How Google AMP affects Mobile Application Development

Are you thinking about switching to Accelerated Mobile Pages to enhance the loading time and user experience? You must be aware of its advantages and disadvantages before adopting any protocol for the mobile app development. Moreover, you should know how to properly implement it. AMP is an open source project that is supported by the Google and Twitter.

Google AMP is platform-agnostic that can be used by any app, browser or web viewer. In this digital world, there are various platforms that are currently using it such as Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit etc. The main purpose of these platforms is to enhance the mobile user experience. AMP consists of HTML, JS and cache libraries, specific extensions etc. As AMP is based on lighter coding and this is the reason that content can be hosted on the Google AMP cache.

Currently, Google has been updated AMP with two types of the Optimization. These are:

1. Images

Once images are cached, they will be loaded more quickly. For this, meta could be removed, but make sure it does not affect user experience.

2. A Lite version

This version is mainly used in those places where the internet signal is quite slow as this allows them to display some information. Some areas like Vietnam and Malaysia are more concerned, but this version will be available worldwide.

How it is helpful to boost your mobile performance

Google’s AMP is a new initiative that is used to speed up the web on mobile devices. It allows the pages of participating publishers that load faster on all the smart-phones and tablets using customized HTML code optimized to work on the resource limited work device. By taking a basic approach to coding, Google AMP does away with many of the root reasons of increased latency when loading mobile web content. There are various best mobile application development companies those are working on these features of the Google to improve mobile app performance.

Here are a few takeaways on the project:

1. Speed is King

While providing a faster experience for the mobile searches, Google AMP gives publishers numerous avenues to generate interactive content and pull in revenue from marketing. At the same time, AMP could decline the demand for ad blocking software by serving to ease slow-loading digital advertising on mobile devices. It is true that content takes several seconds to load because slow pages never loads at all.

Thus a new program has been launched to create an overall better experience for both the consumers and publishers on the mobile devices. It is also great for publishers because they get more page views.

AMP is code is currently open source and easily available on the GitHub.

2. Know the limitations

The core technology behind the AMP project is AMP HTML. It is just HTML that renders in all modern browsers, but comes with special rules. To develop it, Google took the essential parts of HTML and shed features that decline speed, like arbitrary JavaScript libraries. AMP also doesn’t allow external style sheets or inline styles to format web pages, and developers can use only one style tag in the document head. Overall, style rules cannot exceed 50Kb.

3. Make it interactive

It seems that Google wants to force mobile web developers back to the Web 1.0 era with all the restrictions around AMP. The HTML components that AMP provides are all pretty expressive and things like amp-img, amp-lightbox, amp-youtube, etc., generally do what you expect them to quite easily. It must be kept in mind that AMP’s components require a different approach than normal CSS coding. AMP also supports components like dynamic animations, tweets, and Instagram embeds, so designers should have plenty of leeway to get creative.

4. Use the Validator

Fortunately, Google also provides a validator to understand if AMP understands it that is easy to use. The validator will show you exactly where and how any code breaks AMP’s rules.

Browse your AMP HTML code with #development=1 appended to the end of your site’s URL to activate the validator, after you finish or as you are in the process of coding. If a document has a valid AMP HTML, it is also fast.

Merits and Demerits of Google AMP

There is no doubt in saying that AMP appears to the best solution to increase load time on mobile websites and also user experience, positions and traffic but on the other hand Google AMP also has few drawbacks.

Merits

1. Although AMP is not an official ranking factor, Google is positively aggressive AMP content in the mobile so that it can generate a positive influence.

2. AMP aims is to speed up the mobile websites and hence it improves load time. There is no doubt in saying that AMP pages are fast, lean and hence don’t wait for the longest time.

3. AMP improves server performance. If the main part of your traffic comes from a mobile. Then definitely AMP will help you to reduce the load on servers and hence improve the performance.

Demerits

1. AMP has a small set of HTML, Javascript and CSS. These app developers can’t add features or widgets.

2. AMP has analytic platform restrictions while Google Analytics is accepted with a different tag, but this is not the case of every analytic platform.

3. AMP has ad restrictions and hence it is more complex to insert ads that run on AMP. 4. It is hard to switch back, but still it can do a 301 redirect. It can be more difficult to return to the normal if it is required.

How to Setup AMP for WordPress?

If you are using a WordPress website and still thinking about to switch to the AMP then follow these steps that can really help you. Web development company has a better idea about it and know how to use it.

Install AMP Plugin

Once you have installed AMP Plug in just click on the “Appearance” AMP page to check how your site looks on the mobile devices.

Setup Template

We can also modify the text color, header of the background and links on the page. Once you change the site’s icon, just save the changes.

Customize Template

If you want to polish it with a touch of a brand, this plugin does not offer you the facility of customization. If you are working with the Yoast SEO then you need to install and activate Glue for Yoast SEO and AMP. Once you do this, navigate to SEO > AMP page to configure plugin settings.

Monitor with Google Search Console

Using the Google Search Console, We can check how AMP content is behaving on the Google. All you need to do is just log in to your console dashboard. After that, choose Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Other Benefits

Speed up the Loading time

According to the Google, 53% of website visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than 3 seconds to load. We also know that AMP has decreased the page load time as it contains some sets of standards. Asynchronous JavaScript, resources sized statically only inline CSS, etc. has some guidelines. Everyone accepts it that page loading time has the greater effect on the traffic and user engagement. This is the reason that it is very important for the site owners to monitor the web performance.

Conclusion

There is no shred of doubt in it that AMP provides a relatively easy way to improve the speed of the mobile websites for the publishers. Although Facebook is also reacting and that appears to be a response to the AMP Project’s momentum. Most of the web development companies are focusing on this feature to improve the loading time of the page so that it can fetch easily. If you are also looking to build a mobile app, consult best mobile application development companies for this purpose.

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