The statistics reveals an escalation in the number of smartphone users since the last four years. To Cisco’s 13th Annual Visual Networking Index, there would be an astounding 829 million smartphone users in India, that account for more than 60% of the population a tremendous shoot up from last year contribution of merely 27% Indians using the smartphones. The forecast was based on an analysis conducted independently and on real-world network usage dates. The prevailing trend sees the current generation and the millennials substituting the pocket-friendly smartphones over the desktops. There has been a heavy leaning on the mobile with the Indians accessing their devices more often. By the ICUBE, the organization that tracks digital adoption and the growing trends in India revealed that over 97% of the users use a mobile phone to access the internet.
In addition to that the government policies towards making the country digitized have to lead to various incentives as Increased availability of Bandwidth, Cheap Data plans and increased awareness has reduced the gap between Urban and Rural India with the penetration tripled over the last 4 years. Many of this deviation towards the mobile can be attributed to Mukesh Ambani led $50 billion telecom sector Reliance Jio which through its promotion campaign of offering a Gigabyte a day of free 4G enticed over 100 million subscribers in addition to lowering of the data prices in the country. With more cost-effective options coming in the market, the trends reveal a booming market for smartphones. For everyone skeptical of using smartphones, the companies are offering 4G featured phones with long battery lives which are easy to operate and connect. With more than 160 million worth of smartphones worth of over $28.5 billions sold during last year. India finds its place in the chart amongst the countries with the maximum mobile internet usage. A survey by Digivate reveals that over 16,000 mobile optimized pages are being furnished every day with AMP. Some leading publishing houses like Network 18, NDTV, India Today and DNA are already supporting AMP:
USER PROFILES FOR INDIAN SMARTPHONE USERS IN INDIA
As mentioned before the 4G launch following the year 2016, the calling and data rates have considerably been slashed down. That has led to the influx of affordable smartphones created a whole segment of new consumers who either upgraded from feature phones or were new mobile users altogether. The study showed that almost half of the entry-level users are between 15 and 24 years of age and they are mostly students with a craving for more data time and are not as rich as the premium category. Over 60% of internet users in the premier category fall in the age group of 24 years and are employed. The users are affluent and require more data time.
ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES (AMP)
Considering most of the users are accessing the internet through their mobile phones and not through the desktop, it is highly imperative to elevate the mobile internet experience for the customer. One of the ways to make it happen is to increase the speed which can be executed through Accelerated Mobile Pages(AMP). Before going into the details of the AMP, let us discuss first what is AMP and how is it most likely to impact the business. The past trends have continuously revealed the surge in smartphone usage following the last couple of years. Even Google has changed the algorithm favoring the rise in mobile or testing a mobile-first ranking system. Thus in order to rank higher on Google search engine, equal importance has to be given to the site’s mobile version too. Thus a slow mobile site with constant interruptions and complex content that doesn’t load soon acts as a turn off factor for the mobile user. Data has shown that over 40% of people will abandon a web page that takes more than 3 seconds to load.” Google takes these factors seriously and penalizes the site heavily causing it to cease from ranking.
The introduction of Google’s AMP was a pathbreaking step in this direction. The AMP is regarded as an answer to the shortcomings in Facebook Instant Pages and Apple News (limited to enhancing the speed related to the Facebook and Apple platform content) which is a limiting factor for the reach and the potential. On the contrary, AMP pages were different for it being open-source initiatives that allowed publishers content to exist on open web
BENEFITS OF AMP FOR DIGITAL MARKETING
Both the Publishers and the site owners are expected to reap exponential results through AMP in improving the user’s experience tremendously. AMP is expected to boost your page speed tremendously and since speed is one of the critical factors in Google’s Algorithm, it provides the much-needed push in the site’s rankings. Let us think from the user’s perception about the PAGE SPEED LOADING. Faster pages lead to satisfied and contented users. Satisfied customers lead to more retention time and consequently less likely to be bounced off. Staying longer on the site would also invariably mean they would have more time to access the content on the site. This would enable your site to rank higher in comparison to that of the extremely slow loading competitor’s pages. And having explained the importance of mobile marketing in today’s time when the majority of the searches are done through mobile or smartphones, the mobile speed becomes a major ranking factor. The second important benefit that gives the AMP an edge providing factor is the design features that elevate the user’s experience. And the great thing in regards to the styling and layout on AMP is that it is quite similar to that of a normal HTML in that in both the cases the CSS is used.
ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES AND HOW DO THEY WORK?
Accelerated Mobile Pages are targeted to construct pages to deliver the content at a fast and quicker rate. When executed, the AMP comprises 3 elements such as AMP HTML, AMP JS Library and Google Cache.
1.AMP HTML: The AMP HTML is just a mere extension of the normal used HTML. Being an extension comes with some limitations on the usage of the full set of tags and functionality available through HTML. However, that been said the AMP doesn’t require the development of new rendering engines: existing user agents can render AMP HTML just like all other HTML.
The AMP JS library works to deliver AMP HTML pages in a speedy manner, and Google’s AMP Cache works to aid the cache of AMP HTML pages. Concisely it can be mentioned that AMP HTML is nothing, but the standard HTML which incorporates custom AMP properties. Though most of the tags used in the AMP are standard tags, there are others incorporated to replace the normal ones to support the AMP elements. All these customised changes work to ensure that the patterns are simple to use.
2.AMP JS LIBRARY: Including the JS Library is the first step in the conversion of any page to an AMP page. The AMP Library contains development tools that enable us to build our AMP pages. The very first step for any page to be converted to AMP is to include the AMP-JS library in the page. This is an important first step since the AMP library includes development tools that will guide us as we build our AMP pages.
The AMP (JS) utilises the best performance practices ensuring its users the custom tags and ensuring that page loading speed is enhanced. The biggest advantage of including the JS Library is that it has every element even those from external sources, synchronized so that nothing within the page may be blocked from rendering.
To include the AMP-JS library, simply add the following line within thetag of your markup:
3.GOOGLE CACHE: Fast loading is the main benefit of google AMP pages. Google’s AMP Cache is a delivery network that is proxy-based, used to distribute all valid AMP documents. It transmits AMP HTML pages, then caches them, and then automatically improves upon their page performance. What it does it that it forbids the use of any JavaScript written by the webmaster and in its place, the page should be comprised of customised AMP elements.
Using AMP HTML, the only styles that are allowed keep are those that stay inline. The AMP system will not submit to any HTTP requests until the fonts have started downloading. This is possible because all JavaScript in AMP has the attribute of being async and only allows inline style sheets. AMP has total control of the downloads of resources—it prioritizes loading, meaning that it will load only what is needed and will prematurely fetch the resources that take a long time to load.
There is not a lot of extra effort required to ensure that HTML is indeed AMP HTML. There are only a few extra extensions needed for the rich content, as well as some restrictions that ensure reliable performance, but if a website is fairly simple, to begin with, it may already be in compliance with AMP HTML. With more and more of the population accessing information on the go from their mobile devices, AMP is a step in the right direction.
BENEFITS OF AMP FOR BUSINESS DIGITAL MARKETING
It has been noticed that Google has been penalizing the sites that are not mobile compatible. The algorithm of Google is targeted to enhance the mobile experience of its users. With the growing trend of the increased usage of smartphones and mobile phones, the famous search engine introduced the AMP or Mobile First Indexing for augmenting the overall webpage performance.
Some of the major factors that affect the success of any website are the loading time of the page, Visibility on the mobile, search engine rankings and bounce rate. The mobile page speed is aimed at making a remarkable impact on these aspects. There is a significant relationship between the website loading speed, page views and the search rankings. It is obvious that if a site has a reduced loading time, it shall make the viewer access number of pages, lowering the bounce rate. Since the user experience is inversely related to the bounce rate. The reduction in the bounce rate would lead to being ranked higher on Google. It is, for this reason, AMP rank higher than those which are not.
There are many benefits of the AMP but considering the scope of the article, we shall discuss the top 5.
1. Fast-loading pages that increase the U/X
Speed is one of the most crucial and integral components of the mobile page and is us. As per a blog from Google Small Business Blog “When it comes to mobile speed, every second matter — for each additional second it takes a mobile page to load, conversions can drop by up to 20%.”Although the content is crucial, the users won’t read them. Thus it is the needs of the day to make the mobile pages extremely fast. And through AMP you can achieve that. The way the readers are accessing the content has changed considerably over the years and the speed at which it shall be published is extraordinary. Having a slow mobile page would not let you convert your mobile users into customers.AMP can come to your rescue in ensuring a speedy page loading consequently increasing the user experience.
2. Increased mobile visibility for content marketers
Google has started displaying the AMP results in organic listings. The results are demarcated by the lighting symbol. More attention-grabbing search results can increase your CTR and higher conversion rates. That would make the search users look for Google AMP Pages for they load faster than the other mobile pages.
3. Improved search rankings
There’s a strong relationship between site speed and conversion rate. A faster loading side shall make a user stay on the site for a long period and consequently the likelihood of an effective conversion happening is much more and are more likely to subscribe to a list or purchase a product. Having said that Google has not yet made it a ranking factor.
4. Flexible Ad support
Analysis of many mobile and desktop versions of the website reveals that there is an increasing number of distractions in the form of a navigational menu, header image, social share buttons, sidebar, popups, forms, and other unnecessary elements, which can lower the conversion rate tremendously. Google AMP helps to solve this problem and get rid of distractions. This happens owing to the streamlined version of JavaScript and CSS out of the question (mostly). It provides an opportunity to generate more revenue from your ads. Analyzing the AMP versions of your website shall make you see how effectively it is designed to display ads in a flexible and a user-friendly way.,
When you click on an Accelerated Mobile Page, It’ll load nearly instantaneously, even before you’re done the clicking.
5. User tracking made simple
It is very important for the owners to understand the analytics of the traffic to the mobile pages. For instance, it is of high importance to understand not only the traffic coming to your site, but also understand the nature of the traffic, and the means they accessed the mobile site. The tracking helps you to monitor the type of people that are viewing your site which becomes exceedingly easy with AMP. With AMP, the publishers can select tags that help the sites to evaluate valuable data such as clicks/conversions, video and link tracking, visitor counts, new vs. returning visitors and more.