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How Does the Dynamic CMS Affect Page Speed?

Design help CMS
#1

This is a general question about how Webflow imports dynamic information on websites.

If I have a homepage that has a navbar Symbol (dynamic), a footer Symbol (dynamic), and a blog post preview through the CMS (dynamic), will that negatively affect page speed compared to just having them be static elements?

Does that information get dynamically imported every time the browser loads the page or does that information dynamically import on Webflow’s backend and then serve it statically to browsers?

Looking to understand this concept better to be able to optimize page speed for clients.

Thanks in advance!

1 Like
#2

From my understanding—which may not be totally accurate, so my apologies if that’s the case—Webflow is compiling a static site when you click “Publish” so there shouldn’t be any difference in performance. Loading 10 “dynamic” elements is no different than loading 10 “static” ones—the only difference is how the content is related to one another when the project is published.

This is part of the reason why Webflow sites are so snappy, they’re not waiting for information to be populated when a user visits the page but simply fetching a predetermined set of resources from a CDN. You give the Designer instructions on how you want the page to be built, including any relationships you’ve created with the CMS/Ecommerce data, and it spits out a “flat” site with that data where it needs to be.

That said, rendering large amounts data on a single page—whether it’s dynamic or not—can negatively affect page speed. Excessive script usage and large media (images, video, etc) are most often the biggest hit to page speed so this is where I’d put my attention first and foremost :+1:

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#3

Thanks @mikeyevin, that’s the answer I was hoping to hear :slight_smile:

Maybe someone on the Webflow team can confirm this?

#4

Following up on this discussion. I am also trying to better understand the performance implications of using Webflow CMS pages more extensively. @mikeyevin thank you for your answer, which makes a lot of sense. Would love to have a Webflow team member confirm if possible. Thanks!