

Compression is an important way to reduce a website’s load time. Compression can lead to 70-90% reduction in the data size transferred between a server and a client. Modern browsers and servers support compression methods such as Gzip and Brotli.

Here’s how compression works:

A browser includes a list of allowable compression methods in the Accept-Encoding header when requesting the server.

The server, after fetching the resource, looks up the Accept-Encoding header sent by a client’s browser and selects the most suitable compression method.

The compressed data sent by the server to the client is automatically decompressed by the client’s browser before displaying the content to the end user.

As a side note, you don’t implement the compression mechanisms. Rather, you specify a list of allowable compression methods, and the server will select the most suitable.

Edge functions allow you to serve content from the CDN server closest to your user, which reduces latency and improves the overall performance of your website.

Performance optimizations often lead to better SEO. This is as a result of Google and other search engines favouring websites that have good web performance.

The following strategies help make your Next.js and headless CMS websites rank better in search:

Pre-rendering pages on the server improves your SEO because search engines can easily crawl and index the pages. From Next.js 13+, your HTML pages are pre-rendered on the server by default unless you explicitly state otherwise.

Static site generation (SSG) is a technique for generating your pages at build time once and then serving the pages from a cache on subsequent requests. SSG improves SEO because it makes your website faster. And search engines love fast websites.

Metadata describes what a web page is all about. Metadata, though not seen by the user aside from the page title, is used by search engines to make sense of what your website is all about.

Next.js provides two ways to add metadata to your web pages:

In static metadata, you manually add metadata to your web pages.

With dynamic metadata, you generate metadata dynamically for your pages. You would use dynamic metadata for pages such as blog posts, product pages, marketing pages, etc..

Sitemap, as the name sounds, is a map of the discoverable pages of your website. You submit the sitemap to Google Search Console or other search engine crawler websites for indexing. Make sure your sitemap is always updated for better indexing and search rankings.

Here’s a simple way to generate an XML sitemap in Next.js:

Search engines favor URL links that are concise and descriptive. You want to use URL links that best describe what the page is all about. Instead of having a URL link like this:

“https://yourwebsite.com/blog/123”

Your URL should look like this:

https://yourwebsite.com/blog/performance-nextjs”

Concise and descriptive URLs make it easier for both search engines and your users to understand what a webpage is all about.

Lighthouse is a free tool from Google that audits web pages. It runs a series of tests and gives a score. And also gives recommendations on how to fix the issues it identified. One reason Lighthouse is preferred is that its tests are based on the Core Web Vitals--metrics used by Google in ranking websites.

Regular audits can help identify SEO bottlenecks in your website.

Performance and SEO optimization are not a one-time thing. You need to take proactive measures to maintain your website’s performance and SEO using the right tools and methodologies.

Details of tools and methods that enable website performance optimization along with SEO enhancement, are presented.

Certain built-in features of Next.js resolve numerous performance difficulties automatically.

Through its next/image package, the application performs automatic image optimization operations.

You can speed up third-party script files through the next/script package which avoids reducing your website's performance.

Built-in caching enables users to receive pre-generated static pages or pages that receive incremental static regeneration updates from cache storage leading to shorter response times.

Server-side rendering occurs automatically in Next.js while it generates pages through static generation or incremental static regeneration for serving users. By doing so your website obtains better search rankings.

The default feature of Next.js splits website code and implements lazy loading functionality. Such performance enhancement occurs because the system loads and executes solitary required parts.

The BCMSImage component integrates seamlessly with Next.js, which improves the performance of your headless CMS-powered website. Much like Next.js’ own next/image package, BCMSImage automatically handles image optimization tasks such as responsive sizing, lazy loading, and caching.

With these features, your websites can serve optimized images stored in BCMS. And this reduces load times and improves overall user experience.

The component aligns perfectly with Next.js performance features so you can integrate media assets through a system that delivers images using optimal format selection.

You require performance indicator inspections to verify your website performance together with SEO content.

The process of continuous performance assessment enables users to monitor their development throughout specific periods.

Web platforms remain impractical to bug-proof entirely despite having the best-performance tools at hand. Your website will reach optimal performance through the use of debugging and optimization tools.

Performance profiling accepts browser developer tools that help users profile their website performance to detect slow parts while optimizing rendering tasks. Production runtime analytics through Sentry LogRocket and Telemetry allows users to discover critical performance defects and bugs needed for continuous optimization. Automated tools such as Linters together with performance analyzers, function as Code Analysis Tools by warning about inefficient code patterns and suggesting better solutions.

You can prevent user disruptions by identifying website problems ahead of time during active debugging sessions to resolve them preceding their impact on users.

Next.js applications that use headless CMS solutions offer strong development capabilities, although optimization requires careful planning to achieve peak execution. Developers who use Next.js functions such as Static Site Generation (SSG), Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR), and effective caching methods can reduce server latency and decrease load.

The combination of payload reduction with API batching and edge computing solves problems that occur from delayed responses and bulky data exchanges in headless content management systems.

When organizations optimize their content through performance standards, they achieve better user satisfaction combined with improved SEO position, addressing the search engine ranking criteria presented by Core Web Vitals. System reliability and quick performance are maintained via Lighthouse audits and real-time monitoring, together with Next.js’s built-in optimization tools that provide developers with practical solutions.

Next.js enables developers to merge its rendering functionality with optimal headless CMS implementations, which enables them to create fast and scalable search-friendly applications. These methodologies help teams develop digital platforms that provide smooth UXs and increase sales numbers.