AMP Development | A Complete Guide to Accelerated Mobile Pages

In recent years, the usage of mobile internet has surpassed that of desktops all over the world. This also has changed user expectations significantly.

They expect great digital experiences to be delivered to them at the moment they need them. This can be ensured through Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). 

This can be ensured through Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). 

What is AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a web component framework that loads your site in a lightning-fast manner on mobile devices. It reduces Content Delivery Network and CSS and JavaScript components.

So, the pages are instantly loaded—this ushers in a better user experience on mobile devices. 

What are The Benefits of AMP?

There are several reasons why more and more brands and businesses are adopting AMP. Here is a list of those.

1. Mobile-friendly

AMPs are mobile-friendly. They are accessible across all mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, e-readers, etc.

Since these devices are more widely used nowadays than desktops, your web pages become available to a wider section of internet users. 

2. Fast-loading

AMP can load your pages faster. This would improve your user experience, page engagement, and retention rates.

Studies have shown that pages with a longer time to load have lower average time on-page, higher bounce rates, and lower conversions. AMP helps avoid all such negative effects.

3. Maximized revenue

Statistics say that a one-second delay in website loading lowers your conversion rate by 12%. Since AMPs load your web pages faster, you get to maximize your revenue generation through it.

Further, since AMP pages are distributed to different platforms at one go soon after their creation, ads can be seen on AMP and non-AMP pages. So, you can deliver your brand experience across all platforms to increase your ad-budget ROI. 

4. Web components availability

AMP lets you use optimized web components. You can perform A/B testing, use CSS for retrieving data from the web pages, etc. 

5. Boosted SEO

Mobile responsiveness and page loading speed are given prime importance by Google while ranking websites. Since both of these are ensured by AMPs, your site will be ranked higher in the search engine result pages.

This increased visibility would, in turn, increase your site visitors and revenue generation. 

6. Simplicity

AMP development is straightforward and simple. Your entire archive, including the CMS archive, can be easily converted to AMP, and you don’t require any special skill to optimize your AMP pages.

Further, the AMP format is completely portable, and the AMP pages are consistently fast, irrespective of how the user reaches them. NotifyVisitors can help transform your site into AMPs.  

How Do AMPs Work?

Multiple optimizations work in combination to load AMP pages in a lightning-fast manner. Here is a list of those. 

1. Asynchronous execution of all AMP JavaScripts

JavaScript is powerful for your webpage, but it can delay page rendering. Though JavaScript may include AMP components, these are designed so that they do not degrade performance.

AMP allows only asynchronous JavaScript to prevent delayed page rendering. 

2. Static sizing of all resources

AMP separates resource layout from document layout and starts loading the page’s layout without waiting to download any resources.

Further, external resources like ads, images, and iframes must state their size in the HTML so that AMP can determine the element’s position and size before downloading those. 

3. No allowing of extension mechanisms to block rendering

AMP supports extensions for tweets, Instagram embeds, lightboxes, etc. Though these require additional HTTP requests, AMP doesn’t allow these to block the layout and rendering. 

4. Keeping out all third party JavaScript 

Third-party JavaScripts like to load JS synchronously JS loading. This would delay the loading process. But AMP pages restrict to sandboxed iframes. This way, these cannot hinder the main page’s execution.

Even if they stimulate multiple style recalculations, the very little DOM of their tiny iframes quickens the time taken to do those. 

5. Inline styling and size limitation of all CSS

CSS blocks page load and all rendering, which makes it likely to get bloated. Since the HTML of AMP pages allows only inline styles, 1 or more HTTP requests are eliminated from the main rendering path.

Further, the maximum size of the inline style sheet is limited to 50 kilobytes. 

6. Efficient font triggering

Web fonts are huge. The browser takes a lot of time to begin downloading these. Therefore, for ensuring effective performance, the AMP development system optimizes web fonts.

It declares zero HTTP requests till fonts begin to download. This is made possible by the asynchronous execution and inline styling in the JavaScript. 

7. Style recalculations minimized

Style recalculations are costly, but every time you measure something, style recalculations get triggered.

The AMP system tackles this by designing all DOM reads to occur before all the writes. This way, a maximum of only one style recalculation happens per frame.  

8. Running animations on GPU

Running animations of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) facilitates fast optimizations. For, GPU performs things like moving and fading elements on layers.

However, it can’t update the page’s layout and assign the task to the browser, which is not good.

The AMP system, therefore, only lets animating and transitioning on opacity and transform. This way, the page layout is eliminated. 

9. Prioritizing resource loading

AMP controls the downloading of all resources. It loads only what is needed and pre-fetches those resources which are lazy-loaded.

So, only those resources that are presently most important are downloaded first. Ads and images are downloaded only if the user is likely to see those. This kind of prioritizing ensures that things load fast. 

10. Using pre-connect/prerendering API

The AMP system heavily uses the new pre-connect API. So, when HTTP requests are made, they are as fast as they can.

This ensures that the page is rendered before the user conveys that he would like to navigate it. So, when the user chooses it actually, the page is already available, facilitating instant loading. 

What Kinds of Businesses Would Benefit from AMP Development?

Businesses whose sites have static content and are not very media-rich would benefit from using AMP.

For, websites with many video content cannot be loaded at a lightning-fast speed by AMP development. However, at an added expense and extra effort, you can work additional features into your AMPs. 

AMP is a great platform for sharing articles, blogs, and recipes. They are also utilized in lead generation landing pages because of their speed.

Industries that can harness the complete potential of AMP are advertising, e-commerce, and news publishing sites. Some of the leading firms using AMP successfully are The Washington Post, U.S. Xpress, WIRED, Fast Commerce, and GIZMODO. 

For instance, TransUnion, an American consumer credit reporting agency, faced slow-loading mobile pages that led to lower mobile conversion rates and higher bounce rates.

The firm resorted to AMP for enhancing user experience and getting higher ROI. It helped it get 3% more conversions, 26% lower bounce rates, and the users spent 2.5x more time on their site.

Likewise, Gizmodo, a website for design, technology, science, and science fiction, adopted AMP in May 2016 to enhance its user experience. It resulted in its pages loading 3X faster on mobile.

This significantly increased the number of visits it received each day. Further, more than 80% of its traffic from AMP pages is new traffic. On these pages, the firm also witnesses a 50% increase in impressions per pageview. 

In India, Myntra, the largest online fashion store in the country has found great success after implementing AMP in May 2017. AMP reduced its overall page load time by 65% and the bounce rate by 40%.

The firm generated higher revenue than before from sales through mobile. And the best thing is the revenue increase is continuing to move up. 

Some other companies that have found great success through AMP development are Grupo Expansión, India Today, Metromile, InnKeeper’s Advantage, DiscoverCarHire.com, Tokopedia, Jagran New Media, VOGSY, KG Media, RCS Media Group, etc.  

Conclusion

Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source framework that loads your site in a lightning-fast manner on mobile devices by reducing Content Delivery Network and CSS and JavaScript components.

This makes your site accessible across all mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, e-readers, etc., and ensures a better user experience across these. 

AMP’s fast-loading attribute also increases conversion rates, page engagement, and retention rates and decreases bounce rates. These maximize the ROI.

Further, switching to AMP also lets you use optimized web components such as A/B testing and CSS. Another benefit is the higher ranking of AMPs in the search engine result pages, which boosts your SEO.

Many firms across the world are successfully taking advantage of the immense potential of AMPs. It is simple and straightforward to create AMPs. NotifyVisitors can help you in this regard. 

Also Read:

• How Does AMP Pages Impact SEO?
• How to Enable Ads on AMP Pages?