Amp up with Google AMP

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Naresh ki dukaan to Amazon.com!
For us developers; Web 2.0 to Web 3.0!
&, NOW

Mobile Websites to 

Want to see what next is on line to wow the mobile users? Then without adieu read further.

What really was the need of this new invention?

The online space has hugely transformed to present flashy websites with rich and interactive content. The businesses invest heavily in website designing and content creation, while some fail to realize that it is equally important to ensure that the heavy, content-rich pages need to load quickly to allure the customers and make them surf through the pages and the content. With advent of newer technology in smartphones, more and more people are resorting to surfing through their mobile devices. Since India is still grappling with mobile data speeds where the penetration of 4G is still on the lower side, it is critical for web pages to be designed in such a way that they load faster on such handheld devices.

What is Accelerated Mobile Pages?

An open source project launched in 2016 and backed by Google, specially for mobile devices which specifically address the need of quick loading of web pages. The project is called AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages, that enable development of fast loading of websites in mobile devices. Faster loading time of the websites will lead to satisfied user experience and increased chance of visitors staying on the page for longer time.

How does an AMP website stand out?

You will know it when you choose to AMP it. An AMP website will be tagged with a Blue Lightning sign . Just like the logo, AMP loads at a lightning speed!

What does AMP have in store for you ?

If it is not instant, it is not fast enough – Every second counts! The following sums up the benefits of AMP

Organic search performance –

Websites developed with AMP technology is favoured by Google, as AMP is a google product and the technology enables super fast page loading. These factors increase the chances of the website visibility in an organic search result and increases the ‘Search Engine Result Performance’ (SERP). Additionally google enables the AMP pages, especially news content to be displayed in the “Google News Carousel Viewer” enabling a visitor to get a snippet of all top searches at one go. This reduces the search ranking of websites which are not AMP developed.

First Impression is a lasting impression!

AMP carousel viewer and search results for AMP pages will be displayed on top of the search results mostly. Keeping this in mind a few modifications or optimisations in your web page can take your website a long way.

1. Create catchy headline and  compelling image for your AMP webpage because that’s the first thing displayed on google search results. Make sure the headlines and the images included are optimised.  
2. The first 100 words in the headline displayed in the web search results should be such that it compels a reader to click further and enter the web page.

Page Loading-

AMP is synonymous to faster page load! As statistics suggest, 54% of users browse through their mobile devices and wait for an average of 6 seconds for a web page to load. With users getting impatient by the day and preferring higher speeds, the chances of users abandoning slow loading websites is high, ultimately impacting the site’s google ranking as well, since the ranking is directly proportional to a user experience (UX)! WIth AMP in place the website loads 5X faster giving a delightful user experience for mobile users.

Engaging the audience-

The near instant loading of AMP enables grabbing the audience attention instantaneously. The target audience will be more receptive to the brand message if the web page loads completely at a faster pace. The net result could be a lead conversion.

Bounce Rate-

Bounce rate is the metric used for calculating the percentage of visitors leaving the page in shortest time, either because the page did not render the promised content or the page was not user friendly.
AMP loads contents (text) first followed by images, videos and lastly the ads. This leads to quicker page rendering, thus decreasing the bounce rate for the page.

Web Conversions –

Google AMP cache loads AMP validated pages at a faster pace, enabling almost immediate page rendering upon a search request. This feature shoots up the dwell time and dramatically increases the conversions.

Maximise your revenue-

“Speed Speaks”. The statistics say that for a second delay in page load, the conversions fall upto 20%. AMP creates a fast experience everywhere from Ads, landing pages or the entire website. This increases the customer engagement and thereby scale up the sales & performance.

How AMP pages render fast?! 

AMP is made of the following components which enables it to load super fast in comparison to a normal website.

1. AMP HTML is a simple HTML with custom AMP properties
2. AMP JavaScript manages resource loading and provides custom tags through its library that provides AMP’s best performance practices to enable faster rendering of web pages. It makes loading of content from external sources asynchronous making the pages more reliable and efficient.
3. AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering valid AMP documents. It caches AMP HTML pages and improve page performance automatically. When using Google AMP cache, all page elements load from the same origin that is using HTTP 2.0, thereby enabling faster loading of content. The cache has in-built validation system that ensures guaranteed content by not depending on external resources.
4. AMP Lite is a stripped version of AMP mainly aimed at loading pages faster than normal AMP sites for low RAM devices or slow internet connections. Google released, AMP Lite to optimize AMP websites for bandwidth constrained users.

The near instant speed is made possible as, AMP Lite cuts down a whopping 45% bytes in comparison to normal AMP using certain tags such as “amp-img”, “amp-font” and such other. The AMP lite strips the quality of the JPEG images in a way not creating a significant visible difference, also this version of AMP converts JPEG to WebP image format on supported browsers enabling a 25% reduction in byte size without quality compromise.

AMP for E-Commerce, a possibility?

The concept of an E-commerce platform is to enhance user experience for an online visitor. The intention of e-com websites is to allure a visitor and convert to a prospective customer. To achieve this along with the products per say, it is crucial to create a engaging and impeccable user experience.
Almost 67% of the world population accounts to mobile users and about 50% of the web traffic is from the mobile users. This magnanimous growth in mobile users worldwide, demands an optimised website with a near instant page loading ability. The importance of loading speed for an ecom website is crucial for traffic conversions and search engine ranking performances. Since its roll out in 2016, e-Commerce giants like EBay, Flipkart, Aliexpress, Myntra etc have successfully utilized the power and versatility of AMP!

Is AMPing up your website helping after all?

There has been a fierce debate for this newly adopted Google project which are making accolades in some businesses and a complete disappointment in others. But it is for the businesses at large to decide on the fate of AMP, which soon could be a standard for search engine ranking!
I hope to clarify some doubts in your mind through the following case studies. Theses are regarding three businesses from different laterals such as “lead generation” and “ecommerce” websites.

E Commerce Website – Our team developed AMP websites for a few ecommerce business in 2 different domains, one was in a food & beverage industry and other a leading fashion brand. After a period of 6 months of successful AMP implementation, the following are the observations recorded;

The Food company showed remarkable increase, almost 87.6%more in mobile traffic post AMP implementation and drastic reduction in bounce rate. The percentage of revenue conversion increased by 21.9% post AMP implementation.

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  Revenue Conversions

   

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  Mobile Traffic

The fashion brand did not record significant change in mobile traffic and bounce rate post AMP implementation. The noteworthy improvement was the revenue conversions increased by a whooping 53.3% post AMP implementation

Revenue Conversions

Lead Generation Website – Our team developed AMP website for an exquisite furniture company. AMP was implemented on the Home Page, Product listing and Product detail page. Traffic increased by about 9.1 % post AMP implementation. There was a slight increase from 63.84% to 68.2% in the bounce rate post AMP.

Mobile Users Traffic

It’s all about Speed – It matters!

Mobile users demand speed and AMP delivers just that! Below you can see a Lead generation page being compared before AMP and after AMP for factors such as time, size and resource request.

NON AMP

After AMP

Viola! The Non AMP Page took a whooping 9.7 sec to load a page 4.21MB with a total resource requests of 153. Really?!

AMP Page on the other hand took just a mere 3.4 sec and stripped the page to just 743kb by removing the “fluff” in the website, thereby enabling a super fast loading of just the basic content.

Insights from the above comparison study :

1. AMP certainly proves to be a technology to watch out for.
2. Observations recorded for the AMP enabled websites indicate a positive outcome with increased revenue conversions and user traffic.
3. Nonetheless every technology has loopholes and so does AMP! We see that our lead generation website did show increased bounce rate post AMP implementation, the first reactions could be “oh what’s the point of AMP?!” but let’s not jump the guns, the new Google AMP carousel viewer could be the culprit. This viewer enables a user to swipe the articles without having to open each, and when this is done, Google registers each swipe as a separate session. If there is no activity recorded in the session, then it is registered as a “bounce”!

Our final thoughts on AMP

If you are a business with more than 65% mobile traffic the AMP is for you, however if your business website is intended to display images and videos, the a responsive website with optimised page loads are a better option.

As mentioned earlier in the article, every technology has flaws and so does AMP. Firstly, URL is a key part of web browsing, with Google AMP in place, Google url appears in place of the publisher’s URL which could in some business be a concern for credibility.

Secondly, the feature of Carousel viewer in Google AMP increases the bounce rate for a website. This could be because the carouse viewer lets the user to slide through the website highlight without actually clicking on each, resulting in a “session” each time. Lastly, tracking of analytics in AMP is considered pretty cumbersome.

Nonetheless, AMP should be offered a great deal of appreciation for its near instant page loading and optimization features. Foreseeing AMP could be used for ranking websites, it’s better off to implement on critical pages such as “home page”, “product listing page”, “Blog page”,”contact-us page” and such other.

Interested in AMP? then Contact us for your new Website today! and help us transform your website and scale up your customer base !