Google’s Mobile-First Index is here after a long time coming. If you have been thinking hard how to position your site - whether to maintain your current ranking in SERP or figuring out how your new mobile site will be seen by Google through the mobile-first index, this is no longer the time to procrastinate.
Back when desktop-first indexing was still the norm, it took years of research and experience to formulate the best solution that will allow people to easily find what they are looking for (or for your product to be found on the web). And since there isn’t much time, it could be best to listen to what experts have been saying. To cut through the clutter, we have gathered the essentials in optimising your mobile site to prepare for the mobile-first index. Your preparedness will gauge how much is at risk.
If you are like many, who haven’t discerned that mobile domination will come, the mobile-first indexing policy could get you feeling lost in the wilderness. The slightest preparedness could be having a mobile Responsive Website Design (RWD), at the very least. For a while, it has been the most cost-effective solution to serve web pages to mobile users. This can be your first line of defence when mobile-first indexing hits hard, and there is a good chance it will like it did with desktop first indexing. The same standards may apply, but as to how you will attack the mobile site issues could be different.
Responsive Web Design (RWD) can fix several problems:
However, since Responsive Web Design was created by designers, it was never meant to address speed issues; whereas, speed can be a major factor in keeping up with mobile-first index. Loading speed on RWD is at 10 seconds on the average. Also, designers have yet to optimize for touch vs. click-and-scroll interfaces. Another problem is the visualisation of data on small screens such as charts and graphs.
Enter AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). AMP is Google’s initiative to push the speed up the internet by coming up with visual content that is highly easy to consume. Essentially, AMP is an HTML framework that serves stripped-down versions of web pages to deliver content at half a second of load time. AMP is very relevant at this point when speed matters a lot on a mobile web perspective.
There have been a lot of positive results associated with AMP. With the use of “Fast Fetch” tag, it becomes even faster and convenient to implement. Google prioritises web pages on AMP in its mobile news carousels, and many publishers have reported huge success with it. No wonder it is increasingly becoming a favourite content framework. This is just an indication that speed has a big impact on user experience. Just when you think AMP sounds impressive enough, there are some downsides to it.
AMP uses Google’s cache and is, therefore, the version that is served is different from the original document. Though AMP seems to be the best option for serving informative blog posts and rich content, there is a break between clicking on the AMP content and when the user continues further engagement within site. This implies a need for publishers to have a site version of their content and that of AMP which becomes a “search-result ad copy” (quick access) to the real content. Does this mean that customer engagement will be sacrificed for the sake of fast mobile web experience? We may have to find out in the next phases of AMP development.
Another content format to consider is the Progressive Web App (PWA) format. Progressive Web Apps allows you to provide a mobile app like experience to customers without needing the budget for a full-fledged native app. It enables you to build fast-loading dynamic apps in full-screen mode that offers push notifications and a shortcut in the home screen without users having to download, install or update apps. Browsing seamlessly on the app is even possible even when the connection is poor, which isn't possible with a mobile web app or native app. In a nutshell, PWA offers the following advantages:
E-commerce stores primarily benefit from PWAs with faster checkout times. These apps can even provide a seamless experience for leveraging offline resources to push notifications and interact with customers after using the web app. Sounds good! But are there drawbacks? PWAs are quite costly and highly technical to implement. Thus, the need for a professional web designer will be a necessity.
Which one is for you?
For publishers seeking higher traffic to their site, AMP can be a great alternative albeit the challenge with implementing AMP properly due to the lack of available CMS plug-in. On the other hand, PWA is securely accessible on all browsers. Plus, it also offers all design elements in an app-like display. While both have nearly the same loading time, the speed of navigation from PWAs is due to all pages having the same format compared to AMP. Regarding speed, there is no clear advantage on AMP over PWA.
Like earlier mentioned, there seems to be no option but to move to a mobile-friendly website and for starters, it’s better to have a responsive web design rather than none at all. But regarding business competitiveness, this will not take you ahead of the competition. Leveraging on either AMP or PWA may be a better alternative for now. Better yet, experiment on combining the visibility advantage of AMP and the app-like interface of PWAs for delivering optimal user experience. The Washington Post has had success with this. It depends on your priority and which format will work best on the nature of your business.
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