If you’ve never heard of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP you probably think we’re making stuff up!
Essentially, AMP is the average loading speed of your website pages.
Don’t yawn just yet! This can really help you to get the most from your website.
What is Google AMP?
The average loading speed of your web pages has a direct impact on how long online users browse through your website. Statistics show that pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load lose up to 40% of potential visitors, which could translate to a massive loss when calculated in terms of lost revenue and click-throughs.
AMPs have managed to cut down the load time for mobile pages from an average of 10 seconds per page to near instant loading.
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The Start of AMP
Once upon a time (not that long ago), websites used to customize their content for desktops. Then along came smartphones and tablets, and websites had to go mobile. Search engines such as Google also took note of this new development.
One of the first developments in this regard was the optimization of many websites for mobile devices. The major challenge, however, was the fact that most websites were not loading as fast as mobile users would have wanted. Along came AMP.
Between October 2015 and February 2016, Google rolled out it’s AMP project as a way to improve user experience. Other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest also invested in this new project in a bid to retain as many users as possible – recognizing that users were getting impatient with slow platforms.
For Google, the main AMP focus was on media platforms such as The Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN. The idea at that time was to reduce ad pop-ups on mobile, decrease load times, and increase traffic to static media pages. E-commerce and lead generating websites were sceptical about AMP as it wasn’t clear how it would benefit them without the very important advertisements as they are an important part of their marketing strategy.
With time, web admins realized that it was possible to use AMP to attract new traffic and then once that traffic arrived, it could encourage them to visit the non-AMP pages.
Today, 7% of all content views online are generated via the AMPs. That’s without the 2 billion web pages across different distribution platforms using AMP today. Large and small companies are investing in AMP in massive numbers. In other words, AMP is a thing.
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The Rise of AMP stories
In the same way that Instagram and Facebook stories have been creating a buzz on the social media, AMP stories are the trendiest on the serach engine results pages…although probably not as cool.
Web publishers use this feature to create short videos and other relevant content and, instead of posting them on social media, they place them on Google’s search results. The user experience, in this case, is epic as content searchers are able to digest and swipe the AMP stories faster than usual. (fast, again, is good.)
Today’s consumers want ads that look like stories. They don’t have time for boring traditional ads which, no matter how informative they are, they don’t really speak to the consumer’s soul. Of course, the lightning speed that comes with AMP stories also makes them attractive to the modern user.
You must, therefore, take advantage of these stories to boost user engagement, increase sharing, generate new leads, and collectively raise your revenue.
Why Has AMP Become so Important?
Besides the obvious advantage of increasing page speed, AMP has a lot of other advantages:
1. Improved SEO Ranking (soon)
AMP is not yet among Google’s SEO ranking algorithms but all indications say that it will be soon. Google loves pages with a fast load time both on desktop and mobile. AMP does exactly that.
2. Increased Traffic
The more visible a website is online, the higher the traffic it gets (duh). When this traffic converts to loyal customers, then AMP can be said to increase revenue for companies.
In the whole AMP debate, one thing stands out – that it is a viable marketing strategy for all businesses.
Wahoo!
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