The latest articles on DEV Community by Axoryte (@axoryteinfosoft). https://dev.to/axoryteinfosoft https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3954090%2F4e6b1c35-74b5-493c-86c5-a7e1bb6f4c4c.gif https://dev.to/axoryteinfosoft en Axoryte Wed, 27 May 2026 10:04:21 +0000 https://dev.to/axoryteinfosoft/we-rebuilt-our-clients-old-php-site-in-nextjs-heres-what-happened-to-their-traffic-2elk https://dev.to/axoryteinfosoft/we-rebuilt-our-clients-old-php-site-in-nextjs-heres-what-happened-to-their-traffic-2elk <p>A few months ago, one of our clients came to us with a problem. Their <br> website was built in 2018 on a custom PHP stack. It was slow (4+ second <br> load time), not mobile-friendly, and their bounce rate was sitting around 78%.</p> <p>They weren't getting leads from the site. People were just leaving.</p> <p>We're Axoryte Infosoft — a software development team based in India. <br> We work with startups and businesses across the US and UK. This particular <br> client runs a B2B services company in Canada.</p> <h2> What We Did </h2> <p>We rebuilt their entire site in <strong>Next.js 14</strong> with the App Router. <br> Here's the stack we used:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Framework:</strong> Next.js 14 (App Router)</li> <li> <strong>Styling:</strong> Tailwind CSS</li> <li> <strong>CMS:</strong> Sanity.io</li> <li> <strong>Hosting:</strong> Vercel</li> <li> <strong>Analytics:</strong> Google Analytics 4 + Vercel Analytics</li> </ul> <p>The old site had no image optimization, no lazy loading, and was serving <br> everything from a single shared hosting server.</p> <h2> The Results (After 8 Weeks) </h2> <div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"><table> <thead> <tr> <th>Metric</th> <th>Before</th> <th>After</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Page Load Time</td> <td>4.2s</td> <td>0.9s</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Google PageSpeed Score</td> <td>34</td> <td>94</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bounce Rate</td> <td>78%</td> <td>41%</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Monthly Leads</td> <td>3–4</td> <td>18–22</td> </tr> </tbody> </table></div> <p>The client was genuinely surprised. They said they'd been told their <br> old site was "fine" for years.</p> <h2> Key Lessons </h2> <p><strong>1. Server-side rendering matters for SEO.</strong><br> The old site was fully client-rendered. Google was indexing blank pages. <br> With Next.js SSR, all pages are fully rendered HTML — Google loves it.</p> <p><strong>2. Image optimization alone can cut 60% of load time.</strong><br> We switched all images to Next.js <code>&lt;Image&gt;</code> with AVIF format. <br> That one change reduced page weight by 1.8MB.</p> <p><strong>3. Core Web Vitals are not optional anymore.</strong><br> Google now uses LCP, FID, and CLS as ranking factors. You can't ignore them.</p> <h2> What We Learned </h2> <p>Rebuilding a site is never just "a new design." It's a chance to fix <br> architecture mistakes, improve performance, and set the client up for <br> the next 5 years.</p> <p>If you're working on something similar or want to talk about a project, <br> feel free to reach out through <a href="https://axoryteinfosoft.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">axoryteinfosoft.com</a>.</p> <p>We're always happy to discuss ideas — no sales pitch, just an honest conversation.</p> ai webdev programming productivity