With page speed set to become a more important ranking factor for Google, it’s time for web developers to re-visit AMP and the benefits it can have for your website.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open source, website publishing technology designed by Google to make web pages load almost instantly on mobile devices. AMPs are compatible with all of the top browsers and are also utilised to provide in-app instant experiences across a number of popular social media platforms.
AMPs are created by essentially stripping away additional JavaScript and HTML tags to create simplified version of a webpage. While this won’t work for some areas of your website, it could have great potential for particular pages – especially when you consider that 25% of users would happily sacrifice animations and videos (that increase the amount of code required to load) for a better website performance.
According to Google, the average user will leave a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load – considering that the average load speed online is 15 seconds means that there are a significant number of sites being abandoned without a user ever seeing the content or getting an impression of the brand. AMP can ensure your web page loads within 3 seconds to retain users and excel compared to competitors who may be slower.
AMP is also important for your Google Search rankings. Speed is a significant factor when it comes to rankings as Google wants to provide the best experience for it’s users (and subsequently keep them using the search engine so that ads can be served) so ensuring that you have pages that load as quickly as possible is key to a high position. Bounce rate and website traffic also count towards your ranking so by decreasing how often users abandon your site you can decrease your bounce rate, increase your traffic and achieve a higher ranking in SERPs.
You can easily integrate AMP into your existing site structure by using an existing CMS plugin or by implementing custom functionality in your CMS to generate AMP content. By incorporating AMP as part of your web development strategy you can ensure you achieve high performance and still provide a customised user experience.
For more support with your website design & development, get in touch with our team.
