A Guide to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs)

An Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP), designed by Google and Twitter, is designed to make mobile pages faster. And that’s a good thing – according to Neil Patel, around 40% of users will abandon a web page that takes over 3 seconds to load. AMPs cut download time between 15-85% in initial tests. To summarize, AMP-optimized pages rank better and faster, not to mention converting your visitors into customers.

How Does an AMP Work?

The AMP plug-in can render your site’s mobile pages faster by leveraging stripped down HTML files that create faster, mobile-friendly copies of your webpages. Because the HTML is stripped down, keep in mind that no forms are allowed on AMP plug-in pages, and custom fonts should be specially loaded. While there are some limitations, the most important factors here are speed and readability. 

Benefits of AMPs

• Traffic Growth and SEO Ranking – AMP standards help decrease page load time, which improves user experience and increases the time that visitors stay on your site. Page load time also affects your site’s SEO. If two sites rank similarly on Google, the one with the fastest page speed gets priority.
• Low Bounce Rate – Faster pages mean that visitors will stay on your site longer, since the experience is easy and fast. With AMPs, users will be less likely to ditch your site early due to slow loading times. Which is good, since a 1-second delay in web page speed can decrease conversions by up to 7%!
• Increased Ad Views – AMPs enhance the overall usability of images and banners. This means there will be a higher ad viewability rate and you can maximize revenue with your site.

AMPs: A Few Things You Should Know

If you’re looking to implement AMPs for your website, make sure you’re aware of these standards:

• You must have a streamlined version of CSS
• You can only use the JavaScript library that AMP provides
• Sites must be properly validated to work every time
• Forms are not allowed on AMP plug-in pages
• Custom fonts must be specially loaded
• Declare height and width of your images for optimal formatting
• Use AMP-approved extensions for videos

Increase Your Website Speed

AMPs are truly powerful and can help you meet Google’s standards for site speed. Plus, AMP is surprisingly easy to implement on many common content management systems (CMS), like WordPress. To learn more about AMPs and how to increase your website speed, contact advancreative today.