Speed is a currency for the most successful businesses.

As Amazon has proven, the faster you can deliver what someone wants, the more people will buy from you.

The same goes for website content.

If you click on a website link and the site doesn’t within 3 seconds you are very likely to leave the site and never return.

In 2019, 63 percent of internet users will access the internet via a smartphone. This means that the web is now much more oriented around the cell phone than ever before.

With the introduction of AMP pages, the world is ready to move into the realm of lightning-fast loading times.

The History of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

In 2016, Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages, an open source initiative to enhance the site speed of many mobile web pages.  

AMP is essentially a stripped-down version of website page with basic HTML. This simplicity of code allows the website content to be hosted on Google AMP Cache.

Because it is hosted on Google’s servers, it can then serve this cached version to users instantly whenever they click on your link. The median load time for pages marked with AMP is as quick as 1 second.

More than 1.5 billion AMP pages have been created to date, and more than 100 leading analytics, ad tech, and CMS providers support the AMP format.

AMP = Speed = Ranking

While Google does not explicitly say all websites should have AMP pages, it is ranking those that do higher than ever.

A recent study found that even a 1-second delay in mobile browser load time can lower conversion rate by 3.5%, bring down pageviews by 9%, and increase bounce rate by 8%.

Google’s ranking algorithm is highly cognizant of this fact and knows that engagement and speed are indelibly linked.

In our own studies through Google Analytics, we have found that our site traffic increased by almost 50% over the past year, and the majority of the increase was due to AMP and mobile page views.

How to Make AMP Part of Your Website

If you have a WordPress site, it is fairly easy to get your AMP running on your site.

The WordPress platform has a free plug-in which you can download and activate. Once that’s done, the plug-in takes care of creating AMP versions of all of your content.
The next time Google crawls your site, the new code will be discovered and the AMP versions will be displayed in place of the regular pages.

For non-Wordpress users, a few more steps are required. Some Content Management Systems have a similar AMP plug-in available.  Other  custom websites may require a developer to do some coding work to let Google know that AMP versions of the site exist. 

In conclusion, it is a good idea to add AMP to your site as a way to streamline the user experience. The faster a site is, the more likely people will want to view it, and the more likely Google will rank it.

AMP is a great way to future proof your website and potentially increase your rankings at the same time. It lets you take advantage of the trend towards speed and efficiency that is taking over the world, both online and offline.

Looking to enhance your website for user experience? Brandastic is an Orange County web development agency. We specialize in building websites for WordPress and Magento. If you need a custom site for ecommerce or better customer connection, reach out to us today.