AMP: should your business pages be Accelerated Mobile Pages?

Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source project Google announced in October 2015 and switched on in mobile search in February of this year. An AMP page is ordinary HTML with three constraints: a restricted set of tags (amp-img instead of img, amp-video, amp-iframe and so on), a single inline stylesheet capped at 50 KB, and no author-written JavaScript at all. Interactivity comes from a library of approved components such as amp-carousel, amp-analytics, amp-ad, amp-form and amp-sidebar.

In exchange, Google validates the page, stores a copy in its AMP Cache and preloads it when the result appears on screen. That is why tapping an AMP result feels instant. The median load time Google has quoted is under one second, against roughly seven seconds for the average mobile page in its own studies. Most of that gain is not magic. It is the preloading plus the fact that AMP forbids the render-blocking scripts and oversized images that slow everyone else down.

Until last month, AMP mattered mainly to publishers chasing the Top Stories carousel. On September 20, Google began showing the AMP lightning-bolt label for any valid AMP page in the main mobile organic results. Platforms moved early: WordPress has had an official plugin since January, Shopify and Squarespace have announced support, and eBay put AMP on product browse pages in June. The question for a business site is no longer whether AMP is coming but which pages deserve it.

Run each page type through a simple test: does it need to be read, or does it need to be used?

A practical rule: if more than 40 percent of a page's sessions come from mobile organic search and the page's job is to inform, an AMP version is probably worth the effort. If the page's job is to transact, invest in making the regular mobile page faster instead.

The constraints are the point of AMP, and they bite in predictable places.

Design. One stylesheet under 50 KB, no external CSS, no web fonts beyond a short whitelist of providers, and every image needs explicit width and height. Your AMP pages will look like a simplified cousin of your site. Plan a deliberate AMP template rather than trying to replicate every brand element.

Scripts. Live chat widgets, A/B testing tools, heat-mapping, most pop-up email capture, custom sliders and anything built on jQuery will not run. Check what is on your pages before you start, because the list is usually longer than anyone remembers.

Tracking. Replace your analytics snippet with amp-analytics. Google Analytics is supported with a JSON configuration, and most tag managers have shipped AMP containers this year. Expect to see AMP visits as separate sessions, sometimes under a google.com referrer, until you set up client ID handling properly.

URLs. When a user taps an AMP result, the page comes from the Google AMP Cache at a google.com/amp/ address, with a small header bar linking back to your domain. Users sometimes share that cached URL rather than yours. Canonical tags pointing from the AMP page to the original keep ranking signals where they belong.

Ads and monetisation. amp-ad supports the major networks including AdSense and DoubleClick, but fewer units fit the layout and some formats are excluded. Publishers in early trials have reported revenue per pageview down against their regular mobile pages, offset partly by higher pageviews.

1. Pick a pilot set. Ten to thirty of your most-visited informational pages. Not the home page, not checkout.
2. Build the AMP template. On WordPress, the official plugin creates a /amp/ version of posts; expect to customise its template for your logo, colours and a working navigation. On custom builds, generate the AMP version from the same content source so the two never drift.
3. Link the pair. The regular page carries a rel="amphtml" link to the AMP version; the AMP page carries rel="canonical" back. Miss this and Google will not connect them.
4. Validate every page. Use the validator at validator.ampproject.org or append #development=1 to the URL and check the browser console. One invalid tag means the page is not served from the cache at all.
5. Set up amp-analytics and amp-pixel for your analytics and any conversion tracking you rely on. Test that goal completions on AMP pages reach the same property as the rest of the site.
6. Add structured data. Article markup with a logo and image is required for the Top Stories carousel and helps everywhere else.
7. Watch Search Console. The new Accelerated Mobile Pages report lists validation errors by page. Check it weekly for the first two months.
8. Measure against a holdout. Keep a comparable group of pages without AMP for a month and compare mobile organic clicks, bounce rate and downstream conversions. Decide on evidence whether to extend.

For a WordPress site with a reasonably standard theme, a competent developer can have a branded AMP template, analytics and validation in place in one to three days of work, so budget in the range of $800 to $3,000. For a custom CMS or an ecommerce platform without native support, a templating project that keeps AMP and regular pages in sync typically runs two to four weeks and $5,000 to $20,000 depending on how many page types you cover. The ongoing cost is discipline: every new component someone wants to add to a page has to have an AMP equivalent or be left out.

Treating AMP as the mobile site. AMP is a cached, reduced version of specific pages. Businesses that redirect all mobile traffic to AMP lose functionality and confuse users who want the full page.

Letting the pages drift. If the AMP template is maintained separately from the main site, prices, offers and contact details fall out of sync within months.

Forgetting the call to action. AMP pages are often generated from the article body alone, dropping the sidebar offer or footer form that the regular page relied on. Rebuild the conversion path inside the AMP template, within the rules.

Ignoring the regular mobile page. AMP does nothing for the pages it does not cover. The lessons it enforces, such as lightweight pages, sized images and fewer scripts, are exactly what your main site needs. Apply them there too and the gap between the two narrows.

We start with discovery: which pages carry mobile organic traffic, what each one is for, and what scripts and features it depends on. From that we plan an AMP scope, page type by page type, with a holdout so the result can be judged honestly. Build covers the AMP templates, analytics and conversion tracking, validation and structured data, and the fixes to the regular mobile pages that the audit always turns up. Then we improve on the Search Console data and the holdout comparison, extending AMP where it earned its place and pulling it back where it did not. The work connects web, growth and brand: the pages themselves, the search visibility they are chasing, and a simplified template that still looks like the company.

A representative engagement is the content marketing work we did with a business whose guides and how-to articles brought in most of its organic traffic, nearly all of it on phones. We built an AMP template for the article type only, rebuilt the email capture and consultation offer inside the AMP constraints, and set up tracking that reconciled AMP sessions with the rest of the site. The regular mobile pages were slimmed at the same time using what the AMP audit revealed. The articles gained the fast-load label in results, and the business kept its conversion path intact, which was the part that mattered to them.