Do you have any idea how long the average person’s attention span is?

From what we can see from recent Google experiments, the average person’s attention span is becoming shorter, especially in relation to the digital space. Google’s experiments displayed 30 search results on a page (instead of the usual 10) - the result? Just that extra 500 milliseconds that it took to load the page to include the extra search results, led to a massive 20% drop in usage.

This adds further evidence to what we’ve known for some time - page load time speed is crucial, especially for ecommerce sites. That extra few seconds it takes for a consumer to think about a purchase can make all the difference and result in them changing their mind. You lose a sale in the process. This is why we need to be focusing on pages and ads that are simple, accessible to the majority of people and most importantly, that can load lightning fast!

AMP and ecommerce websites

Although AMP is not fully supported across all ecommerce sites at the moment, mobile traffic has led to huge growth for several digital business including eBay. The likes of eBay and other businesses, are choosing to adopt AMP early as it focuses on improving the web browsing experience by keeping mobile pages simple, accessible and fast to download.

Recent improvements made to AMP

Although AMP is fairly new, we’re already seeing several improvements made that increases the benefits on offer when it comes to your ecommerce site. Three key improvements we’ve seen recently are:

• AMP pages are now able to handle e-commerce analytics thanks to the amp-analytics variable

• Both product and listing pages are supported in AMP

• AMP now works within a smart caching model that enables platforms that refer traffic to AMP pages to use caching and pre-rendering. This results in web pages loading super fast!

Top AMP tips

Smashing Magazine, a web design and development editorial site, has put together some tips about experimenting with AMP. Here’s a selection of their top tips:

Make use of the best practices suggestions

AMP includes a lot of tips for best practices for building mobile web pages. It’s wise to incorporate these suggestions as part of your regular development lifecycle.

Use less forking in code

If you’re following AMP best practices when building regular pages, you’ll be able to reuse most of the UI components between AMP and non-AMP pages. This means less forking in the website code itself (except for the JavaScript-based components).

Take advantage of the AMP component list

A growing list of components, such as sidebar, carousel and lightbox, are considered critical for creating a compelling e-commerce experience with AMP.

Internal search is beneficial

Adding AMP’s ecosystem to a site’s internal search is a very interesting prospect for many online retailers.

At the moment, it’s important to note that ecommerce sites are not fully supported by AMP. However, things are moving in the right direction and positive developments are being made each day. There’s no doubt that websites with a large amount of mobile traffic would benefit from adopting AMP sooner rather than later.

At Woven, we can assist you with all of your business’ digital marketing needs. We’re able to provide services to integrate your AMP into your ecommerce website and more.

Contact Woven to discuss implementing AMP into your existing ecommerce website.