Introduction

Next.js is a React framework that allows you to build web applications that are not only SEO compliant but also interactive for end users. It builds on top of the React framework to allow for SSR(Server Side Rendering) and provides a streamlined development experience.

With Next.js, developers are able to build production ready applications, that too with features like hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling and route prefetching which was not possible with React.

Thus, the primary intention behind building Next.js on top of React was to allow for ease of development through additional features that require little to no effort to setup and configure.

Let’s now talk about 5 such reasons and features that might convince you to use Next.js in your next project. 

Image Optimization ⌛

Using the prebuilt Image component, developers without having to do much work, can optimize their images i.e reduce the size of their images without compromising too much on quality. This can save them a lot of time and improve the performance of the web application because larger, unoptimised images slow down the loading time.

Next.js analytics 📊

Next.js provides analytical support through an in-built dashboard that provides valuable insights without any extra configuration.

Internationalization 🌐

Another important feature of Next.js is internationalization. This essentially means that your web application can be supported for multiple languages, thus making Next.js  internationally recognised with minimal effort.

Prebuilt SSR, SSG, and CSR Support 🧑‍💻

Next.js provides support for server side rendering, static generation and client side rendering. Server side rendering essentially allows the web page to be displayed on the server rather than the browser, which allows for faster loading times. This makes Next.js the perfect choice for building large scale SEO friendly applications.

Zero Config 💻

With respect to Next.js, zero config essentially means automatic compilation and bundling. Conventionally, automatic refresh in front end applications requires installing and configuring the correct libraries, which is a time consuming task. Next.js, on the other hand compiles and builds with hot refresh and that too without any extra configuration.