Smartphones and tablets have revolutionised how we access information online. To improve the user experience and reduce page load time on mobile devices, the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project was born. Much like Facebook’s Instant Articles, this new framework aims to create mobile web pages that are lighter, thanks to a common and predefined structure.
This Google-led initiative is open source, meaning anyone and everyone can share their contributions to help the project evolve.
Accelerating page load performance on mobile
AMP’s main objective is to allow instant rendering of pages containing rich content like videos, animations and images. To achieve this, several different components have been developed:
- Mandatory technological restrictions. Only static resources, with rather significant limitations in terms of HTML and CSS, will be used. The result? A universal, consistent structure that makes pages lighter and simpler to load. For example, the AMP structure requires the systematic display of an image, followed by text. The AMP engine will therefore be able to load these elements correctly, avoiding any problems due to varying structures.
- A carrousel simplifies how articles are highlighted. Thanks to pre-rendering, once an article has passed into the carrousel, the browser begins loading the page. This way, once a user clicks on the article, a good portion of the content can already be displayed immediately. This carrousel display, and the visibility if offers, is an important incentive for content publishers and media groups to adopt AMP.
- Beyond just a code makeover, the idea was also to bring content literally closer to users. All AMP pages will be cached in Google’s CDN (content delivery network). The server closest to the user will be called, saving precious seconds in page load time.
Lastly, one important point: For many years now, Google has insisted on the use of https and secure connection protocols. If you want to use AMP, remember that all your pages’ resources must be called with a secure protocol.
What impact does AMP have on analytics tagging?
In concrete terms, the introduction of AMP shouldn’t have any repercussions on digital analysts’ work. You must simply be aware that analytics tagging for AMP will be different, as creating an AMP page requires a specific code.
AT Internet’s tag is natively integrated in the AMP Project
We participated in the development of AMP’s analytics component by integrating our own tagging code. Therefore, if you wish to implement AT Internet’s digital analytics solution on your AMP pages, all you need to do is use the code available in our documentation. You won’t need to download any JavaScript files.
In conclusion, we should specify that projects like AMP and Instant Articles are largely destined for publishers. Though it’s another positive step toward offering mobile users a faster, more comfortable experience, it also further deepens content publishers’ dependence on these tech giants… But that’s another story for another day!
For any questions, or for more information about the AMP project, feel free to contact us.
The Mobile & Multi-device R&D project has been co-financed in part by the European Union with funds from the ERDF, and in part by the Region of Aquitaine.
Comments are closed.