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Accelerated Mobile Pages – Everything You Need to Know

If you work in Digital Marketing, it is likely you’ve heard the term ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’, or ‘AMP’ for short, being thrown around. But what does it mean? In this article, I will explain everything you need to know about accelerated mobile pages and how they are revolutionising the way we do business.

An Introduction to Accelerated Mobile Pages

Your landing page speed (if you don’t know what that is, read about it here) can make the difference between converting or losing customers. In fact, mobile phone users will leave a web page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Phones and tablets have transformed the way we find the information we need. People consume a tremendous amount of information and news on their phones. However, if your web page loads too slowly, you will lose visitors and potential customers. Therefore, to set yourself apart from the competition, make use of accelerated mobile pages.

The aim of accelerated mobile pages is to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. Webpages with lots of information, infographics and even videos are able to load instantaneously with accelerated mobile pages – appearing in an instant, no matter the device you’re using.

What is an Accelerated Mobile Page?

Accelerated mobile pages, otherwise referred to as AMP, stand for a Google-backed project that is designed to allow any publisher the opportunity to have pages load fast on all mobile devices. At its essence, the accelerated mobile page is basically a stripped-down form of HTML designed to be extremely fast loading.

How Does It Work?

Accelerated mobile pages work on an HTML framework that is built entirely out of existing web technologies. Accelerated mobile pages are designed for speed, making them more streamlined and fast loading. What’s even better is that accelerated mobile pages can be served directly from Google AMP Cache, allowing Google to serve customers with the cached copy of the landing page, offering the fastest loading. If the webpage is unable to serve from your cache, your accelerated mobile page will load from your web server. Although this is not as fast as serving directly from cache, it is significantly faster than the average non-AMP landing page

The Launch of Accelerated Mobile Pages

Accelerated mobile pages were launched in October 2015. Google has been aware for a long time that the majority of internet searching is now performed on mobile phones and, as a result, faster loading web pages were required. Not only are slow-loading web pages frustrating for users, they can also mean lost customers for many companies. As a result, accelerated mobile pages were launched to find ways for content to be delivered to consumers faster. By early February 2016 many major technology companies, digital marketing companies and publishers had begun to use accelerated mobile technology.

The Benefits of Accelerated Mobile Pages

They are fast, fast, fast! Seriously. Accelerated mobile pages load instantaneously, no matter the extent or type of content. Is there anything better for your web pages than fast loading?

Accelerated mobile pages and SEO

The benefits of accelerated mobile pages in SEO is significant. Quite simply, faster-loading landing pages mean more conversions, more leads and accelerated mobile pages have the potential to rank highly in Google in the future. By combining speed and smooth loading, accelerated mobile pages give consumers a heightened and improved web experience. By giving consumers an improved landing page experience, accelerated mobile pages are crucial for your Quality Score and Ad Rank.

Easy to Build

Are you worried that you’re not technologically minded? Well, there’s no need to panic because accelerated mobile pages are notoriously easy to build. By using standard web technologies, accelerated mobile pages are easy to create based on your existing development workflow. In fact, many people are able to create accelerated mobile pages of their web pages in just a single week.

Accelerated Mobile Pages Improve

Content: Publishers who rely on detailed infographics, video content or articles with plenty of images throughout, need not worry. With accelerated mobile pages, they can make their pages as interactive as possible without worrying about loading time. Accelerated mobile pages allow publishers to focus on creating top-quality content that allows for a great user experience.

Distribution: With accelerated mobile pages, distribution is made far easier and content can be distributed to anywhere in the world in an instant. So, if you’ve got family across the globe that you would like to share content with, you can do it instantly.

Advertising: Ads are all over the internet. Whichever web page you load, it’s likely there is at least one advertisement on it. With accelerated mobile pages, a range of ad formats, networks and technologies can be supported. This means, any websites using accelerated mobile pages HTML will keep their choice of ad networks, as well as any formats that don’t detract from the user experience.

Accelerated Mobile Pages and the Future

Accelerated mobile pages are significantly improving the users web experience worldwide. This means faster loading times and a more usable internet as a result. Accelerated mobile pages have one goal in mind: to create a better mobile web experience. The benefits of accelerated mobile pages cannot be underestimated. If it’s loading fast and looking good, what’s not to love!?

Accelerated mobile pages ensure a mobile web that works better for everyone. What do you think? Leave us a comment below.