Improving Next.js Performance: SSR to SSG + ISR for Faster Load Times

Tuha'a Ziyaad — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 12:44:28 +0000

Page speed matters more than ever. Google’s Core Web Vitals framework has made TTFB and FCP crucial for ranking well. After hitting limitations with SSR, we decided to move to SSG + ISR on two of our most active content sites:

nolcardbalanceae.com — public transport and NOL card balance check guides
wgustudentsportal.com — student tools and academic resources

SSR Was Slowing Us Down

Both platforms initially used getServerSideProps, but with traffic rising and SEO slipping, performance audits with PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse confirmed what we feared: server response time was hurting the experience.

Static + Dynamic? Use ISR

We migrated to getStaticProps with Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR), letting us statically generate thousands of guides and tools for both nolcardbalanceae.com and wgustudentsportal.com.

return { props: { data }, revalidate: 7200, // Every 2 hours };
The result? Pages served instantly, with fresh data reloading in the background.

Fixing the Vercel Build Limit

Vercel’s 45-minute build limit created a blocker during deployment. With so many static pages, we exceeded the threshold regularly.

To fix it:

We batched content at build time
Stored it as local JSON
Called that in getStaticProps()

This brought total build time below 30 minutes and gave us predictable, fast deployments.

What Improved

After implementation:

nolcardbalanceae.com saw bounce rate drop by 20%
wgustudentsportal.com pages loaded under 1 second
Lighthouse scores consistently hit 95+
Googlebot crawled 3× more URLs per day

We followed Next.js best practices and Google’s performance guidelines to the letter — and it paid off.

DEV Community: Tuha'a Ziyaad

Improving Next.js Performance: SSR to SSG + ISR for Faster Load Times

SSR Was Slowing Us Down

Static + Dynamic? Use ISR

Fixing the Vercel Build Limit

What Improved