A masterpiece implies that a work of art represents outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship.
Well, technology is not art. And declaring a tech function as a masterpiece is an exercise in futility because continuous improvement is an immutable reality.
In digital marketing, the constant reality is the need to improve how web and app pages load.
Google may not have created a masterpiece in page loading protocol, but it came close — for the moment, anyway — with its Accelerated Mobile Page Project (AMP), an open-source protocol aimed at improving page load performance on mobile devices.
Marketers Amp Up
AMPs are essentially HTML pages with a set of specific web protocols. These mainly consist of a set of HTML custom elements, a JavaScript library and a content delivery network (CDN) for caching pages.
In simple terms, the open-source initiative helps publishers create mobile-optimized content so that information loads instantly.
AMP addressed the basics that underpin the management of page load speed. But what does the implementation of AMP mean for marketers?
At its best, marketing connects content to the people who are most likely to share it.
The easier it is to load a page, the more likely the content will grasp a target audience’s interest to act or to share it.So shared content is an essential part of initiating digital word of mouth among customers.
As Google itself noted, "Using the AMP format will make it far more compelling for people to consume and engage with your content on mobile devices. Users love content that loads fast and without any fuss. We have seen people read more and consume more content that loads in an instant."
Connecting With Customers
Marketers recognize the value published content has these days.
Blue Nile, a digital marketing research firm, reported that 87 percent of B2B marketers who responded to its survey use content marketing as a strategy to reach customers.The majority use web site articles, newsletters, blogging/in-person events, case studies and videos.
The FAQ page of the AMP site emphasizes a focus of AMP’s initial benefits towards publishable content.
It notes “the goal is for all published content, from news stories to videos and from blogs to photographs and GIFs, to work using Accelerated Mobile Pages.”
Last year, Google and a number of publishers and technology companies, including The Washington Post, Vox and BuzzFeed, signed on to AMP with the goal of improving mobile web browsing. Google is continuing to test AMP pages to optimize crawling and indexing.
Benefits by Association
Marketers can benefit from looking at the networks and platforms that are associated with the Google AMP program.
Take Twitter, which plans to prominently display the AMP versions of news articles within Moments, its news feature that lets Twitter users click a link to a news article, blog post, or other content, and then click to return to where they had left in the Moment stream.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
Webinar
Apr
13
Accelerating Content Velocity Across the Digital Supply Chain
Learn to integrate DAM with upstream tools to improve workflow efficiency.
Webinar
Apr
13
Composable Commerce The Future of Retail
The Adobe Commerce approach to composable and why it's best in class
Webinar
Apr
18
Drive Business Growth Through Customer Service and Support
Defining the future of technology. What is AI’s role in the future of customer service?
Webinar
Apr
26
Future-proofing Your Marketing Through Better Customer Understanding
Understanding your customers and how to reach them in real-time across all channels
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
The decision is an outcome of Twitter's collaboration with publishers and industry leaders on the AMP project.
In its blog post of its AMP-related changes, Twitter explained that the changes “help publishers make incredibly fast mobile websites.”
Leveraging New Technologies
Google AMP also assesses technical concerns for author-written JavaScript or any third-party scripts intended for planned pages.
It allows third-party JavaScript to function through a separate framework. This is done so that the scripts do not block execution of the main page and slow page loading.
But the framework AMP provides, an iframe, means another step of quality assurance when integrating the third party scripts. Doing so ensures that their original purpose and function is maintained.
The technical consequence leads to a final point aimed at leveraging new technologies.
More and more opportunities are incorporating the performance of mobile devices, which means page loading is amplified in importance, along with ensuring functionality that works across devices.
Google Cardboard, for example, is being used in some virtual reality applications with mobile search pages. So having consistent, well-performing media is a key for influencing how people associate a good experience with a brand.
Google will continue to evolve the Accelerated Mobile Page program beyond its current early stages.
The sharing of content on the Internet has revealed the value of such effort, which certainly won’t abate anytime soon. In fact eMarketer reports that content marketing usage is expected to increase as a result of marketing managers' desire for better targeted media.
If that desire includes Google AMP, then managers will be ensuring that the goodwill engendered from potential customers viewing content are a masterpiece in customer experience.
Title image by Jaelynn Castillo
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
