Needless to say, most of our online business comes from Google’s organic search results (SEO). With the ubiquity of online browsing on mobile devices, Google now wants to achieve a consistent standard to apply to web pages when delivering content to any mobile device and tablet, ensuring that pages load elegantly and instantaneously.
How did they achieve it?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source framework launched by Google in February 2016. This framework changes how Google evaluates our SEO rankings by placing a higher priority on mobile performance. While there has been a huge focus on adapting websites for the limitations on mobile (high data costs, slow loading times, and poor content rendering), mobile browsers have, until AMP, lacked the benefits of a dedicated framework.
In order to reach this goal, Google has developed a new web page format – which is basically a simplified version of HTML dedicated for mobile devices. By allowing the most performant design patterns and imposing restrictions on resource-heavy Javascript, AMP pages are dramatically faster than the average HTML page found on the web today.
With their determination to further improve loading speeds, Google uses server-side rendering of AMP elements to cache page contents on Google servers. This will allow the content in pages to reach the browser as quickly as possible. This strategy appears to be coming into fashion, as there are currently over two billion AMP pages online, on over 900,0000 domains internationally.
If you think that AMP only focuses solely on smaller devices, you are wrong. AMP will load in any modern desktop browser as the project’s own website is coded solely in AMP. This is a leap forward for mobile optimisation and theme responsiveness, as there is now a provision for mobile experiences that uses a discrete code, removing content that is redundant on small screens.
AMP and E-Commerce
Since we’ve established that websites that implement AMP have an SEO advantage on Google’s organic SEO, you might be wondering— how else can your eCommerce store benefit from AMP?
The biggest advantage that AMP shares with both media channels and eCommerce is speed, since faster loading sites will simply gain better opportunities to generate sales.
In this context, you could dramatically lower your online store’s loading speed for mobile by adopting a streamlined framework, your competitors could be reaping huge rewards over your clients. Imagine if your online store is making $100,000 per day: a one second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5m in lost sales every year (Kissmetrics).
Moreover, it is also possible to create AMP versions of Shopify pages through the API. Some of the apps in the Shopify App Store have also successfully leveraged this technology to provide a conversion service for clients.
AMPing up for the future
Henceforth, it is likely that AMP will see growth worldwide, given that Google has announced during a recent developer conference (AMP Conf) , that AMP will be applied over the search engines of Baidu, Sogou, and Yahoo Japan.
The open-source framework continues to build its impetus, and more plans for improvements are on the way, including third-party log-in and support for eCommerce analytics.
If you are worried about lacking behind the competition, or would like to know more about this issue, Web Design Market can certainly help with your digital marketing strategies; we have proven results from a large variety of clients. Contact us today for a free quote!