Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), is an open source, cross-platform framework with which you can significantly increase the loading speed of mobile websites. It is based on the decline of CSS and JavaScript, a content distribution network, as well as modified HTML. The project is supported by Google.
Background
Smartphone Internet use is increasing at an accelerated rate globally. For this reason, the future of the Internet will be a smartphone in many areas. Therefore, web content must be optimized for mobile devices. Not even the smartphone trade is spared from the growing use of the smartphone Internet. Changes in browsing habits impact the design and adaptation techniques of the websites that are used for their presentation. To drive usability where feasible, mobile websites have to be fast.
A study revealed that the bounce rate increases to more than 50 percent if a web smartphone takes more than 10 seconds to load. The effect of differences in page load times is even more evident in online stores. Here, a few fractions of a second can establish whether a visitor becomes a buyer or not. Speed optimization should definitely be incorporated into smartphone optimization. In declaring page speed as a ranking factor in 2010, Google itself highlighted the fact that web loading speeds are an important factor for a positive user experience.
History
The Accelerated Mobile Pages project was launched in October 2015. The basis for the establishment of the open source proposal forced debates and discussions between publishers and technology companies, where the need to load smartphone content more quickly was usually the main theme . The initiators, which include Google, WordPress, and Adobe, aspire to create a complete smartphone ecosystem. This system should be beneficial to both publishers and developers, users and consumer platforms. Other technology partners include the social network Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Among the first publishers to implement AMP are "Zeit" and "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" in Germany, "Washington Article" and "Buzzfeed" in the United States, "The Guardian" in England and "El País" in Spain.
Due to the open source approach, AMP is expected to spread and take root quickly, much like the Android operating system for smartphones.
Operating principle
The loading speed of a website depends mainly on the size of the files to be loaded. Therefore, the framework attempts to minimize the overall size of a web page. At the same time, the contents of the AMP website are cached and made available on a proxy server. If a user accesses the content, they are uploaded through a content delivery network. The source code of the AMP websites can be interpreted by all servers.
- AMP HTML: The HTML source code is customized and reduced by AMP. Only one HTTP request occurs per page call.
- AMP JavaScript: AMP websites only use asynchronous JavaScript. This ensures a fast rendering of the web since the loading of the page cannot be blocked by the JS resources. If third-party JavaScript files are embedded, embedding is done via iframes.
- AMP CDN: An AMP website cache is created on proxy servers everywhere. In this way, content can be delivered via an http 2.0 based content delivery network. The CDN also checks if the AMP web portal is functional.
The great utility of AMP is that the loading speed of a website can be accurately calculated and scaled beforehand. Other enhancements include specifying the exact file size for images or other embedded media. When an AMP website is loaded, the technology is able to prioritize individual downloads. Here, the positions of the individual files in the sources are also interpreted at the same time as the size of the file.
CSS files are also affected by speed optimization. For example, only online styles that do not exceed 50 kilobytes are allowed for CSS.
Apps
Simply, the Accelerated Mobile Pages are not limited to a specific area of the web. E-commerce apps for AMP websites, special registration forms, paywalls, etc. they are also conceivable. The initiators chose to refrain from any prior restrictions. With regard to the incorporation of AMP websites into Google search results, only news publishers have been affected so far. In the long term, however, it is likely that online stores that have special AMP product pages will also be integrated, or travel service providers that, for example, simplify reservations through fast AMP websites for mobile users .
Modifications to the HTML code
Modifications to the HTML source code are essential to implement AMP websites. For example, media tags are prefixed with "amp."
- Images: amp-img.
- Videos: amp-video.
- Audio files: amp-audio.
- iframes: amp-iframe.
Example in the case of a video:
These tags should be used for AMP websites:
Document type:
Top level label
tag (also works)
Canonical link in the section:
Coding in section:
See head port in section:
Reference to AMP-CDN in the head section:
Specification of opacity:
While the rel-attibute and the canonical tag are not required on conventional websites, AMP websites must contain these two items in the head section.
rel-attribute: Shows crawlers that there is also an AMP web portal version of the current page.
Example:
Canonical tag: The canonical tag on the AMP web portal points to the original web.
If the AMP page is the only web portal that has this content, the canonical tag points to itself.
Importance for smartphone marketing
AMP websites should load in milliseconds. Since ads are also affected by optimized load speeds, advertisers can use AMP to try to ensure that their ads do not have a negative effect on the user experience. This is because currently, advertising banners or interstices are usually perceived as a nuisance by smartphone Internet users.
AMP frameworks are compatible with a number of different advertising formats. Therefore, this technology offers advertisers a wide range of commercial promotion alternatives. Since the framework is not platform dependent, advertisers are not limited to a single company when they want to serve ads.
Web Links
