Picture this: A potential customer lands on your online store via their mobile device.
Instead of waiting for the loading time, they’re instantly immersed in a seamless, lightning-fast shopping experience. Products are beautifully showcased and the checkout process is a breeze.
This is the magic of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and the game-changer your eCommerce business needs.
AMP is an open-source framework designed to create faster-loading web pages for mobile devices.
Developed by Google, AMP aims to improve the mobile browsing experience by prioritizing speed and performance.
In this blog post, we’ll shed some light on the importance of AMP and best practices for its implementation to grow your eCommerce business.
What is AMP?
AMP or accelerated mobile pages is an open-source HTML framework that helps you create fast-loading and mobile-optimized web pages.
They are supported by all major search engines, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to enhance mobile shopping for both consumers and businesses.
AMP are designed to be lightweight and efficient, so, they load faster on all mobile devices. They employ a variety of techniques to optimize web pages, including:
- Using inline CSS and JavaScript
- Prioritizing the loading of critical resources
- Lazy loading images and videos
- Using a caching system to deliver pages from a server that is close to the user
How does AMP Boost eCommerce Businesses?
As an eCommerce business owner, you put a lot of effort into improving your store performance, building marketing strategies, and offering quality products. However, most of these efforts would be a waste if your web store isn’t accessible from mobile.
When a visitor comes to your online store, the first impression of your website decides their action. That is what you can improve with AMP technology. It helps you attain customer satisfaction through excellent store performance while lowering the bounce rate.
Benefits of Leveraging AMP
Here are a few benefits of harnessing the power of AMP:
Quicker Load Time
Accelerated Mobile Pages help improve the page-loading performance of a website by removing unnecessary data. In fact, the whole project was based on the idea that mobile users expect quicker results, so pages were adjusted for smartphone use. Some complex pieces of backend programming needed to be pragmatically reduced to improve efficiency.
Lower Bounce Rate
According to research, when a page takes one to five seconds to load, there’s a 90%[i] higher chance of visitors bouncing. This means that optimization for mobile pages is crucial to retaining users and staying ahead of the competition. With AMPs, you can improve fast loading times that lead to mobile browser users viewing more pages, thereby, reducing the bounce rate.
Higher Performance and Flexibility
AMPs are not the only framework out there designed to improve page performance. However, it is the most flexible one when it comes to granting access to the streamlined stylesheet. It is precisely built around the motive that mobile users want their content instantly.
Better Mobile SEO
In order to drive traffic to your website as well as retain and convert visitors, performance and speed are two important factors. These help you ultimately rank higher in search engines.
Here, AMP proves to be the best because of the search engine benefits offered to them. AMPs are often faster than non-AMPs. Hence, you can build beautiful AMP home pages that score well on SEO.
Increase Conversions
Higher page load speeds encourage your eCommerce conversions. It also permits users to find the products or services they are looking for quickly. The more products your customers will view, the more the chances of receiving orders in bulk.
Best Practices for Building Accelerated Mobile Pages
To provide a faster and more satisfying shopping experience, it is essential to optimize your eCommerce website for mobile users.
Let’s take a look at the best practices that help you make the most out of accelerated mobile page technology:
Choose Plugins Wisely
The choice of plugins plays a pivotal role in AMP implementation. Opting for the right plugins can enhance user experience, improve website functionality, and ensure compatibility with AMP standards. For this:
- Conduct thorough research to identify plugins that align with your website’s requirements.
- Prioritize AMP-compatible plugins to maintain fast loading times.
- Regularly review and update plugins to ensure they remain compatible with your AMP setup.
In Sync With Canonical Page
Keeping AMP pages in sync with canonical pages is important for SEO and content consistency. It prevents potential ranking issues and ensures a uniform brand experience. To enable this sync, you should:
- Implement proper HTML tags to link AMP and canonical pages.
- Use the rel=”amphtml” tag in your canonical page’s header to point to the corresponding AMP page.
- Regularly check for any discrepancies between AMP and canonical pages and rectify them promptly.
Use A/B Testing
A/B testing allows you to make data-driven decisions to improve AMP pages. It helps identify which variations perform better to enhance user engagement and conversion rates.
To conduct a thorough A/B testing, you should:
- Set up A/B testing experiments to compare different AMP page versions.
- Define clear objectives and metrics to measure success, such as page load times, click-through rates, or conversion rates.
- Implement changes based on the insights gathered from A/B testing to continuously optimize your AMP content.
Don’t Implement AMP on High-traffic
Implementing AMP on high-traffic pages without careful consideration can have unforeseen consequences. It may strain server resources and impact user experience negatively if not executed correctly.
To ensure you implement AMP correctly, you must:
- Analyze the resource impact of AMP on your server infrastructure before applying it to high-traffic pages.
- Consider prioritizing AMP for content that benefits most from mobile optimization, such as product pages or articles.
- Monitor server performance and user feedback closely after AMP implementation on high-traffic pages and be prepared to make adjustments as needed.
Conclusion
The rise of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in eCommerce marks a transformative shift toward a faster, more user-centric online shopping landscape. The speed and efficiency they bring to the table empower you to meet the ever-growing demands of mobile-savvy consumers.
Embrace AMP and drive the success of your online business!
Want to Accelerate Your eCommerce Store’s Mobile Pages? Let’s talk!
If you want a seamless transition to Accelerated Mobile Pages to help you remain competitive, drop us a line at [email protected], and our eCommerce mavens will take it from there.
Statistics Reference:
[i] Soocial