The importance of AMP for websites and marketers

53% of mobile visitors leave a web page that doesn't load within three seconds, while the average loading time is between 14 and 19 seconds according to Google. So Google came up with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to speed things up, but what does this mean for websites? For the first time ever, we live in a world where the majority of internet usage (51.3%, according to StatCounter) comes from mobile devices.

This number is unlikely to scare you, because you know that more Internet users are spending more time browsing from their mobile devices. That's why we're all about making our websites mobile responsive and developing mobile-first strategies. But we have not yet reached the ideal picture that we want, as the mobile version of websites is still slower than the desktop version, and there are many problems at the level of use experience.

Topic Contents Toggle What are AMP? Accelerating your site for mobile is a profitable equation. It is not one of the most important factors in ranking search results on Google. Mobile. Difficulties in adopting accelerated mobile pages (AMP). An ongoing debate about accelerated mobile pages (AMP). What are accelerated mobile pages (AMP)? AMP technology stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages”, it is open source from Google and specifically designed to make mobile web browsing better and faster.

This is a competition to Facebook Instant Articles that has made it possible to view media articles up to 10 times faster and read them without leaving the largest social network in the world. Essentially a stripped-down, simplified version of your main website, the website then loads to open faster on mobile, not only because it's smaller, cleaner and optimized for mobile, but also because it's cached on Google's servers, meaning there are no requests to the servers in the way of delivery. Users and readers usually arrive at these pages from a mobile search on Google, which directs searchers to AMP mobile pages and also prefers them to regular web pages.

Users will no doubt love this improvement, but what does it mean for businesses? There are many other questions that we are trying to answer here. Speeding up your site for mobile is a winning formula In a world where you lose 47% of traffic after just three seconds of loading time, delivery speed could never be more important.

AMP-optimized pages load in about one-sixth the time of a regular page (about 88% faster, according to The Washington Post), with the average time it takes for AMP to load just half a second. Google AMP's big plan is to enable it to use the same code to load rich content pages (video, animation, graphics, etc.) along with smart ads across multiple platforms and devices… instantly. According to a study by Google, AMP can increase website traffic by 10%, more than double the time spent on page, reduce bounce rates by 35%, increase ad visibility by 25%, and lead to 20% more sales conversions than non-AMP-enabled pages.

The latest study also looked at the relationship between page speed and revenue, finding that mobile sites that loaded in 5 seconds generated up to twice the mobile ad revenue as those that loaded in a traditional 19 seconds. These are promising results and actually confirm to us that adopting this technology in your online store, blog, or content site is also essential and necessary. Some sites that adopted this technology noticed an increase in visits by 50%, which is a very wonderful transformation that means a lot in terms of revenues and profits as well.

It's not the most important factor in ranking mobile search results on Google. Google claims that AMP pages don't get much of a boost in mobile search results ranking, however it stands to reason that if Google detects that your pages are geared toward faster mobile load times, and therefore improved mobile user experiences, then you stand a better chance of ranking higher than competing pages. Another advantage for marketers of this technique is that they ride a horizontal spiral above all other results for large-scale searches, and the algorithm may learn how to pull in more and more AMP results. Therefore, it is clear that adopting this technology on your website plays a positive role in your position in search results, and this significantly.

But if Google starts evaluating your online presence on the lighter AMP version of your site, instead of a carefully optimized “full” website with more content, this may not be in your favor, but the good news is that the technology supports more content and styles to display on its pages and loads faster for users without any problems. Difficulties in Adopting AMP Although Google works hard to ensure ease of implementing AMP, there are some issues involved, such as conflicting information and frequent updates. The code is open source and Google provides tutorials for optimization, but AMP integration tools are not necessarily compatible with other website add-ons.

AMP-ready pages have very little branding or differentiation, as eliminating heavy design elements is part of what makes them fast. Another reason for AMP to load quickly is that Google presents a cached version of your site to users, so it doesn't display the updates you made to the pages in real time and it takes some time for those changes to take effect. It's less draining on the servers if you get a lot of mobile traffic, but you can say goodbye to your current tracking, as AMP stores and tracks things differently than regular pages, even mobile-ready ones.

These pages do not support displaying many contents, such as scripts for displaying product prices, measuring weight, competitions, and obtaining instant answers provided by service pages on websites. Therefore, it is best to disable AMP technology and keep it activated on article and news pages. Continuing controversy over AMP. Some see this technology as an intimidation by Google that takes over the content of sites. Others are concerned about losing analytics thanks to the underutilization of their servers and the possibility of a decrease in revenue from the ads that are displayed. Consistency will also take a hit since content and design will differ between mobile and desktop, but some are enjoying the benefits of increased loading times and increased sales thanks to lower bounce rates.

If you have a blog or news site, the benefits of AMP are clear: you can deliver your site content to mobile users faster and cleaner than ever before. For e-commerce sites, it's a balancing act between the pros (faster loading times resulting in increased page views and increased potential sales), and the cons (maintaining two versions of your website, doing double the SEO, losing tracking capabilities as well as full control over the content). That's why many organizations take a sit-and-wake-up approach before making any big moves, but as we move toward a mobile future, it's not too early to gather information and get up to speed on how to apply this technology to your organization, quantify the costs involved and test a few pages.

AMP brings with it a whole host of questions, concerns, benefits and opportunities, but it also brings standardization and definition of what truly “mobile-ready” is something we all greatly value. List List List List List List List #mobile #google #mobileacceleratedpagesAMP