If you actively surf the internet, chances are you might have heard of the term Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP pages are essentially a diet version of existing web pages that offer faster load times than the standard page.
Where should I use AMP pages?
1) Most of your traffic is from mobile devices
One of the main reasons AMP pages were created was because of the shift in internet usage from Desktop to Mobile devices. Catering to mobile web users by making the site mobile responsive is not enough. Since mobile devices at times run slower internet connections it is also essential to focus on page load times.
2) When you wish to lower the bounce rate
According to Google, 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. This means all you have is 3 seconds to get your user’s attention and faster page speeds improve overall usability, which persuades a user to stay on your site longer.
3) When you are spending on Paid Ads
Amp is intended to make the web faster. And when you are spending on Paid Ads to direct traffic towards your site from various channels, it is important that the page that the visitors get to has a fast response time to avoid them losing interest in your content. Remember, faster load times are directly related to your Return On Investment.
How Does AMP Work?
AMP code contains a three-step AMP configuration:
AMP HTML
A lighter and different markup of traditional HTML code with additional tags. Being a subset of HTML, AMP puts some restrictions on the set of tags available through HTML but the AMP HTML documents can be uploaded to a web server and served just like any other HTML document. Predictable performance is the main goal for AMP HTML. Primarily it is aimed at reducing the time until the content of a page can be consumed by the user.
AMP JS library
One of the restrictions that come with AMP is that it does not allow execution of custom JS. this avoids the issues that heavy slow JS may cause. This also helps make sure that the pages don’t need to be reloaded multiple times which might, in turn, make the browser recalculate the site of the page and affect load time.
AMP pages allow third-party JavaScript only in sandboxed iframes. By limiting third-party js to iframes, main page execution can not be blocked. Even if the JS triggers multiple style re-calculations since they are inside an iFrame the change to the DOM is minimalistic.
AMP Cache
This is simply a delivery network that is used to send all valid AMP documents. It caches AMP HTML pages and transmits it from the same origin that is using HTTP 2.0. This acts as a validation system to recheck the AMP pages every time and confirm that they are using valid AMP HTML and do not depend on external resources. There are currently 3 major AMP Cache providers – Google, Cloudflare and Bing.
How Do I Test My Amp Pages?
Once you have created an AMP Page, it is essential that you test it in order to avoid any unnecessary errors that might affect the performance and ranking of your page. There are various tools that can help you check if your AMP page is valid or not, the one tool that we suggest is Google.
AMP for WordPress
A large majority of websites today are running on WordPress. The Official AMP Plugin for WordPress supports fully integrated AMP support for WordPress sites, with stunning capabilities. Developed in partnership with Google, this plugin can help WordPress users implement AMP into their own website.
Having AMP capability on your WordPress site can help you stand out from your competition by storing your pages on Google’s AMP Cache. It will also help you rank higher on Google and improve the user experience for mobile users at the same time.
Analytics and AMP
AMP pages being a technology developed by google support Google Analytics(GA) tracking which can help track customers and build custom reports for free.
In Conclusion
Amp Pages are something that is being vastly adopted by websites. Being an Open Source project it is free to utilize and as a bonus, it positively affects the site SEO. Google will always rank faster pages higher and utilizing the power of AMP pages is one of the easiest things that can get your website in its good books.
The above steps range from simple to highly technical. For more information about AMP Page and how to implement them on your site, Contact Us today!
We also have a surprise coming up that we are so excited about and can’t wait to tell you! But for now, it’s a secret! Come back in October 2021 to see!