Jamstack

What & Why?

What is the Jamstack?

The Jamstack is a modern web development methodology that focuses on delivering fast and secure digital experiences for end users. The 'Jam' stands for:

• JavaScript – the client-side programming language that drives dynamic elements of a page
• APIs – application programming interfaces that connect your website or application to other web services, databases and/or endpoints
• Markup – the way HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is rendered, often utilising static site generators and CDNs to deliver web experiences as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The 'stack' refers to how these technologies are stacked together to deliver the end solution for your customers. 

Why the Jamstack?

In our 20+ years of working in the digital space, we have all too often heard clients describing a common set of problems arising from their digital platform investment: 

• A slow website leading to low conversions
• A feature-rich digital experience platform that is only being used as an expensive CMS 
• A rigid template structure that forces digital marketers and content editors to use third party landing page solutions to do their job
• Disparate content management solutions across the organisation (e.g. website vs mobile app vs display screens)
• Security flaws and vulnerabilities that have gone unnoticed for too long 
• A costly hosting infrastructure that isn't delivering a ROI
• A frustrated group of stakeholders across marketing, digital and IT

Any of these sound familiar? The Jamstack can help address these very real business problems. 

The benefits of the Jamstack

At Luminary, we have summed up the benefits of the Jamstack for businesses in the six 'Ss' of the Jamstack:

1. Speed: super fast, pre-rendered websites that are SEO-friendly and improve conversions. Add to that improved speed to market with a streamlined development pipeline. 
2. Stability: no more random downtime moments caused by legacy applications. Static HTML, served at the edge doesn’t go down. 
3. Scalability: unbeatable scaling with no web application servers or database servers needed. Significant cost savings at scale (and highly performant!). 
4. Security: by serving pre-rendered static HTML we remove any potential connection to web application servers or database servers. It’s hard to get any more secure than that. 
5. Serviceability: this refers to the quality of the experience in designing, building and maintaining Jamstack-driven web experiences. The 'maker experience' is a critical factor in the ongoing success of any website or application. This covers designers, developers, content editors, digital marketers, and anyone else who is involved in the creation and ongoing management of digital experiences. 
6. Simplicity: the Jamstack is all about abstracting complexity to deliver ease-of-use for all stakeholders, and simple, blazingly fast experiences for end users. 

Methodology

The methodology used by our Jamstack agency

The Jamstack opens up limitless possibilities and combinations, but can make it difficult to know where to start! That's where we come in.

At Luminary we always take a step back and do a proper discovery to ensure we know exactly what problem we're trying to solve before we reach straight for the toolbox. This enables us, and our clients, to work together on a complete strategy, and to be driven by the optimal user experience (UX) that we need to create in order to achieve it.

Once we have a clear definition of the problem, our tech experts work their magic to architect a solution on the Jamstack. We identify the major requirements, and select the best tools available on the market to meet them. This typically covers a broad range of requirements that a digital project covers, such as content management, search, online forms, dynamic personalisation, marketing automation, data visualisation, cloud hosting, DevOps, and more advanced integration scenarios with CRMs or e-commerce platforms. Our solution architects confirm that all of these moving pieces are going to work nicely together, to produce the final microservices architecture.

Luminary's Launchpad best-practice front-end development framework and component library allows us to rapidly bring your designs to life as a responsive, accessible, high-performing, and beautiful website. By using modern front-end development frameworks, combined with the latest static site generators, our Jamstack developers can integrate neatly with your martech stack using APIs while maintaining complete control over the markup.

Advanced DevOps tools work behind the scenes to handle the immediate publishing of your content as it is updated, so you can focus on what you need to do in your preferred content management system or marketing automation platform, knowing that your Jamstack website will always be up to date and blazing fast.

Jamstack-friendly apps and tools

One of the strengths of the Jamstack is the ability to utilise best-of-breed apps and tools to deliver the best possible digital experiences. Here are some of the apps and tools our Jamsack developers recommend.

Integrations

Headless content management systems (CMS)

JavaScript UI frameworks

Static site generators

Forms

Ecommerce

Search

Personalisation & A/B testing

Authentication

Cloud hosting, DevOps and serverless functions