If you’ve been involved in mobile marketing for any length of time, then there’s a good chance that you’ve interacted with AMP, or at the very least, had some discussions regarding the value of still using AMP to help with your mobile marketing campaigns. A few years back, Accelerated Mobile Pages was nearly an essential component, poorly defined and well promoted by Google as the solution for fast-loading mobile web experiences for users.
However, over time, the mobile marketing landscape has drastically shifted. The expectations and demands of users have changed as well. And search engine performance evaluation criteria have significantly changed.
Here is where platforms such as Apptrove enter play. Rather than a single fixing solution like Accelerated Mobile Pages, today’s mobile marketing specialists can now use sophisticated insights on performance, attribution, optimisation, etc., to determine user interactions over time and devices, through numerous stages of the customer journey.
So today it isn’t really about asking yourself, “What is AMP?”
But more about whether Accelerated Mobile Pages should still continue to be part of your mobile marketing portfolio, or if you’re better off investing your time and resources somewhere else. Here’s the breakdown so you can make the best decision possible.
AMP Definition
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a free and open-source framework developed by Google and Twitter to create mobile web pages that load as quickly as possible. The focus behind Accelerated Mobile Pages is to simplify web pages by eliminating anything that isn’t necessary for users; removing heavy scripts, styles, and other complex elements.
AMP is designed to be lightweight, so the page will load quickly on slow connections or old devices. In its early days, AMP pages were listed prominently in mobile search results; Google even provided users with an icon that indicated the page was an AMP page. At one time, it took approximately 8.6 seconds for the average mobile page to load; mobile performance was far from ideal.
What are the Ways that AMP Will Help with Page Speeds?
The Benefits of AMP to Improve Page Speed
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a framework that helps create pages that load quickly. It does so by using specific performance guidelines to eliminate many of the things that typically slow down mobile pages.
Here’s what normally slows down the page load time:
- Excessively large image files
- Multiple third-party scripts
- Heavier JavaScript Frameworks
- Plug-ins that are downloaded before the page content will appear
The Accelerated Mobile Pages framework addresses these issues directly by limiting how much JavaScript can run on the page, allowing for the efficient loading of images and media, and giving priority to visible content, loading first over any background processes.
The end result is pages that load almost instantaneously (many of them within one second of being requested).
This is important because people are very impatient; many people simply will not wait for a page to load if it takes longer than just a few seconds. If a website loads faster, that will reduce the number of people who abandon the site out of impatience (also called bounce rate), increase user engagement, and provide the best first impression possible on mobile devices.
AMP is not some type of magical solution to page speed issues; it is simply designed with performance fencing to ensure quickly loading pages through a combination of aggressive optimizations.
How Does AMP Affect SEO?
The influence of speed over SEO may have historically been indirect; however, this is significantly greater on mobile.
If a user clicks on a result, sees a Page that takes a long time to load, and leaves right away, this is an example of sending a negative signal. High bounce rates (the percentage of visitors who left a website after they accessed it), very short visit times, and engagement rates will not help search performance.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) was developed to provide users with pages that load much more quickly, thus enabling users to get content delivered without any hindrance. Historically, Accelerated Mobile Pages also had an additional visual indication when displayed in a search engine result; hence, when a user saw one marked as “Fast,” they would click on it.
Although AMP is not a direct ranking factor, page experience is.
Pages that load faster generally show an increase in all three above:
- Engagement
- Total time spent using the Page
- Conversions
It’s important to remember that Google does not require Accelerated Mobile Pages anymore in order for your Page to show high in the search results; in fact, there are many websites that do not use AMP that provide excellent SEO results due to the use of Core Web Vitals being optimised directly.
AMP is able to help you with your SEO; however, it no longer has an exclusive way of doing that.
When should you use AMP?
AMP is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your business’s viability with AMP depends largely on your goals, traffic patterns, and technical infrastructures.
Before committing to AMP as part of your digital strategy, reconsider both the advantages and disadvantages carefully.
Advantages
The greatest strength of AMP is its ability to increase the speed of websites. Because Accelerated Mobile Pages are lightweight and designed to load quickly on your phone, the overall experience for users visiting the site will be better with fewer frustrations, regardless of how slow or unreliable the user’s network connection may be.
Accelerated Mobile Pages may be beneficial in improving mobile performance metrics. While AMP is not a ranking factor, faster load times increase Core Web Vitals scores, which impact your page’s overall performance rating.
AMP pages are a strong option for pages that contain a lot of content – for example, blog posts, news articles, educational resources, etc. By using AMP as a platform, you can get your users to the information they need more quickly and with fewer distractions than traditional HTML pages.
To summarize, AMP is ideal when speed and ease of use are more important than flexibility.
Disadvantages
To begin, AMP will only function if a user first lands on the Accelerated Mobile Pages Version. Additional approaches used as the default way of landing onto an Accelerated Mobile Pages version may not work for all users, so it is imperative that implementation be thoroughly planned in order to avoid such scenarios regarding search engines.
Secondly, there are limitations when it comes to collecting analytics on AMP pages in terms of both the time needed for setup of user tracking, as well as the amount/type/nature of data you can collect versus that of a regular web page. Depending on how Accelerated Mobile Pages is implemented requires a different configuration with tracking for each user.
Thirdly, there are restrictions placed upon outdoor advertisements on an AMP page (limited ad placement and quantity per page), which could reduce revenue for websites that rely on advertising as the main source of profit.
Fourthly, branding could be impacted if your business relies on elaborate designs or personalization from a mobile experience standpoint.
AMP Best Practices
If you’re contemplating whether Accelerated Mobile Pages is right for your digital presence, there are some principles to keep in mind prior to implementing it.
First, ensure you understand why you may want to implement AMP by establishing your site’s perceived need for having AMP. There are many new web technologies deployed on a modern website that provide excellent mobile performance without having to use Accelerated Mobile Pages. These techniques include optimizing images, utilizing scripts correctly, and structuring your site design.
Secondly, have support for the technical implementation of AMP before proceeding with it. Some Content Management Systems (CMS) or web hosting providers have plugins available for Accelerated Mobile Pages implementation. Still, you will very likely need an experienced web developer to avoid tracking problems or negative impacts on your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
Another principle is to avoid using Accelerated Mobile Pages for pages with high conversion rates and when developing pages with a focus on branding. Since Accelerated Mobile Pages does not support many page elements, such as forms and interactive elements, these pages will benefit more from traditional websites with traditional page design.
Finally, use A/B testing to measure whether your engagement, conversion, or retention rates improved with the implementation of AMP by comparing your non-AMP version and your Accelerated Mobile Pages version. If you have improved page performance without using AMP, you may want to continue to monitor and evaluate your performance compared to your previous versions before producing any further reports or documentation!
In the End
AMP was developed to solve the problem of mobile web pages loading slowly for users who were often impatient. At the time AMP was introduced, there wasn’t an alternative to getting your pages loaded quickly apart from using Accelerated Mobile Pages.
But today, the situation has changed.
You no longer have to use Accelerated Mobile Pages for your web pages to be visible on search results. You no longer need an AMP icon. And with all of the modern tools available today, you can create fast, mobile-friendly websites without losing the flexibility or data.
The reasons for using Accelerated Mobile Pages have become much less compelling for most businesses.
Instead of putting money and time into Accelerated Mobile Pages, it makes more sense for most businesses to invest their money into optimizing the speed of their websites and improving the user experience of mobile users in general by optimizing how fast users can load the pages, how easy it is for users to navigate through the site, and that their site works well on all types of mobile devices.
The speed and ease of use of a website are still important factors. However, Accelerated Mobile Pages is no longer the fastest or easiest way to achieve these goals.
Apptrove helps businesses identify friction points across their users’ journeys, as well as understand how performance affects conversion rates and engagement metrics. This helps businesses determine where to focus efforts on optimizations that will have a measurable impact on their bottom line.
Contact our sales team today to discuss innovative ways to create fast, user-friendly mobile experiences that generate sales without needing to use Accelerated Mobile Pages.
FAQs
1. What types of websites benefit most from AMP?
Accelerated Mobile Pages is ideal for publishers, blogs, and news sites that prioritize speed and readability. These types of sites often place more value on getting the content across than being creative with the design. While there are trade-offs to using Accelerated Mobile Pages, e-commerce and feature-rich sites may find that AMP limits their ability to convert.
2. How does AMP affect user experience on mobile?
By eliminating extraneous elements that can hinder mobile pages from loading, Accelerated Mobile Pages enhances the user experience and enables content to be available almost immediately. Providing content quickly contributes to reductions in bounce rates and higher user engagement. On the contrary, some of that interactivity comes at the cost of continued branding or more robust features offered by standard capabilities.
3. What are the limitations of using AMP for analytics?
Although Accelerated Mobile Pages is designed to help websites load more quickly, it has some limitations in analytics tracking when compared to standard pages. A Google Analytics tag must be added separately, and even with the tag, tracking is less granular compared to standard pages. This can make it slightly harder for businesses to accurately measure full user behavior.
4. How can AMP influence advertising revenue?
Accelerated Mobile Pages supports advertisements, but limits them to one tag per page, which can cut revenue potential for publishers. It is also difficult to integrate ads on AMP pages. Page speed can drive engagement, but there is less flexibility with ads, which may not align with sites used primarily for ad revenue.
