Eric Dodds describes the challenges and subsequent overhaul of a slow and fragmented web infrastructure at RudderStack, transitioning from using a bloated WordPress setup and problematic third-party platforms to a high-performance stack using Gatsby, Sanity, and RudderStack's own product. The previous setup faced issues with speed, data inconsistencies, and cumbersome analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. By adopting a JAMstack approach with Gatsby and integrating Sanity for content management, the team achieved significant improvements in speed and efficiency, enabling faster content publication and better data handling. The switch to RudderStack Cloud Mode for server-side data processing eliminated the need for multiple third-party scripts, thus enhancing site performance and analytics reliability. This transformation allowed RudderStack to focus more on strategic SEO efforts, leveraging community resources like the Gatsby Next SEO plugin, while also freeing the development team from the burdens of maintaining a complex and inefficient infrastructure.