Accelerated Mobile Pages, AMP, is an open-sourced web development framework or template developed by Google to simplify the process of designing web pages. AMP is efficient, fast, easily assembled, and flexible for accommodations. AMP reduces code complexity while having other already built-in components to avoid the need to recreate similar templates and elements.
AMP increases the loading speed by removing unnecessary elements that would impact the downloading speed of the webpage. This may include removing large files or oversized images on the web page. Because of its ability to load quickly, AMP is able to attract more users by reducing the time sacrificed accessing websites and waiting for them to load.
Another benefit due to the speed of the webpage is better quality ads and more “costs per click”, the amount advertisers pay to display ads on webpages. However, this is only to an extent. In the case that the AMP removes the ad that was supposed to be displayed on the webpage, the ad would not be displayed and remove the benefit of advertisement revenue.
How AMP Functions
AMP follows a set of rules and algorithms which allows it to function at top performance levels. Firstly, AMP avoids utilizing JavaScript and CSS, instead using AMP customized elements, to avoid causing delays in loading a web page. In some cases, JavaScript is only allowed if it functions as a third-party source that would impact the structure of the webpage. AMP pages mostly opt for the use of HTML. All externally accessed images are required to be in HTML to allow AMPs to easily identify and sort through the size of the documents.
A benefit of AMP is that it calculates the time consumption based on different elements of a web page while the program is being written to ensure that fonts and styles follow necessary requirements to show the best results. AMP calculates the elements based on the requirements of the device and prioritizes downloads so that the most important parts of a webpage is downloaded first over other unnecessary elements.
Problems with Using AMP
A concern that comes with AMP is its interaction with Core Web Vitals. Core Web Vitals help owners understand how to attract or improve user experience on their websites. Factors include “Largest Contentful Paint”, “First Input Delay”, and “Cumulative Layout Shift”. All these factors determine how fast the webpage responds on the user screen. The largest Contentful Paint is how fast it takes for the webpage to load content. First Input Delay is how fast the webpage responds to the user. Lastly, Cumulative Layout Shift measures how many web pages and links the device accesses to get to the designated page. AMP helps improve the Core Web Vital scores, thus having websites with AMP would be preferred over non-AMP websites.
AMP is not perfect and still requires improvements to its system. AMP still lacks the ability to be “SEO-Friendly”. In other words, AMP is not easily accessible for search engines such as Google to crawl through the website pages and fully functioning to be indexed as relevant in the search result database. To avoid consistently facing this issue, it is recommended to include content from non-AMP pages to AMP pages so that AMP web pages may be detectable and accessible through corresponding web pages.
Another problem with AMP is that it removes elements from the website that may impact the user experience. For this reason, programmers are required to be extra cautious and constantly check website products to ensure that all necessary elements would be able to pass through AMP standards. This requires extra effort to ensure that the user experience is positive. Nevertheless, without AMPs, it would take a lot more effort for web pages to load.
Commonly Used Joomla AMP Extensions
JAmp
JAmp generates the AMP version of Joomla websites so that it is accessible to Google automatically and passes the Core Web Vitals test, accessing the benefits of using AMP. All languages that construct the webpage will be converted into AMP HTML markup. This extension gives the user all benefits that come with AMP such as a wider range of customization accessibility in appearance and website components.
wbAMP
wbAMP automatically converts and advertises the web page to search engines such as Google, similar to JAmp. However, this extension comes with customization of functions that allow navigation through the website. It also allows more flexibility with complementing from social platforms.
Future of AMP from My Perspective: Nicole Huang
Because of the problems associated with AMP, I do not believe that AMP will be used continuously in the future. AMP may still be in the development stage and there are still many more improvements to make, however, this method is not perfect. There should be a better method out there that has yet to exist and I certainly do not believe AMP is the end product. There will highly likely be more similar products using multiple elements of AMPs as more competitors rise in the technology industry to develop more efficient and effective products.
Sources
https://www.themexpert.com/blog/joomla-amp
https://extensions.joomla.org/tags/amp/
https://blog.amp.dev/2021/03/23/optimizing-your-amp-page-experience-for-core-web-vitals/
