Since the AMP framework became available in 2015, many publishers and digital advertisers have opinions whether or not it’s worth the trouble of creating faster loading pages. The framework is here to stay and a growing number of digital marketers ask themselves the following when evaluating AMP:
- “What are all the pros and cons of AMP?”
- “When should I use AMP?”
- “Do AMP pages convert better than non AMP pages?”
It may not be for everyone, but here are some common use cases when to use AMP landing pages.
5 common use cases when to use AMP
1. When a majority (or all) of your traffic is from mobile devices
AMP was created partly due to shifting patterns in internet usage from desktop to mobile. In fact, the majority of the world’s internet usage currently comes from mobile devices at nearly 54%, with desktop usage dropping to about 46%:
Catering to mobile web users is more important than ever before. Fortunately, there’s an increasing number of tools available that aim to improve page speed and the mobile user experience. One of them being AMP.
If the majority of your website traffic comes from mobile — and you want to stay competitive in the mobile market — AMP must be on your radar. It’s the perfect way to optimize your mobile-first strategy, attracting and retaining mobile traffic with better page performance and SEO.
2. When your page load speed is too slow
This is one of the more obvious use cases with AMP since the framework’s primary goal is to improve mobile page load speed. AMP enabled websites load almost instantaneously — in just tenths of a second, compared to the average 22 second load time for normal mobile pages.
There are 7 ways this happens, some of which include:
- Content and scripts loading simultaneously
- Efficient font triggering
- Only GPU-accelerated animations allowed
- Prioritized resource loading
For page visitors, faster load times means a better user experience. In a business sense, it can be the difference between closing the sale, converting a customer, or increasing revenue. Data from Amazon, Walmart, and Yahoo confirm this:
All three examples demonstrate how even tenths of a second impact each site, so AMP pages definitely make a bottom-line difference.
3. When you want to lower your bounce rate
According to Google, 53% of visitors bounce from a page that takes more than three seconds to load, and 79% will abandon a site with poor performance:
This means you only have three seconds to capture a user’s attention who liked and clicked your ad and hold it with optimal site performance. AMP for websites is crucial here because faster page speeds improve overall usability and engagement, which convinces visitors to stay on your site longer.
Consider these three examples:
- A Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study (commissioned by Google) found that AMP leads to a 10% increase in traffic with a 2x increase in time spent on page.
- Twitter experienced a 10% reduction in bounce rate due to page load speed on AMP pages compared to non-AMP pages:
- Chartbeat’s data shows that readers typically engage with AMP content for 48 seconds, which is 35% longer than standard mobile web content (only 36 seconds):
These numbers all show that an improved user experience with AMP does matter in capturing and holding attention while lowering bounce rate.
4. When you’re spending significant budget on paid ads
Referring back to the Amazon data in #2, just one-tenth of a second increase in page load time means a $1.3 billion drop in sales for the ecommerce giant. This shows how much AMP’s fast page load speeds can have a direct impact on revenue.
Similarly, on average, ecommerce sites experience a 20% increase in sales conversions compared to non-AMP web pages:
Furthermore, Jeff Hansen of Simplilearn Solutions believes all website owners should adopt AMP to get better ROI from ad spend:
No, question, this makes the web faster. That means a much better user experience and a much lower bounce rate. So more sales, higher customer satisfaction, and better rankings. Win-win-win.
5. When your Quality Score and page experience is too low
Quality Score and post-click landing page experience are both critical for conversions.
Quality Score benefits your ads by:
- Decreasing CPC
- Improving ad position
- Increasing eligibility for ad extensions and other ad formats
A quality post-click landing page experience is also paramount. Since it often takes multiple interactions with your website before an individual decides to complete a conversion, providing a great experience every time makes visitors more likely to return and convert.
Fortunately, AMP post-click landing pages can help solve two issues at once: They give visitors an enhanced user experience, which naturally brings about a higher Quality Score.
Case studies
Myntra (India’s largest ecommerce store for fashion and lifestyle products) implemented AMP across all of their main post-click landing pages on Google, because this is where most of their traffic landed first, but experienced high bounce rates. The company was delighted with the results of their AMP implementation:
- Overall page load time reduced by 65%
- Bounce rate decreased by 40%
- Significantly higher mobile ROI
Event Tickets Center implemented AMP on 17,000 post-click landing pages — 99.9% of all their pages. In A/B testing the AMP experience versus the original, the company was impressed by:
- 10% reduction in bounce rate
- 13% improvement in average session duration
- Decrease in page load time from 5-6 seconds to 1 second
- 20-30% conversion lift with AMP across all mobile campaigns
- 100% increase in ecommerce conversions
Bonus: Why some marketers don’t use AMP
Some marketers and publishers aren’t using AMP simply because their analytics tool doesn’t support an AMP integration. However, there are specific analytics tools that allow you to measure your success with AMP:
By injecting the respective code from those analytics tools into your AMP page, all of the data collected can be passed to the analytic vendors above.
Is AMP right for you?
All mobile users deserve a fast, enjoyable user experience, and all publishers can benefit from a more effective mobile strategy — one where they can distribute and monetize their content, and scale their success. Not all AMP adopters may see a huge lift in results, though, because they haven’t taken the time to understand it thoroughly, or because it doesn’t make sense for them to use AMP.
Request an AMP demo and witness the Instapage AMP builder in action to learn why Instapage is the most robust post-click automation platform available.