You may have heard the term AMP or (Accelerated Mobile Pages), but what exactly are they and why should you be convincing your boss that your website needs to be using them?
WHAT IS AMP?
An AMP is an ‘Accelerated Mobile Page’ which is essentially a move by Google and Twitter to create much faster mobile web pages.
It’s basically a stripped down version of HTML, with pages designed purely for readability and speed, which leads to some really fast loading times.
For more information on exactly what an AMP is, check out the official Accelerated Mobile Pages Project website.
The project has been given support by some major news publications and while you might not have noticed it, you’ve probably already browsed on a couple of AMP pages today. But why do you need to convince your boss to embrace them?
FASTER LOADING
The most obvious benefit of AMPs is the much faster loading times it gives your users. The difference really is noticeable and it’s the reason that these pages were created, so this is by far the biggest benefit to take note of.
Loading times are absolutely crucial to a website’s success. As you can see in this blog post from Kissmetrics, almost a half of user expect a page to load within two seconds and will abandon the page if it doesn’t load within three.
Even if users do stick around on your site, a slow loading time also correlates to a low conversion rate.
As you can see, loading speed is vital and getting it right could help you significantly cut down on your abandonment rates and really boost conversions.
IMPROVED RANKING IN SEARCH ENGINES
While AMP isn’t known to be a ranking factor Google (yet), loading speed and general mobile friendliness certainly are, so anything which helps to enhance them will help to push you up the rankings.
Implementing AMP will almost certainly put your site at an advantage to other slower, unresponsive sites.
And if Google does start to prioritise AMPs, as it likely will do as it did with mobile friendliness, then you want your site to be ahead of the curve when it does.
INCREASED VISIBILITY
Not only will an AMP appear higher up the page on search engines, but it’ll also stand out to readers a lot more.
On Google, AMP pages are highlighted with green text displaying the name of the publisher.
This enhanced visibility alone can go a long way to increasing your click-through rates and as people start to understand what AMPs are, and associate them with quicker loading times, they’ll come to trust these highlighted sites more too.
Google has also started to display AMPs in a much more visual style, with a carousel with large images, which really dominates the search page on mobile, which will undoubtedly draw more clicks.
AD SUPPORT
AMPs support a wide range of ad networks, aiming to deliver fast adverts which still look great and grab the attention of the user. This will help advertisers to maximise their ROI and get their ads seen by as many eyes as possible.
ANALYTICS
Tracking data has become hugely important for websites in the modern era, and AMP is built with this in mind.
Sites can choose from two analytics tags which will track their user’s data such as number of visitors, new and returning visitors, conversion rates and much more.
For more information regarding AMPs or any other aspects of your web marketing, be sure to get in touch with us here at Liquid Bubble, one of the leading WordPress web design agencies in London.
