Making the Webflow Dashboard 20% faster by moving to server-side rendering

Facing increasing dashboard loading times, reaching up to 16.24 seconds, a decision was made to enhance user experience by reducing initial load times by at least 20%. The strategy involved transitioning from a client-based SPA architecture using React Router to a server-side rendered solution with NextJS, aiming to deliver more fully rendered HTML on the initial request and decrease client-side API requests. This change was expected to package critical data with the initial rendering, allowing users to interact with the page sooner. The migration was designed to be incremental and maintain developer usability by directing traffic on a route-by-route basis and refactoring framework-specific APIs into higher-order components, which would be removed after the full transition to NextJS.