Getting Started with AMP

In February 2016, Google launched an engaging and high-quality HTML framework called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) that allows a straightforward way to create web pages.

These mobile web pages are fast with effortless loading and prioritize user experience above all other factors. It is a collaborative project created by Google and Twitter to make quick mobile search results. 

The aim of this project is to create fast, efficient and high performing web mobile pages and ads overall devices and platforms. Approximate 25 million domains pages have been published until today.

Why are Mobile Pages accelerated?

Accelerated Mobile Pages increases website traffic by 10%. Furthermore, websites that use Accelerated Mobile Pages notice an increase of 20% in their sales and conversions. It helps businesses create clean, relevant and streamlined versions of their web pages that allow users to experience fast mobile search results and web service.

An AMP page loads approximately four times faster than a standard webpage. Yahoo, Reddit, BMW, and New York Times etc are some of the companies that have already adopted AMP.

 This framework consists of 3 primary parts for creating mobile web pages:

1. AMP HTML: it is a subset of HTML that has custom tags with restrictions for reliable performance. Mostly used tags are HTML tags and sometimes AMP specific tags replace few tags. These pages are discovered by platforms of HTML tags and search engines.
2. AMP JavaScript: it is an information centre that guarantees the fast rendering of AMP HTML pages. It implements AMP’s excellent performances, such as CSS and font triggers. With the help of external sources, an AMP JS creates everything that can’t block anything from rendering.
3. AMP CDN: it is a Content Delivery Network. It automatically builds performance optimizations and caches the AMP-enabled pages.

How do Accelerated Mobile Pages Work?

Accelerated Mobile Pages are optimized differently from regular web pages; they appear to load instantly. Its significant features are:

• Executes Java Scripts only.
• Resources size strategically.
• Effortless Rendering. 
• Keeps Third-party Java Script is out of the crucial path.
• Bloated CSS files don’t delay the pages.
• It keeps the fonts efficient.
• It minimizes the style recalculations.
• It only runs GPU accelerated animations.
• It prioritizes resource loading.
• It loads pages through pre-rendered content.

How to AMP your site?

1. Maintain original version for the users and an AMP version of an article page.
2. As AMP doesn’t allow third-party JavaScript and form elements, it’s impossible to have elements such as lead forms and page comments for your page. Thus, there’s a hack using iframes that gives a solution that helps verify this drawback.
3. Control the intensiveness of custom fonts; a particular amp-font extension must be loaded. To accommodate the restrictions, you might have to rewrite your site templates.
4. Multimedia is an essential factor that has to be explicitly handled. An amp-img element with explicit height and width is used by images. Whereas for animated GIFs, a separate amp-anim extended component is used.
5. A custom tag called amp-video is used to make videos through HTML5.
6. Slideshows are made through an amp-carousel. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest are supported through their extended components.

How to publish AMP Pages?

Here’s a checklist you can follow to experience AMP to the fullest for your site.

• To ensure AMP Specification Validation
• To grant cached AMP pages server access
• To test cache pages.
• Safe and shareable content with signed exchanges
• To measure user traffic and journeys
• To ensure that your AMP files are discoverable by search engines.

Concluding Thoughts

We can say that amp one of the easiest ways to boost mobile websites’ speed for publishers. AMP creates a platform where you can convert your webpages, creating good content for all users. With Accelerated mobile pages, your site will be future proof, and in no time, AMP will still be thriving in the future.

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