Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is the Google open source project that enables a publisher to create a mobile-friendly content that loads faster on a mobile device.
The project was announced in October 2015, on Google blog titled “Introducing the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project for a Faster, Open Mobile Web.”
Google took this bold step when it realized that about 60 percent of search queries are coming from mobile devices. And no doubt, smartphones, and tablet are becoming readily available than laptops.
A typical user will consider surfing the web with their mobile phones first, before using another device, this trend is known as the mobile-first world, the era that mobile users are dominating.
For publishers, and businesses that are on the web, this is time to position yourself for winning. Your online website might have been converting well before now, but do you think it will continue to be without you take any steps?
Mobile users have no patience especially when they are curious about information, they just want it on the go and are not ready to spare any second. This is why you need to rethink about the benefits of AMP to your business.
AMP was made to help improve your mobile web experience for your users. Consider your website that has a lot of fusses like graphics, videos, and animations; these elements are the primary reason your site has been slowing down because they consume a lot of space on your server.
A large website is to a slow response, but with AMP your website is more of static and is cached by Google server to continuous loading speed.
AMP the old way might not be appealing to everybody, yes and it’s because if your website uses too many graphics, then there is a higher tendency that most of them will be dormant and might not be responsive.
This is because AMP was designed to use less JavaScript, and most of the graphics and animation on the web are built with JavaScript which made the external and synchronous call that takes time to display web components to users. Also, some maladies like web navigation responsiveness, unsupported native video analytics, and restrictions in analytics tracking.
The good news is the update released recently solves most of the apparent problems with AMP:
Responsive Sidebar: Sidebar changes as the width of viewport changes so that mobile users can toggle on the sidebar.
Native video Analytics support: Analytics can now be used track interactions on native amp videos.
Fluid Ads for Publishers: Publishers can now request ads with unknown size to display on their website
Flexible Scrolling Animation: This brings more features to mobile web, such as parallax effects, subtle zoom, and start-stop animation.
With the new updates, the mobile experience on AMP will be better, giving users more flexibility and feelings they have on the non-mobile website. Check the official website to read more about the AMP updates and to get started implementing it.