Almost two years ago Google announced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open-source initiative aiming to make the web “better for all”. Early adopters of the project consisted of largely – if not entirely – bloggers, news outlets, and publishers.
WHAT IS AMP?
First and foremost, the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project is an open-source initiative to improve the performance of the mobile web.
HOW DOES AMP WORK?
Accelerated Mobile Pages are comprised of three components:
AMP HTML – a combination of existing HTML tags with custom AMP properties, and an extended set of HTML tags (“AMP-specific” tags).
AMP JS – the JavaScript library which essentially implements AMP to manage resource loading, allow us of aforementioned “AMP-specific” tags, and ensures lightning-fast rendering of AMP pages.
(Google) AMP Cache – a proxy-based CDN (Content Delivery Network) for serving AMP valid pages to users, leveraging Google’s high-speed network.
Accelerated Mobile Pages bring far more than just speed improvements to the table; they have proven to decrease bounce rates whilst significantly improving click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall user engagement. This is largely due to the way AMP enables users to interact with the page, even before it has completely loaded.
The average page loading time on a 3G connection is 19 seconds, with 77% of mobile sites taking over 10 seconds to load. With content-heavy product pages or category listing pages with several images, it’s incredibly difficult to deliver a fast experience to users, even with best-practice performance implementations in place.
“Start Fast, Stay Fast”
With Progressive Web App (PWA) functionality coming to Magento – as announced at Magento Live UK 2017 – it’ll be possible to develop fluid, app-like experiences to users while making the first “hop” lightning-fast with AMP.
By Matt Walters, Solution Specialist, Vaimo UK
