Google have created a new way of accelerating mobile web pages for mobile devices. Giving online publishers and advertisers more opportunity resulting from faster loading times.
Speed matters and instant is the ideal. Research shows that the bounce rate can be as high as 58% for web pages that take nearly ten seconds to load. Using the AMP format will make it far more compelling for people to consume and engage with more content. For Google it isn’t just about speed and performance. They also want to promote enhanced distribution so that publishers can take advantage of the open web’s potential for their content to appear everywhere quickly – across all platforms and apps – which can lead to more revenue via ads and subscriptions.
Google have created seamless, simplified publishing. AMP HTML embraces the open web, so you can be sure that your content appears correctly across all modern browsers and apps. Pages are published normally to your site, using standard tools, and are accelerated via caches created by Google and others.
Publishers using Accelerated Mobile Pages
The AMP framework for accelerated mobile web pages is currently used by TIME, BBC, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, Mashable, Buzzfeed, Condé Nast and many other top tire global content publishers.
Technology companies using AMP HTML
Google, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin, Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat and Wordpress.
How do Accelerated Mobile Pages work?
Using the AMP framework for developing accelerated HTML web pages for mobile content (found here https://www.ampproject.org) your business or organisation can develop web pages for mobile devices that are HTML based, that enable to cache and pre-render your content more aggressively (faster) than the current caching provided by Google in search results. As the content is deemed static, a pre-rendered version is cached by Google and served locally to the user wanting to view the content. The content is loaded faster because to the type of caching and pre-rendering provided by Google’s indexing of web pages using the AMP framework.
AMP HTML is a new way to make web pages that are optimized to load instantly on users’ mobile devices. It is designed to support smart caching, predictable performance, and modern, beautiful mobile content. Since AMP HTML is built on existing web technologies, and not a template based system, publishers continue to host their own content, innovate on their user experiences, and flexibly integrate their advertising and business models — all within a technical architecture optimized for speed and performance.
AMP development and validation resources
It is Googles offering to improve the internet for publishers, advertisers and users to make mobile content faster loading. To help design, develop and validate code using the framework Google have integrated AMP into Google Search Console, (GWT). If you want the project open source files go here http://github.com/ampproject
Quick video explanation of Accelerated Mobile Pages
As it was quicker to make a short video explaining AMP we made one and included it below so please view. One of the big differences was the loading times we tested through the developer console using the demo link provided. To test AMP load speeds this is the link AMP Example, Demo Link and for the guidelines to design, development and validate AMP HTML go here AMP Development Guidelines.
Video Transcript:
Hi this is John Kennedy from Brands on Digital. This is just a very quick introduction to something new from Google for publishers of mobile content and web developers. Accelerated Web Pages – AMP is going to be of interest to serious online news publishers and advertisers. Owners of websites with lots of content – videos and images, copy and where advertising revenues and fast loading times are essential.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – is an an open source development framework from Google. This framework exists to accelerate mobile web pages globally for mobile devices. The home page for AMP is www.ampproject.org It has all the resources you need to get started developing AMP Pages.
I first came across AMP in the Google Webmaster Tools search console so AMP is already well integrated into Google’s search platform. To help you get started they provide a link from the GWT console. Providing Google’s guidelines on accelerated mobile pages for the design, discovery, validation, structured mark-up and status checking of AMP pages.You will find the link from your search console under Search Appearance / Accelerated Mobile Pages / Get started with AMP
To you show you AMP pages at work we tested the AMP pages in the demo area provided by Google. Using the AMP demo link provided, you see the speed of these mobile pages at work under Network. Change the mobile device you are testing for, to see how it works under your chosen device. The top publishers already integrated and shown in the demo are major news provider networks who also rely on fast loading Adverts for revenues. From our tests these pages load really fast. Text first, images and then Ads, all load much quicker when tested using the developer console.
If you want to go straight to the source files they are here on http://github.com/ampproject. You will also find some also really good articles/resources elsewhere online. This article from Distilled quickly explains Accelerated Web Pages.
Within their article they explain that Google, Twitter and potentially others can aggressively cache and pre-load / pre-render AMP content because it is designed to be static. What is important here is the caching – a cache of your web pages enable a quicker pre render of your pages. So for example, for someone looking at your website from the other side of the world, all the content will load faster.
Google’s cache will help more aggressively pre-render the content locally to the user viewing the content. Making load times much, much faster than before. To use this fast loading cache you will need to create the mobile content using the AMP framework. That’s where their resources and guidelines come in handy as it requires development and testing. So yeah, there’s a lot of new things to learn but this is fantastic for global publishers of online content and serious advertisers who have heavy pieces of content currently slow serving on mobile devices.
There are more people are using mobiles as their main source of news intake so the right framework is needed to support mobile content for larger publishers. It is another step forward in differentiating the user experience on mobile devices from desktop. Signalling that large brands now have to think more about how to take advantages of these new developments provided by Google to promote and engage audiences even more through mobile content.
That’s the quick run down from us on AMP, hope you have find it useful, interesting and insightful. If you are interested in writing for our blog please feel free to get in contact.
