Case Study: BMJ achieves faster publishing performance and better user experience with Thinslices

BMJ boosts page performance to 100 with Thinslices

BMJ, a global healthcare knowledge provider, faced challenges with the slow performance and limited flexibility of its monolithic Drupal 7 publishing platform for its flagship journal, bmj.com. The architecture struggled to handle increasing content scale and user demand, making quick front-end updates difficult. To revolutionize its user experience, BMJ partnered with vendor Thinslices.

Thinslices implemented a decoupled front-end using a tech stack of Node.js, Next.js, AWS, and Vercel for static site generation, while keeping WordPress for content management. This solution dramatically improved performance, achieving a perfect 100/100 Google Lighthouse audit score and sub-second page load times. The results for BMJ included a 100% increase in clicks from Google search, a 65% increase in page views and visitors, and a 47% drop in exit rates.

BMJ