Due to COVID-19 businesses are shifting more of their customer experience online, so in today’s world, websites need to be fast, secure and engaging.
Vancouver’s Bare Advertising saw that as an opportunity to double-down and launched a new subsidiary dedicated to Gatsby/JAMstack web development, creatively tagged Jambaree.
Over the past several years, Bare has built a strong expertise in Gatsby, a JAMstack static site generator technology, developing robust websites for clients such as Real Cedar, Carbon Zero and the Decking Superstore.
“Since the start of the pandemic, the whole world shifted online; shopping, working, studying, communicating. And when you’re doing things online, there’s nothing more frustrating than websites that take ages to load,” says John Thomas, Jambaree principal. “The sites we build using Gatsby are lightning-fast and they look great too. And the simple truth is, faster sites get more traffic, and sites that get more traffic make more money.”
Gatsby is a React-based, GraphQL powered, static site generator. Traditional (dynamic) sites, like those traditionally built on WordPress, rebuild the web page each time it’s viewed, even if you’re the same user browsing multiple/same pages. They use slow scripts to build the page, while at the same time pull text from the database, causing more of a lag. Because Gatsby pages are pre-built, the user experience is exponentially faster because pages don’t need to be pulled together on command – they’re already there.
And, website speed cannot be understated—on average websites that load within 5 seconds have 70 per cent longer sessions and 35 per cent lower bounce rates. That’s why sites built by Jambaree with Gatsby are head and shoulders above the rest.
Jambaree has also pioneered a way to combine the familiarity of the WordPress backend with a React-based Gatsby front end, called “headless” WordPress. There are various headless CMS (content management system) platforms sites can use, but with WordPress being the leading CMS in the world, it’s the obvious choice for a seamless upgrade to a Gatsby front-end.
A good example of what a Gatsby site can do, is Real Cedar. Developed by Jambaree for the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association, the site seeks to inspire, inform and educate discerning consumers, builders and architects about the benefits of real cedar. The new site provides a more sophisticated website solution.
By implementing a new Gatsby architecture, for Real Cedar Jambaree was able to deliver a site that is up to 5x faster than its predecessor, with better search engine rankings, stability, and increased functionality.
Since its launch in June, Jambaree has garnered a lot of attention. It just signed a contract to develop a new site for Silicon Valley’s Parallel Domain and continues to get incoming interest from U.S. companies exploring Gatsby as a solution.