With more and more search and internet activity taking place on mobile devices such as smartphones, it’s no surprise that companies such as Google are focusing on it. Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP is one of the biggest developments to come our way in recent times and one which businesses of all sizes need to take advantage of if they can.

What is AMP?

Delay in pages loading is a bugbear of users, so the quicker you can make your site appear on that mobile device the better. This is an open source scheme which is designed to improve download speeds so that pages appear almost instantaneously. You will need to have your site in the simplified code that allows you to achieve this.

This code is made up of three vital components: the HTML, the Cache (or how the data is stored and given priority) and the JavaScript which ensures that nothing on a particular page prevents or delays loading.

Essentially, normal pages often load slowly on mobile. AMP enhanced pages should load in under a second.

How Does It Affect Your Business?

It’s not just the speed of download that is going to benefit businesses. Google has already been working to give SEO points to those websites that have AMP pages – which means you’re far more likely to come at the top of SERPs if you have it.

  • If you can appear in the first few results of any search online, you stand a much greater chance of being clicked on and people visiting your site.
  • This is amplified if your business depends on trade by appearing on local searches.
  • It’s already been shown that click through rates are considerably higher for sites that have AMP.
  • That means you can expect your bounce rate to be lower too and your conversion to be higher because people stay on your site.

Mobile first is important if you want to make sure that your business is creating opportunities to attract potential customers online. In March this year, Google rolled out it’s mobile first indexing and by April they were giving preference to sites that displayed the AMP lightening bolt symbol.

Are There Limitations?

The answer to this is yes. You need to understand that this is a developing project and all the pieces are not yet in place. There are limitations on what you can do with CSS, the script that designs your pages, and JavaScript itself. For some businesses that can have an impact on branding and style, particularly if they are using a range of graphics and largish files.

Implementing an AMP project currently requires the input of a design team that knows what they are doing. Getting it wrong can mean your site doesn’t perform as well as you hope. You might be forgiven for thinking that playing a wait and see game may be the best way forward in the light of this. That could, however, miss the prospect of taking advantage of AMP before your competitors and driving more traffic to your website.

Even so it’s important for business of all sizes to start exploring the options when it comes to AMP, including whether they should implement now or later. Contact us today to find out more.