What is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a new standard from Google to ensure your content renders as quickly and efficiently as possible on mobile devices.
Odds are you are reading this page on a mobile device. More than 56 percent of the content on the web is accessed through mobile devices, and this number is only growing.
If you are, you are accessing an Accelerated Mobile Page. You may have seen this icon next to this page and other content when browsing Google on your mobile device:
Why Accelerated Mobile Pages?
The goal of AMP is to make pages load as quickly as possible on mobile devices. Unfortunately, the web is still pretty slow for many people.
AMP limits what you can do in HTML – gone are the ads, JavaScript libraries and other elements. The page is stripped down to the basics in order to render the page as quickly as possible.
You can read more about the AMP project here.
OK, how do I use it?
If you’ve read this far, you’re likely wondering how you can add AMP to your website or blog.
If you’re running WordPress, Automattic has a handy AMP plugin. (That’s what we’re using for our blog).
Go to your WordPress Plugins panel, search for “Automattic AMP,” and add it to your site. After installation, add “?amp=1” after any post, and you’ll have an AMP-friendly version of that content. Easy to add and highly recommended!
If you aren’t running WordPress (or feel like doing a little PHP coding yourself on your WordPress site), AMP is fairly trivial to add. You are reducing what the page is doing and simplifying it.
Google AMP Cache
Once your AMP content is published, it is a candidate for Google AMP Cache.
Google will potentially further optimize your AMP content to remove anything that isn’t mobile-friendly and will store your content in its geocache to ensure that it can serve your content as quickly as possible. This cache allows your content to be geographically distributed and ensures that AMP requests don’t take have to go through multiple network “hops” to reach your server.
If you aren’t serving your content using AMP, you should remember that the majority of today’s web traffic is mobile. If your content isn’t mobile-friendly, you are missing an opportunity to connect with your audience.
See our 14 expert tips to optimize your mobile marketing.
More to explore
If you think Accelerated Mobile Pages for your website is interesting, wait until your read about AMP for email.
An extension of AMP, AMP for email aims to improve the functionality of emails. The goal is to create more engaging and interactive email experiences. For example, AMP email recipients can directly submit forms from within the inbox.
That’s just one example of how you can use AMP for email.
DailyStory has built-in support for AMP emails. We’re one of only a handful of email vendors supporting AMP. Other DailyStory features include automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more.
