Next.js & React Development

The rendering decision is not one choice for the whole application. Marketing pages should be static and served from the edge. Dashboards need per-request data. Product pages often want static content with a live inventory number layered on top.

We choose per route, and where a page is mostly static but was forced dynamic by one personalized element, we use Partial Prerendering so the shell arrives instantly and the dynamic fragments stream in. Users see layout, copy, and navigation immediately instead of a spinner over an empty page.

Server Components are frequently confused with server-side rendering, and treating them as the same thing produces applications that get neither benefit. A Server Component's code — including every library it imports — never reaches the browser, which means a heavy markdown parser or database client adds nothing to your bundle.

We push client components down to the smallest leaves that actually need interactivity. Marking a layout as a client component silently drags its entire subtree onto the client and erases the benefit, which is the most common way this goes wrong.

Next.js caching has burned a lot of teams, because data that was correct in development turned out to be stale in production, cached by a layer nobody configured. We make every caching decision explicit: which fetches tolerate staleness, for how long, and how they are invalidated when the underlying data changes.

The result is a caching strategy that a developer joining in six months can read and understand, which matters far more than squeezing out the last few milliseconds.

Passing Core Web Vitals is a ranking factor and, more importantly, it correlates directly with whether people stay. Largest Contentful Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift are usually handled by correct image sizing, font loading strategy, and reserving space for content that loads late.

Interaction to Next Paint is the one that catches teams out, because it measures main-thread blocking after a user interacts — something LCP never exposed. We profile with CPU throttling on real interactions, break up long tasks, and audit third-party scripts, which are frequently the dominant cost and invisible until you attribute them.