Google AMP is the Accelerated Mobile Pages promoted by Google, which lets you design and create a mobile version of your website. These mobile versions have a very quick response time than the regular website’s response time.
This service by Google makes use of Google AMP JavaScript’s custom library and the page elements. People who advocate the use of AMP will make you feel that it is an important thing to deliver your web pages in a faster way. This, in turn, will make your users stay at your website for a longer time because of the ease of its usability.
But, I will point out one thing here, that a user will only stay longer on your website if the content is engaging and innovative. If the user connects with it and gets what he is looking for, he is sure to stick there longer.
What Is Google AMP?
Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) has a standard structure that creates fast-loading mobile pages for the website. There are certain standards that are laid out for building AMP pages, and the developers need to follow them to avoid delays in loading the pages.
It also has tutorials for building AMP pages, which help the developers invalidating their pages with AMP standards. You will also need to use Google approved HTML to print your AMP compliant page and put the contents of the page in Google’s infrastructure.
Do You Need an AMP?
Before answering this, you must first have an answer to these questions:
Q1. Is your website dependent on third-party tools for tracking audience and capturing leads?
Q2. Does your website have many pages which no articles?
Q3. Do you use an ad engine to monetize your website?
Well, if the answer to any of the above questions is YES, then you may use your own knowledge and framework for maximizing speed, rather than depending on Google. You can also make the best use of Duda, which is a mobile-oriented website and has the capability to everything than AMP can do.
Google is currently soaring with the worldwide success of AMP, which is why it will never tell you not to use AMP for maximizing your website’s speed. The AMP use is superfluous in many cases, and if you have tried everything to bring a change to your website’s speed, then enforcing AMP will be more disadvantageous.
Situations When You Do Not Need an AMP
You Have Made Code Adjustments on the Mobile Version of Your Website
If you are using WordPress, it is not difficult as you simply have to adjust the theme’s functions.php file combine some ‘dequeue’ commands by incorporating a code fragment:
If(wp_is_mobile())
{
wp_dequeue_script(‘cufon_handle);
}
This code will check if the visitor of your website is on a mobile device. If yes, then it will disable Cufon plugin. It is a font replacement tool that changes the font according to the device where the website is being opened. Always remember to enqueue a script if you want to dequeue it. Otherwise, you will see no changes.
You Have a CDN (Content Delivery Network) Already
CDN is an effective way of boosting up the website speed and reducing the delays by 50%. This is because many CDNs use refined session routing optimization algorithms, rules for smart file caching, built-in compression, and cleansing of unused files – to increase the speed times and lower the load times for the web page. On using CDN to host the content and images, the queries of your audience are channeled to a network server. Actually, if you do not feel the need to use CDN, you can still curtail the demands of the bandwidth of your code and images. You can delay the images’ loading so that the user can at least start reading the content before they see the image. This is called “lazy loading.” Plus, you can also make use of CompressPNG or CompressJPEG for further cutting down the size of the images. By using all these mentioned means, you can easily avoid the use of AMP.
Your Website’s Mobile Version Has a Single CSS Reference
CSS powers Style sheets whose size is pretty small. But, if your website involves a lot of style sheets, the server will get queries for each sheet alone. This may hamper the speed of your website. In such cases, not the weight of the file but the query volume slows down the content loading of the website. So, to handle this is to centralize all the style sheets into one master CSS resource. You have to mention in the code of your website to point to the external CSS file, which is being requested from the CDN, rather than placing the whole CSS in-line on the page. Make use of CSS Minify to clean the CSS files. Once, when your CSS files behave like images, you can easily compress, consolidate, and minify to keep the coding less and speed far, without using the AMP.
Top 6 Reasons Google AMP Is Not Great for eCommerce Websites
AMP is Limiting
AMP is somewhat limiting in its application, like it is ideal for static web pages, media websites that need mobile visitors, etc. But, AMP does not work well for eCommerce websites. It has several limitations, and they are mentioned below:
1. Payment Methods
The webpages which are AMP powered do not have any mark-up for checkouts, which means the user is directed to normal checkout. Checkout options like Amazon Payments, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. when incorporated on a checkout page, disable the AMP version of those pages. Thus in payment methods, AMP can be avoided.
2. Chat Applications
Chat applications cannot be used with AMP, whereas many sites use chat-bots for interacting with their customers. If your chat is AMP-enabled, you might lose some potential revenue because the users will not be able to interact with the chat apps.
3. Limited Analytics
AMP does not support Google Analytics, and only a limited set of analytics is available for AMP. It does not support many tracking features or information as the standard Google Analytics. Other tracking suites like Piwik or kissmetrics does nor work with AMP.
4. Logging In
Another limitation with AMP is that the user cannot log in on an AMP, and thus it does not support the use of login forms. It also does not allow social media logins, which can prove to be the biggest obstacle to a majority of the users in today’s times.
This is mainly because AMP pages are static and do not handle dynamics well. Website features like ‘recently viewed products,’ ‘recommended products,’ etc. do not work with AMP.
5. Killing the Internet
Google AMP is killing the internet as it is giving people strong reasons to invest in its infrastructure. It hosts AMP pages on their domain and serves AMP content from its cache.
6. Integrations
A majority of the websites these days use third-party integrations, which is not possible for AMP-powered sites. This is because of the way AMP caches the pages on Google. Thus, the their-party tools you will use to enhance conversions and sales are not possible with AMP. Following are the common integrations that cannot be used:
- Algolia, a search service, and other such services cannot work
- SSL seals or payment gateway seals is not possible
- Nosto or Segmentify, which are product recommendations, cannot be used
- A/B Testing is not supported
- Time Payment and other financing services do not work
- No reviews are shown with AMP. Thus Yotpo or other review platforms do not work
In case your website uses any of the above integrations, AMP will remove them. This must have given you a clear idea about how limiting AMP can be.
Conclusion
From the above review, it must have been clear how AMP can be limiting. AMP is clearly for big-scale publishers and news websites. eCommerce is yet to adopt this functionality for its benefits. Normal website owners and small scale publishers will also not reap great benefits from AMP because the surety of the return on their investment is not clear. Thus, for your eCommerce store, stay away from Google AMP.
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