For the past few months Google has been emphasising the importance of mobile-friendly websites and mobile commerce with their newly introduced AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), which load 4x faster than regular pages and are rumoured to improved SEO rankings. Just recently they have announced that these Accelerated Mobile Pages will now be updated through additional projects that will improve and add features. These additional features include:
- Scrolling animations – which can be used for parallax effects, subtle zoom, fade-in of images or even starting and stopping images
- Responsive sidebar – allows for easier to make responsive pages
- Native video analytics support – to collect engagement data of users
- Improved Client ID information - AMP viewers can now accept vendor identifiers and/or API keys included in pages
- Fluid ad-support for publishers While this project is still underway, it does signify the mobile to desktop shift that is become increasingly apparent in digital spheres as consumers are reaching for their phones and tablets more and more for information, shopping and research. It will be interesting to see how far these AMP updates will go and how they will improve both user and publisher mobile experience as Google continues to flex is mobile muscles.
