A fast first visit is a product decision

When we rebuilt the structa.cloud landing pages, the first decision was the rendering model. The old stack shipped a heavy React SPA: a shell, a hydration step, and a JSON API feeding it. The browser waited through all three before a user saw text.

The document model

We switched to the AHA stack — Astro, HTMX, Alpine. Every page is finished HTML in one response. The server composes the document from Wagtail StreamField blocks; the browser just paints it.

The difference is measurable: first paint dropped from seconds to tens of milliseconds, and SEO tools stopped complaining about empty shells. A page is a document again, not an application bootstrap.

What we kept

• HTMX fragments for the rare dynamic region
• Alpine.js for micro-interactions — accordions, toggles, counters
• Wagtail as the single source of content truth

No SPA shell, no hydration waterfall — just the web as it should be.