Everyone wants to make their website fast because no one wants to lose the business.
But the majority of the people only invest their time and effort in making their desktop website fast and most of the time they ignore the mobile website.
If you are also one of them then let me inform you that today more than half of the website visitors come to your website using their mobile devices only.
Therefore if you are not taking this seriously then one day you will realize that you are far behind your competitors and your business is at a big risk especially if it relies on your website.
So if you don’t want to take that huge risk and think of making your mobile website fast to beat your competitors, then you have landed in the right place.
In this article, I will explain to you everything about the Google AMP project, its benefits, and how it can help you increase your WordPress mobile website loading speed up to 80% as compared to a regular mobile website.
So without wasting any more time, let’s get started.
If you love watching video content then here is the video for you regarding increasing your mobile website speed using AMP technology.
But if you prefer text-based content over video content then you are welcome to skip this video and continue reading this blog post.
There are various reasons you should increase your mobile website speed and hopefully being a website owner you already know most of them.
I can’t even say it’s how frustrating when a website’s loading speed is slow like hell when I try to open it on mobile devices.
Usually, most people use mobile data on their mobile devices which is not as fast as a landline connection, therefore, most web pages load very slowly on a mobile device as compared to a desktop.
Thus being a business owner you should think about your customer’s struggles while they visit your website using mobile and consider making your website as fast as possible on their mobile devices for them.
Do you know that according to a study it comes in front of us that 63% of total web traffic comes from only mobile devices as compared to desktop devices in 2017 which was 57% in 2016?
It simply means that the numbers are increasing every single day and people are using their mobile devices to surf the internet more than desktops and laptops.
And in this scenario, if you want to take advantage then you need to make your business website completely mobile optimized.
Usually, mobile websites are almost 3-4 times slower than the desktop version of the same website which I will cover in detail later in this article.
Therefore your top priority related to mobile website optimization should be making your website as fast as possible.
As you already know that mobile website users are increasing every single day then the next thing you should know is that 53% of those users will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
This simply means that nowadays people are patient less and they don’t want to wait for anything.
And one of the main reasons behind this is that there are several alternative options available to choose from. Then just think about it, why should they wait for your website to load?
Therefore you should consider increasing your mobile website speed to not to lose those visitors after they come to your website.
And the biggest opportunity is waiting for you if your website loads fast because the same study that I have mentioned above also says that the average web pages take 22 seconds to load fully.
So if you can make your website load faster then only you would be a winner at this moment.
Recently Google said that;
Today we’re announcing that starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.
– Google Webmaster Central Blog
When Google, the biggest search engine in the world itself says that page speed is one of their ranking factors thus there is no question of not increasing your site speed for mobile devices.
So one thing to keep in mind is that if your mobile website is fast enough then Google will index its pages fast and there are high possibilities that they will get some good ranking positions in SERP fast if you have already done the proper SEO for it in the first place.
If you are not getting Google AMP for your website then you might be keeping yourself behind your competitors because today every website owner is considering AMP for their mobile website.
As I explained earlier, 63% of the total website traffic comes from mobile devices but at the same time if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, then 53% of those visitors will leave your site immediately.
And AMP can solve both of these problems as it will make your site load within 3 sec so that you get all the traffics to your website and they will not leave it because of speed.
Therefore if you don’t grab this opportunity then your competitors will take over your market by acquiring all the potential customers of your business.
There are several reasons for considering Google AMP for your mobile website and in the below section I am going to share with you some very crucial reasons for that.
But before sharing those reasons I would want to clarify what is this AMP thing at the very first place.
According to Wikipedia;
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) is a Google-run website publishing technology designed as a competitor to Facebook’s Instant Articles.
– Wikipedia
In simple words, AMP is an open-source project by Google that was developed with minimal HTML, Javascript, and CSS which is served from Google’s own content delivery network (CDN) to make the AMP pages load almost instantly.
There are more than 25+ million websites in the AMP ecosystem. It is supported by various giant platforms including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. as well as it’s compatible with almost all web browsers.
There are several good website themes available for the WordPress CMS which have great designs, easy to customize and have a lot of great features included.
Also if you want to create a custom-designed website then you can find many great page builders for WordPress which can help you make your site look as you want it to look.
When you design your website using those themes and page builders the website looks really good on the desktop as well as on mobile devices as the website you get will be responsive for all kinds of devices.
But the main problem with those themes and page builders is that their loading speed on mobile devices is extremely slow, it is almost 3-4 times slower as compared to the desktop website.
And you cannot do much to increase the speed on mobile devices if your website has a heavy design and a lot of features.
So the last option to consider is the Google AMP and the reason behind that is a website made using AMP technology can make your website 80% faster than a normal mobile website.
As you already know that though most of the themes and page builders make your website mobile optimized still they are 3-4 times slower as compared to the desktop version of the website.
And there might be some fixes available to reduce that desktop-to-mobile speed gap up to 30-40 percent but still, it is not satisfactory if you really want to win the game in the long term.
Here comes the Google AMP, it can make your mobile website load within 1.5 sec to 3 sec, and I have tested the difference between the normal mobile websites and the AMP websites.
Here is one of the before and after AMP comparisons from one of our client’s websites that we converted into AMP;
The speed testing is done using the Google Pagespeed Tool and below are the screenshots of the mobile speed score.
One thing you should keep in mind before deciding to convert your website into AMP is that it will not support all the features and functionalities that you are already using in your mobile website.
But it will make your website super fast which will help you get more traffic and reduce your bounce rate which simply means you will get more leads and eventually sales in the long run.
Now it’s time to do your homework and decide what is your priority, is that all the functionalities that you are going to lose when considering AMP or the leads and sales which will secure the future of your company.
There is no reason not to use an AMP while it is a widely accepted technology by global brands like BBC, BuzzFeed, The Telegraph, The Washington Post, and many more in this list.
It’s a technology by Google and successfully adapted by everyone, therefore if you want a fast mobile website then you should consider Google AMP before anything else.
Recently Google announced;
Today we’re announcing that after a year and a half of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing…….
…….We do not have a “mobile-first index” that’s separate from our main index. Historically, the desktop version was indexed, but increasingly, we will be using the mobile versions of content.
– Google Webmaster Central Blog
Hope you have understood by now after reading the statement made by Google.
They are very serious about the mobile website as being the biggest search engine in the world they have analyzed and predict the future of the web.
Therefore this is the right time for you to make your website super fast and perfectly mobile-optimized at the same time which is possible only with Google AMP.
If your business is highly dependent on your website then it’s time to wake up!
I am saying this because as you already know that most of the website traffic is coming from mobile devices today, and it’s growing fast.
In this scenario, you should think about making your website highly mobile-optimized to become the fast mover and grab the opportunity to get those traffic right on your mobile website among your competitors.
Therefore considering Google AMP for your website will be the best decision for your business.
Because it will make your mobile site load within 3 sec so that people won’t leave your site and when people will stay on your site then automatically your conversion rate will increase.
There are three main components developed by Google that can increase the AMP website speed on mobile devices which I will explain just right after this paragraph.
According to the official AMP website;
AMP HTML is HTML with some restrictions for reliable performance. AMP HTML is basically HTML extended with custom AMP properties.
– https://sync.win/amp
It simply means Google has optimized the regular HTML and made some custom changes to it to make it minimal so that it helps the AMP website load faster than the regular HTML that we use on normal websites.
AMP Javascript library implements all of the best performance practices to make the AMP page load faster than the normal website’s Javascript files.
According to the official AMP website;
Among the biggest optimizations is the fact that it makes everything that comes from external resources asynchronous, so nothing in the page can block anything from rendering.
Other performance techniques include the sandboxing of all iframes, the pre-calculation of the layout of every element on page before resources are loaded and the disabling of slow CSS selectors.
– https://sync.win/amp
Just like people use CDN services to make their website load faster, Google is also using its own proxy-based CDN (content delivery network) to deliver a cached version of the AMP website across the globe to make all the website contents like HTML, codes, images serve fast to the users.
There are two main ways to get the Google AMP version for your WordPress website #1 coding and #2 plugins. Although I can’t teach you everything from scratch in this article.
But in the below sections I will share with you some insight as well as the advantages and disadvantages
If you want to make your AMP website from the scratch by hardcore coding then either you have to be a developer or you need to hire a developer in the first place.
There are numbers of AMP developers you can find over the internet who can help you make an AMP website from the scratch.
I want to share a great resource by Google itself where you can learn how to set up an AMP website from scratch using codes. Here it is: Create your first AMP page.
But if you want my opinion then I would not recommend you to go for this coding option until you are a large enterprise organization and I am going to share with you my own views regarding this.
There are a lot of disadvantages when you as a small or medium business make an AMP website in this way;
So when I conclude I must have to say that there is a lot of money and effort involved when you are making it with hardcore coding.
And it wouldn’t be budget-friendly to create and maintain this kind of AMP website thus I would rather recommend you to go for the next available option which I will explain in the very next section.
This is the next and best option to set up the AMP version for your mobile website.
There are a lot of plugins you can find in the WordPress repository to set up the AMP website and I’ve tested almost all of them on our client’s websites.
After testing all the available AMP plugins I can say that most of them are useless and a waste of time.
Still, if you want to test them yourself then you should install and play around with any of those available AMP plugins yourself.
But if you ask me which is the best plugin for this purpose then as per my experience, I will recommend only two AMP plugins for your WordPress website one is AMP by Automattic and the second one is AMPforWP.
Both of them are being used for different purposes;
When you have a very simple blog-type website with not a heavy design and you want to set up the AMP website yourself without hiring an expert but you are not that tech-savvy then you should consider the AMP by Automattic plugin.
Because this plugin is very easy to set up even by a non-tech-savvy person as it is a plug-and-play option so you just need to install and just after a few clicks you will have an AMP-ready website.
But if you have a business website with beautifully crafted pages and you want to get an AMP website without losing your original design then you should consider the AMPforWP plugin.
Although the basic version of this plugin is free to use still you need to pull some money out of your pocket if you want to get all the necessary features just like your original website.
Also if you want perfectly custom-designed pages just like your original website then you may need to hire an expert like us to set up the AMP pages for your business website.
Now if you’re thinking about hiring someone to make your WordPress website fast and AMP-compatible with the beautifully crafted pages then you can hire us as we provide these kinds of services to help people like you.
In this entire article, I have tried to cover almost everything about Google AMP, how it can make your website loading speed up to 80% fast, and all the other possible answers to the questions that you might have about Google AMP.
Do you think that something is missing in this article? Then please use the below comment box to share those things and add value to this blog post.
I would like to say thanks to you for spending your precious time reading this article, I really appreciate it from the core of my heart.
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