How to Check if Your Jamstack Website Works Well?

INTRODUCTION

So here it is – your dreamy Jamstack website! You’ve spent so much time (and money) on the Jamstack web development that you just want to take some rest and celebrate the high performance that the agency was telling you about. 

But something is not right – the results are not as good as they promised, the river of leads is not flooding your email, and you’re not sure if the implemented Jamstack website stands to what you’ve paid for. 

But surprisingly, it’s quite normal. Although Jamstack websites are fast and light by nature (as they are just static pages) there’s still some work that needs to be done in the backyard. 

So, if it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one with this problem. We’ve talked with many customers that weren’t sure about the quality of their new Jamstack websites implemented by different (even top) agencies.  

We also know that not everyone who migrates to Jamstack understands how it works or has the time and resources to check if it was implemented correctly in a technical sense. And so we’ve created this article to guide you through quick checks you can do by yourself to evaluate the website’s performance.

Quick note: The website is ready, but the hard work is not over yet

Even if your site is ready, and it looks exactly how you wanted, the job is not done yet. Of course, checking if the Jamstack website was well implemented is a good starting point, but without the proper management, the website won’t be fast and effective. 

To be honest, website management is a never-ending story, and you should always keep that in mind. 

The most common tasks in website management are:

• Website maintenance
• Website optimization
• Beta testing
• Content updates
• Adding/changing the features

Website maintenance

All the tasks needed to keep your website up and running. This includes among others the process of monitoring the website for faults and fixing them. 

Website optimization

Activities aiming to improve the website performance, bring more traffic and increase conversions. To satisfy both the real people and bots (which actually bring the customers to your website) you should care both about search engine optimization and on-page optimization. 

Beta testing

Small scale tests of the website functionality and content run within the organization, focused on checking if the website is clear and easy for users. 

Content updates

Keeping the content updated is one of the most important tasks. The information on your website should be relevant and served on time. If you’re running a blog, article updates can also positively affect your website’s SEO. 

Adding/changing the features

Updating the functionality of your website is almost as important as updating content. In such a fast-paced world, you can’t assume that what works now, will be relevant in a year or so. You have to be prepared to customize your website to customers’ expectations. 

We know that it sounds like a lot of work and that not everyone has the time and resources to do it by themselves. There are many options available on the market that make website management easier. 

We cooperate with many customers, delivering post-launch support: ongoing management, support and bug-fixing. We offer two different options: Monthly Support based on chosen Response Time Standard and a Bucket of Development Hours.

Does your Jamstack website work well? 

If you are struggling with your Jamstack website, but you’re not sure what can be the cause (since your Jamstack agency is not reporting any issues), you can do some quick checks to identify the source of the problem.

Below you can find helpful questions that will help you evaluate if your website works well. 

Luckily for all of us, there are many tools available online that make the process quicker than it may seem at the beginning. 

How fast is your Jamstack website? 

Website speed 

The world is rushing, so your website can’t stay behind for any reason. Website users get more impatient over time, and right now they won’t wait longer than two to three seconds for a page to load. 

According to stats, 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load and a 2-second delay in load time resulted in an abandonment rate of up to 87%. What’s more, people would not return to a website that took longer than four seconds to load. 

Site speed is an important direct Google ranking factor but it can affect rankings indirectly too since slow page loading can increase the bounce rate. 

Probably website speed was one of the main factors influencing your decision about migrating to Jamstack. Jamstack websites are usually much faster than others because the pages are pre-generated at a build time. What’s more, pages are stored on a CDN, close to the user visiting your website, so the load time is even shorter. But to be faster, they have to be well implemented. 

The most important metrics in Website performance are 

• Page Load Time – the time to load an entire web page completely. 
• Time to First Byte TTFB – the time between the user request and the first piece of information sent to the user’s browser. 
• First Contentful Paint – time to render first texts and graphics to the screen. 

If you’re not sure if your Jamstack website is fast enough, check out the tools below and compare them with the results we achieved for our customers after the migration. 

Tools to check the website speed 

PageSpeed Insights by Google 

Google is our favourite provider of free, user-friendly tools. And PageSpeed Insights is a great example here. It creates reports of the page performance separately for mobile and desktop devices, and – what’s even better – provides tips on how to improve it.

We use it almost every day, especially during the Jamstack projects. Here are some examples of the Jamstack websites’ performance that we implemented in the past. 

GTMetrix 

Oh, we love GTMetrix. It’s easy to use and provides a comprehensive analysis of performance and recommendations for improvement. We always use it to check our customer’s pages after the deployment and recommend it for further use. Below you can see how performant are websites migrated by us to Jamstack. 

Is your website high in Google ranks? 

Google rank position [Search Engine Optimization]

You know that – if they can’t find you on Google, you don’t exist. According to Baclinko, the first result in Google’s organic search has an average CTR of 31.7% and is 10x more likely to be clicked than the website on the second spot. 

On average, moving up only one spot increases CTR by 30.8%. So keeping an eye on your Google rank is totally worth it. Of course, there are many factors influencing your position, but working on them will totally pay off. 

We can look at SEO from two perspectives: technical SEO and content SEO. Since the Jamstack websites give you full flexibility over the website’s content and structure, it also gives you endless opportunities to improve the content. 

But technical SEO is the clue if you want to find out if the Jamstack agency did a good job. It focuses on evaluating your web visibility and creating a better experience for the users and search engines. 

The main indicators here are web performance, indexing and crawlability. In a nutshell, Jamstack websites perform well in terms of SEO, since they are static and fast. If you’ve checked the performance as we point out above, SEO Audit will help you define the crawlability and internal linking. 

But how to do the SEO Audit? It’s not that hard if you use the proper tools. 

Tools to measure the Google rank position 

Google Search Console 

In Google Search Console you can find all the answers about your rankings. It recognizes the problems with pages indexing, website structure, loading time and security. As it’s a free tool, you can use it anytime to check out if the website is well implemented. 

What’s more, Google Search Console is an amazing tool for content SEO. It shows not only your position for the chosen keyword but also displays the number of clicks and impressions you receive for it. What’s more, it’s free to use. We use GSC on a daily basis and love it!

Semrush 

Semrush is an all-in-one type of tool that will help you improve your digital presence, keep track of the competition, and even create better SEO texts. I find it impressive, but because of the number of available tools and options, using it may be a full-time job.

SEMrush has an amazing tool for Site Audit, that shows your website health, signalizes any issues with the website crawlability and even shows the ideas that will improve your overall SEO. 

What’s more, Semrush has some additional tools for tracking your Google Rank: 

• Position Tracking – you can track any keywords and competitors on Google. It helps you track the campaigns and optimize the targeting efforts. 

• Sensor – it shows the volatility of Google’s SERPs based on the daily changes in rankings.
• Ranks – a research tool, that lets you keep track of the domains with the most organic visibility.

What I personally like about SEMrush is its outstanding design and many guides that make work with it even easier.

Ahrefs 

Ahrefs is another all-in-one tool, that helps you improve your digital visibility. It has many options that let you keep an eye on competitors, build the backlinks and work on keywords.

If it’s about the Site Audit, their advanced tool crawls all the pages on your Jamstack website and provides health scores, flags the issues and recommends ways to fix them. 

With Ahrefs you can also track your Google rank – the Rank Tracker monitors your position over time and sends all the updates to your email. 

Ahrefs is a helpful tool on your way to a higher Google rank position. 

Is your website responsive?  

Nowadays, most people use their mobile devices to scroll the web. Responsiveness is a feature that shouldn’t be ignored. Jamstack websites are usually highly responsive, but not from the default – the developer has to take the proper care of it. 

If you want to check how your website will look on other devices, quickly run the tests with the following tools: 

Tools to check responsiveness

Google Chrome 

Yes, you can do this simply with the browser! Right-click on the landing page open the menu, where after choosing ‘Inspect’ you can check what your website will look like on different devices. Isn’t that easy? 

Snip.ly

Snip.ly is a quick and easy way to check the responsiveness of your website. It shows all the combinations of your website views on different devices and different landscapes on one page, so you don’t even have to click anything. 

Viewport Resizer 

Viewport Resizer is a Chrome extension that let you test any website responsiveness. Once it’s on, you can choose the device you want to check or even customize the size of the view, just to make sure everything looks as it should!

Is your website secure? 

If you decided to migrate to Jamstack, we can assume that the website is the main lead source for your business. 

Security issues can cause downtime of the website, and accordingly, to Global App Testing research, the average cost of a single hour of downtime is $100,000. 

What’s more, many browsers won’t even let the visitors on your website if it’s not well secured, so even the highest speed won’t help you here. And that’s why it’s crucial to care about website safety. 

Jamstack websites are more certain than the others because they don’t use servers that can be hacked. Thanks to API the number of points of attack is limited, and in an addition,  pre-rendered static HTML remove connections to web applications and databases, that may be vulnerable to attack. 

But even though Jamstack websites are much more secure than the others, they are not 100% safe. You should run checks on the website security regularly to provide the highest level of service. 

Does your website bring traffic?

We all care about the number of visitors on our websites. The math is simple here – more traffic usually means more leads/sales or better brand recognition. 

This point is somehow related to your Google Ranks, if we speak about organic traffic. 

However, the traffic not only shows how popular you are, and defines your growth, but also lets you quickly determine if everything works well on different channels you have chosen for promotion, on a daily basis.

Once you know what the average monthly traffic is, you can quickly define traffic deflates, which usually point to problems with websites, like bugs or security issues. 

Another important indicator related to traffic, Conversion Rate is probably the most important in many businesses working online. And well-implemented Jamstack can help you increase it. 

Tools to track the website traffic 

Google Analytics 

The most popular web analytic tool across the world, Google Analytics, allows you to go deep into website statistics and discover customers’ behaviour. It takes the data about the visitors from your website and segregates them into different categories. 

Connecting Google Analytics to your Jamstack website lets you determine the monthly traffic and keep an eye on the conversion rate. To be honest I can’t imagine my everyday work without it. 

HubSpot Marketing Analytics 

HubSpot created this tool to help you measure the performance of the marketing campaigns and the quantity and quality of the traffic. Simple to use reports help you analyze the data and share it within the organization. 

And BTW – Is your Jamstack agency working well? 

Thanks to the checks available above, you can evaluate your website performance and determine any existing issues. But why did you have to do this in the first place? 

Shouldn’t that be recognized by the Jamstack agency you are working with? 

We know it’s not easy to find a reliable partner, and we can’t even count on how many times customers reached us because of the insufficient cooperation with other Jamstack agencies. 

Maybe it’s worth asking yourself some questions and estimating if this cooperation is worth your time and money: 

Are developers still available for your project? 

It’s not always the case of the number of developers that are hired by the agency. They can have even a thousand employees, but if they’re busy and involved with many projects, they may not have enough resources to create an outstanding project for you. 

Make sure that you have a clear offer for the developer’s availability and access to their work hours. In our offers, we provide detailed time estimation, so you can get acquainted with the project plan properly. 

Is the quality worth the cost? 

If you are able to find the issues with the website by yourself (and you had to look for it in the first place), was the agency even worth your time and money? 

Choosing the cheapest agency can be tricky, as low-quality code can require lots of fixes, redoing, and the next developer you will work with can have a huge problem joining the project, as the code is unreadable to him. 

At Pagepro, we always involve a developer from outside the project to do the code review, to make sure it was prepared properly and is easy to read and understand for other developers. 

Does the solution actually solve the problem? 

We understand that our clients don’t have to be specialised and can have some problems with defining the right tech stack for their idea. We always do our best to understand not only the project objectives deeply, but also the final business goal it should be providing.

This is why we spend some time choosing the truly right tools. What’s more, we are ready to explain why we prefer the selected tech stack over the others, so our vision of the project is clear for the customer. 

Is the company fulfilling the contract? 

We know it’s a little terrifying, that we still have to ask that question. Different things can happen, but we put all the effort into keeping the word we gave to customers. If your agency is not fulfilling the contract, you should rethink this partnership. 

Does the agency have experienced developers who can solve more complex problems? 

We know it’s easy to find people in Senior Positions with skills that are not enough even for Junior Positions. During first meetings, our customers have the option to meet the developers signed to the project, talk to them and decide if their knowledge meets the requirement. 

Before we hire developers, they are going through a restless vetting process with more than 50 checkpoints and 3 different practical tasks to test their skills. 

Does the agency maintain consistent and transparent communication? 

Communication is the key – both in private and business relationships. Sometimes we think we’re overcommunicating, but that’s only because we know that truly understanding comes from the proper conversation. 

We run the weekly meetings to keep you on track and we built separate channels for every project to simplify communication with our team. 

LEARN MORE

What is Jamstack? A Guide for Non-Technical Leaders

Which Hosting Platform to Choose for your Jamstack Project?

A Step-by-step Jamstack Website Delivery Process

How to Calculate the Cost of Jamstack Website Development?