The loading time of websites, in particular blogs and ecommerce websites, is generally slow for many mobile users. Despite the efforts made by website owners to speed up their sites, most pages that are rich in content take several seconds to load.
Since 2020, more than 50% of web search traffic comes from mobile devices. And according to many studies, more than 53% of Internet users would leave a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load, and 80% of them would never come back.
AMP or Accelerated Mobile Page, is an open source technology originally created by Google in 2015. Its mission is to make web pages load instantly on mobile by removing unnecessary JS and CSS resources from your site.
AMP uses the minimum possible HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to which is added the Google cache system in order to ensure a page load almost instantaneously.
It’s a bit like Facebook Instant Articles, except that they are exclusive to the Facebook platform, and more specifically to its mobile application.
Google, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other sites are already using Google AMP.
The benefits of AMP
Near-instant loading and improved user experience
Simply put, AMP will make your website on mobile load superfast. In fact, if your website’s loading time on mobile isn’t quick, Google AMP will most likely speed it up for you and will greatly improve the user experience thanks to the limited usage of resources from your server and the direct delivery with a cached version of your AMP-enabled page from Google’s servers.
High ranking in search results
Although the use of AMP itself is not a ranking factor in search results, but the loading speed of the site is and will be more and more critical for a better ranking in Google search results. So, AMP promises you a faster site and subsequently a high ranking in the search engine results. And who says a good ranking in search engines means more traffic and therefore a better visibility.
More conservation of your server resources
If you receive high traffic on your enabled-AMP pages, your server resources will be less consumed, because your web pages will be delivered directly from Google’s servers.
Your ads will be more visible
When your website’s pages are loading fast, the ads are too, and therefore the chance that your visitors see them increases. In fact, according to a recent DoubleClick study, about 80% of site owners found that more visitors saw their ads and engaged with the content in AMP format compared to other pages that are slower.
The drawbacks of AMP
Now that we’ve looked at some of the benefits of AMP, it’s important to look at some of its drawbacks as well. We found 3 main arguments against this technology.
AMP will strip down your website pages
AMP pages are unfortunately not like the original pages, and have a very basic look. In order to match the characteristics requested by google and load quickly on mobile devices, the design of AMP pages becomes very inferior compared to the original pages.
AMP will drastically decrease your conversion rate
Since AMP limits the use of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, it will be nearly impossible for you to insert for example newsletters and contact forms. Yes, with AMP enabled on your pages, your website will gain more speed, but at what price?
Your articles won’t belong to you anymore
One of the reasons why AMP makes pages load so fast is that it allows Google to serve mobile users a cached version of the pages from their servers. In fact, Google holds the information of these pages that appear in search results. So once you enable AMP on your pages, you won’t really represent the content you have created.
Should I use AMP for my website?
It’s up to you whether AMP is right for your website or not. If your site is fairly lightweight and loads quickly, then Google AMP probably won’t do much for you.
But, if the majority of your website visitors are mobile users and your website is less optimized, then it’s definitely something you should consider or even implement immediately.
Do we use AMP on Digital Out Loud?
We are currently not considering converting Digital Out Loud to AMP.
What about you, what is your opinion on AMP? Are you using it on your website, or do you plan to use it soon? Feel free to tell us by commenting below!