Page loading speed and mobile-friendliness have been among the most important Google ranking factors. To combine the two, Google has worked towards making mobile pages load faster with the help of an open-source framework which is called AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). AMP is considered to be one of the best ways to build good web pages that rank on Google and drive higher organic traffic. With the success of mobile AMP, Google developed other versions like desktop AMP. The most recent innovation with AMP involves a platform people spend a considerable amount of time on: the email.
AMP in email is offered by the Gmail Developer Preview. This helps developers in creating a more engaging and interactive email experience. Here are some of the advantages of AMP for email.
Completing actions with the help of AMP will be much faster, like sending RSVP for an event, scheduling appointments, or simply filling up a questionnaire within the email message.
AMP helps in keeping information of the email relevant and content accurate so that emails don’t become stale. This also makes it easy to keep information updated. A simple example would be confirming an account on a website, with the help of AMP for Emails one can access the confirmation page instantly without having to open a new tab. This makes the overall process more efficient and time saving. This new update also offers a preview for websites like Booking.com and Pinterest within the email.
To optimise your page for a faster load time check out Google PageSpeed Insights.
AMP-powered email has potential that can be beneficial for email marketing, because the engaging content can increase CTR while also generating more interest when compared to a regular email.
Content marketing benefits from this update, as users can receive and access content on their email itself. This again improves the users experience making going through emails a more pleasant experience. This holds true even for users accessing emails from their mobile device.
To make the most of your email campaigns, check out our blog to know more about How to build a strong email marketing database.
Companies are working on creating new customer experiences by using AMP for emails. Adding this functionality to emails helps in eliminating the need to open a new tab to finish the task; instead it can be done within the email itself.
The new format of AMP for Emails is supported by Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Outlook.com, Mail.Ru, Verizon owned Yahoo Mail to list a few while it is open to other providers as well. With security and protection of personal information becoming increasingly critical lately, Google has taken several measures to safeguard this. This is why companies creating dynamic emails will need to seek approval from Google first.
Companies which have already started supporting this format are:
The format supports AMP features like carousels, lists and forms among others, while also including the standard HTML markup for email clients supporting AMP. Google has brought in other partners who will also support the AMP for Email on their respective platforms as well. Some of these partners include:
AMP for emails is a much needed update for emails making them more engaging and interactive. This update for emails opens up opportunities for content creators as well as advertisers to roll out fresh content for email marketing.
India Home Health Care (IHHC) is a leading provider of home nursing and other Healthcare services. They work in partnership with BAYADA Home Health Care to provide patients with registered nurses, visiting doctors, physical therapists and more from the comfort of their home.
Mobile devices account for 90 per cent of total traffic to IHHC’s website, with most users accessing the landing page through 3G and 4G connections. However, the landing page loaded much more slowly than other pages on the site, negatively impacting lead generation. To maintain their foothold in the extremely competitive healthcare space, the IHHC team set out to increase their mobile leads by improving the landing page load time. They also hoped to increase conversion rates and reduce cost per conversion.
Goal: India Home Health Care (IHHC) wanted to generate a higher number and quality of leads at a lower cost-per-lead (CPL).
To make the most of high mobile traffic to the landing page, the IHHC team wanted a faster, more seamless experience for potential clients using their smartphones and tablets. Their digital marketing partner Social Beat (a Premier Google Partner) recommended Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open-source library that helps developers easily create fast-loading, mobile optimized web pages that scroll smoothly and look great on both mobile devices and desktops. Working with Social Beat, IHHC began to develop AMP landing pages for their Google ads to improve campaign performance. Implementing AMP was very straightforward, with each page taking only a day or two to build. Soon after the January 2018 launch, IHHC modified their AMP code to more easily monitor the pages’ effectiveness and track leads from their Google Ads campaigns. First, they added the <amp-call-tracking> tag, which automatically replaces static phone numbers with dynamically- generated numbers used for call tracking. Next, because some people prefer to submit a contact form, IHHC used the amp-analytics component to automatically sync form submissions with their Google Analytics account. Whether potential customers contact IHHC by phone or through the website, each new lead is automatically incorporated into the company’s CRM system. This enables them to accurately measure the impact of their AMP landing pages and Google Ads campaigns on final sales.
Within three months of launching their AMP landing pages, IHHC had reduced their average cost per lead by 33 per cent, while total conversions grew by 20 per cent. Meanwhile, the bounce rate was cut nearly in half for potential customers who reach an AMP page compared to those who visit the regular website. IHHC attributes these significant improvements to faster load times that help visitors get the information they need so they don’t grow frustrated and leave. AMP’s call-tracking support has proven particularly valuable, spotlighting ad messaging strategies that resonate with prospects.
“Our AMP pages load nearly instantly, which means that customers get a better user experience and they can focus entirely on learning about the high-quality services that IHHC and BAYADA provide.” —Revathy Sankaran, IT Manager, India Home Healthcare.
Since using AMP to optimize their ad landing pages for mobile, IHHC has generated more high-quality leads at a lower cost. Next, the team intends to create an AMP version of the entire website for mobile visitors who don’t find the company through a Google ad. They also plan to experiment with AMP HTML, which allows advertisers to build ads that load just as quickly as an AMP page on mobile, and Progressive Web Apps, which work with AMP to create immersive, full-screen experiences that don’t require installation.
We are also happy to inform that the case study has been published by Google.
Download the full case study for more details.
As the number of mobile internet users in India and around the world continues to grow, making pages more mobile-friendly will become one of the biggest objectives for brands to reach the next billion users. Implementing AMP could be one of the most effective ways for brands to become more discoverable and ultimately, gain higher conversions, whether you are a Real Estate Giant or a leading FMCG Company. So do try it out and let us know the results you get!
With almost 80% of search queries coming from mobile platforms, Google has been implementing new ways to make the mobile search experience more streamlined and convenient for its users. One of the most drastic moves to facilitate this was the introduction of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
On an average, pages take longer to load on mobile than they do on the desktop. This is especially significant in the Indian context as Indians have the highest amount of data consumption in the world and access the internet primarily through their phones. If brands want to engage India’s next billion internet users, implementation of AMP will become one of the most crucial differentiators.
Unlike its direct competitor (Facebook Instant Articles), AMP is an open-source framework which is very easy to access. A page can be AMP-enabled by modifying the website’s HTML code with certain specified tags or by implementing a specialised JavaScript framework. But even if you don’t have any experience with coding, you can still implement AMP if you use a CMS platform like WordPress. Just by installing a Google AMP WordPress plugin which is easily available, you can make your page AMP-optimised and help it load faster.
Google initially launched AMP for static content-heavy sites such as blogs. Since an AMP page is a stripped down version of the original version, it improves readability for the user. Implementing AMP on blog pages can have several benefits for the reader and the site owner.
According to a study by Kissmetrics on How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line, loading time is one of the biggest factors contributing to bounce rate. Over 40% of those surveyed said they would leave a page if it took longer than 3 seconds to load. A study by Tractus looked into the effects just a 1-second delay in page load time can have on several key metrics. They found that bounce rates increased by 8.3% and page views decreased by 9.4%. This clearly shows that for a successful blog, you need more than just great content. You need an optimised page that improver a reader’s overall experience.
Implementing AMP on blog pages can be one of the most important ways to help your website perform better. When a page loads almost immediately, users are less likely to abandon the page. They are also more likely to explore your site further and click on other links within it. Below is a quick glimpse of one of our blogs, where you can see significant improvement in terms of time on site – just because of the AMP blog page.
When a website implements AMP, they are very likely to see an increase in page speed, page visits, dwell time and a reduction in overall bounce rates. Incidentally, these are also some of the main factors Google takes into consideration when ranking a page. In addition, ever since Google’s algorithm started prioritising mobile-optimised pages, the implementation of AMP could further help improve your website’s SEO.
Implementing AMP will also help your website gain more visibility. AMP-enabled pages have a lightning icon next to them which helps them stand out from the other results displayed. Users are also likely to seek out pages with this icon, knowing that it will load faster. All of these factors can help a website rank high on a search results page.
For content marketers, analytics is one of the best tools to understand user behaviour, what kind of content is working and where traffic is coming from. Tracking AMP pages is very easy as there are analytical tools available to help you track page visits, link clicks, conversions and more on AMP versions of your pages.
Page load speed is a critical factor in improving a user’s experience, especially when you are trying to drive conversions. Understanding the importance of this, Google launched AMP for landing pages. Brands can significantly improve the performance of their landing pages by implementing AMP.
If you run an e-commerce site or any other online business, leads or sales are most likely your number one priority. But if your website doesn’t load quickly, then you could be losing out on valuable customers. The same study by Tractus found that 30% of shoppers who have a bad experience with an online shopping website say that they will never visit that site again and that they will not wait more than 2 seconds for a website to load. So if you want to improve the quality of leads generated via digital, optimising your page speed is crucial.
Implementing AMP could be one of the best measures to create a landing page that converts. There has been shown to be a direct correlation between page load time and the number of conversions. If a page loads quickly and the customer is satisfied with their experience on it, they are much more likely to purchase a product or complete any other call to action.
If one of the main goals of your website is to monetise through ads, then implementing AMP could help you achieve this. This is primarily due to the difference in the way ads are showcased on an AMP-enabled page as compared to a regular page. Since implementing AMP trims all the unnecessary elements of your page and streamlines it, ads are displayed more prominently and with fewer distractions. This can increase the number of clicks on an ad displayed.
Background: India Home Health Care (IHHC) is a leading provider of home nursing and other healthcare services. They work in partnership with BAYADA Home Health Care to provide patients with registered nurses, visiting doctors, physical therapists and more from the comfort of their home.
Goal: India Home Health Care (IHHC) wanted to generate a higher number and quality of leads at a lower cost-per-lead (CPL).
Strategy: In order to achieve higher leads for IHHC, we decided to implement AMP for their landing pages. Since a majority of the leads for IHHC came through mobile, enabling AMP would have a strong impact. Google ads targeted towards potential clients redirected them towards an AMP-implemented landing page. As this would significantly reduce the load-time of these pages, we predicted that it could generate higher leads for IHHC.
Results: The implementation of AMP led to a higher number of leads generated as compared to any other pages on the site. The two most important results from this were:
As the number of mobile internet users in India and around the world continues to grow, making pages more mobile-friendly will become one of the biggest objectives for brands. Implementing AMP could be one of the most effective ways for brands to become more discoverable and ultimately, gain higher conversions, whether you are a real estate giant or a leading FMCG company. So do try it out and let us know the results you get!
