What are AMPs and Why Enterprises Should Care?

Modern mobile application development is built upon a sea of numerous progressive technologies, all aimed at improving user experience with speed, innovation, and performance. AMPs or accelerated mobile pages is one of these technologies that has paved its way to become an indispensable part of mobile UX. In this blog, we will discuss what AMPs are and why they are a critical component of a mobile application development project.

What is AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages?

If you’ve ever looked up for content and interacted with the search results on a mobile device, you’ve probably encountered AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP is an open source framework developed by Google in collaboration with Twitter. Accelerated Mobile Pages are better and quicker experiences on the mobile web. At its core, the framework enables you to build lightweight mobile experiences by simplifying the HTML and following streamlined CSS rules.

AMP was originally developed in response to Facebook’s Instant Articles. However, over the years, it has come out to be a powerful platform for content delivery directly from search engine results at fast speeds. 

How does AMP work?

The AMP framework has 3 main parts:

• AMP HTML: AMP HTML can be called a leaner form of standard HTML. The AMP framework has strict rules for the HTML tags you can use. To facilitate faster loading time, some HTML elements like forms do not work with AMP. AMP framework needs a streamlined form of CSS. This is a typical feature of web content development with modern HTML as well as CSS.
• AMP JS: To make sure pages load fast on mobile app platforms, AMP limits the use of JavaScript. It makes use of AMP scripts, that are optimized to fulfil quick page loading in mind. AMP offers an easy-to-implement library of components. One can build animations, implement content loading, modify layouts, and use AMP’s component library. There’s also the AMP component for GDPR compliance.
• AMP CDN: AMP CDN or AMP Cache, is a critical part of AMP. It is a proxy-based CDN or content delivery network. The CDN gets AMP content while caching it for quick delivery. By default, the AMP CDN caches all valid AMP content and does not provide an option to opt out. However, one can also continue to leverage a private CDN provider on top of AMP cache to customize your configurations for content delivery.

Who should use AMP?

Within a few years of AMP launch, it started being accepted on media sites. Since the majority of content on media sites is static, these websites saw significant boost in organic search traffic. Moreover, Google has also made it simple for publishers to make their content stand out with Rich Cards. For digital marketplace websites with content that is heavily dynamic due to user selections like filtering, adding to cart, sorting and other dynamic user actions, AMP can boost mobile performance. All SEO as well as mobile enthusiasts agree that a well-implemented AMP website will:

• Boost organic search volume and traffic.
• Grow conversions due to faster and better mobile experiences.
• Minimize load on servers because of AMP CDN caches and quick response to servers.
• Provide opportunity for content to be featured prominently in AMP carousel on mobile search results.

AMPs - Things You Should Know Before Implementation

• AMP caches content without requesting your servers each time.  Your analytics and measurement tools cannot rely entirely on server requests. AMPs hence require special tracking parameters to accurately channel CTRs as well as engagement metrics from the AMP version of the website.
• AMP experiences are restrictive on design. It’s difficult for users to perform any dynamic activities except go back to the Google results search. This makes room for lost mobile user engagement, and potential customer conversion.

Conclusion

To simply state, AMP is boiled down version of HTML, which means that it is not about delivering rich user experiences like moving maps, rotating images, and more on AMP. If portions of your website relies heavily on rich UX, you may wish to reconsider building AMP versions of those web sections. To learn more about AMP and how Datamatics can help, get in touch with one of the AMP development companies today!