As you consider your content strategy and publishing plans for 2018 and beyond, accelerated mobile pages (AMP) should be at the top of your list. Here’s why.

Simply put, AMP allows your mobile pages to load almost instantly for users, providing a better user experience, and improving your rankings and conversion metrics as a result.

What are Accelerated Mobile Pages?

AMP works through HTML, Javascript, and caching. They all work together to accelerate the load speed for your mobile pages (by reducing the elements of your site that slow it down), no matter what content appears on these pages. At the same time, it protects and displays im-portant content.

This open source project is supported by Google, as a sponsor, as well as other major platforms like Twitter, WordPress, Adobe, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Bing.

Why Accelerated Mobile Pages Make Sense

Simply put, AMP makes good business sense, regardless of your industry vertical or subsector.

Initially created for media publishers who had a vested interest in ensuring their content loaded quickly, it has since been adopted by content publishers of all kinds. It’s useful for any
organization that wants its users to see content immediately, spend more time on its site, and—in the case of online retailers—wants higher sales conversions.

In October 2017, the AMP project announced that over 25 million website domains pub-lished more than four billion AMP pages, and that the median time an AMP page takes to load from a Google search is less than half a second.

In fact, ecommerce sites see a 20 percent increase in sales conversions when using AMP. The same report indicates that AMP leads to a 10 percent increase in web traffic, with twice the amount of time spent on the page.

Impact on Mobile Ranking

By using AMP, you’ll likely improve your mobile ranking, as these sites load faster than mobile responsive pages.

Google’s mobile-first index means that the search engine crawls the mobile version of a site to see how it should be indexed. Properly implanted AMP ensures that your search engine rankings are what they should be.

Given that so many people access sites on their mobile devices, mobile engagement has quickly become an important metric. Why wouldn’t you do everything you can to make your site rank well in this area?

Another report shows that a site with four million visitors, having implemented AMP, could expect a return on investment of 377 percent over three years.

Finally, one of the biggest hazards looming on the business horizon is net neutrality—and AMP can help with that, too.

Accelerated Mobile Pages and Net Neutrality

The death of net neutrality is a major concern for businesses in 2018.

Without net neutrality, Internet service providers (ISPs) can interfere in network traffic, blocking or throttling services as they desire. Organizations and web users alike may be looking at a pay-to-play model.

On the business end, ISPs could charge to have a faster site, or one that can handle higher loads of users. If your business cannot afford these fees, your throttled service means your
users could be frustrated by slow loading pages. A poor online experience may drive potential customers away from your site, for good.

If ISPs are able to throttle website speed, based on a pay-to-play model, your company’s pages have to respond to that by loading like lightning, even if you are throttled.

This is the only way to continue competing—ensuring your customers get the information, ser-vices, and products they desire from your website.

AMP can help with this by streamlining your site to make it load as fast as possible. By stripping out everything that is unnecessary, while still promoting and displaying the most important as-pects of your site, your users can have a great experience.

With the fight over net neutrality under way, there has never been a more critical concern.
Include it in your planning now; The sooner you start, the easier it will be to adjust if net neutrality is truly killed.

In the face of a net neutrality repeal, AMP could be the thing that keeps you afloat in an unequal Internet world. Investing in this platform addition to keep your site loading quickly, boost user en-gagement and satisfaction, and future-proof your web presence no matter what comes next.