Scam Numbers is a website that helps ordinary people like yourself find out who called them, and identify the nature of the call – whether it’s a scammer, a cold calling sales person, or someone who just likes to harass people on the phone – Scam Numbers will help you report those numbers, and will also help you see what other people reported about that specific phone number.
While on the surface it might seem like an ordinary HTML/CSS/JavaScript website, it’s actually more than that. If you will look closer, you’ll find out that the website is a full AMP website – not just the mobile version of it, but the full desktop version as well. For those who have been living under a rock, AMP is a cutting edge web framework that is optimised for super-fast page loading, and it’s being developed, recommended and maintained by Google, among others. So Why is AMP such a great framework, and why are more and more organisations and websites such as Scam Numbers adopting it? Let’s see some more info on this question, below.
Built for all platforms
Even though most people think that due to its name, “Accelerated Mobile Pages”, AMP was built for mobile only, the reality is far from truth. AMP is ideal for building web interfaces for desktop, mobile and tablet. In fact, you can build outstanding UI for desktop with AMP – just look at the Scam Numbers website, or at the actual AMP website itself, and you’ll get convinced.
Focused on speed
AMP was built from the ground-up with speed and performance in mind, while aiming to keep an excellent user experience. Let’s take this US area codes page for example. You can clearly see how fast that page loads – it’s definitely under the 2 seconds recommended by Google. It will be even faster once it will be cached by Google. Yet, that page contains over 300 images. The magic trick is that AMP enables lazy loading for the images on any given page, right out of the box, with no custom implementation needed from the developer. That is just one example. Another factor that contributes to the lightning-fast loading of the AMP web-pages is the fact that they have strict guidelines on how to implement your code – and most importantly, the AMP standards won’t let you implement any 3rd party JavaScript files. This will prevent developers adding endless JavaScript libraries to a page, that will slow down your page if you’re not careful.
You might think: wait a minute, am I not allowed to add JavaScript to the source code? It sounds like there is no flexibility, in terms of development and feature implementation, right? Well, think again.
Flexible
Luckily, the AMP team has done an excellent job when it comes to flexibility, and feature implementation. If you look at the almost never-ending list of components here on the components list page, you will be astonished by the plethora of functionalities and features that they boast right out of the box. From Google Analytics, to image carousels and even accurate geolocation functionalities, AMP provides you extreme flexibility when it comes to web development, and give you all the tools necessary to build a custom web application in record time.
Cached by Google
On mobile devices, Google will show users a cached version of the AMP page. Yes, the page will be totally cached on Google’s servers. This will result in an almost instant loading speed for the user, once you tap on an AMP result in the search results.
Recommended by Google
Google wants the best possible experience and service for their users. The happier and more satisfied people are with Google’s search results, the more likely it is that they will keep on using Google as a search engine. And that’s the reason why Google strongly recommends AMP.
SEO advantage
This one is very important, and it’s one of the most important factors that makes it worth really thinking about implementing AMP, as SEO can make a tangible difference on your bottom line.
AMP will boost your SEO in 2 main ways: improved page loading time (better user experience) and increased CTR in the search results on mobile, due to the AMP lightning icon present in the search results.
Stand out from competitors
AMP will help you stand out from your competitors, as of September 2019. This might change in the future, as more and more websites adopt this technology, but as for now, whoever implements AMP, will stand out clearly from the rest of the gang.
Conclusion
As you’ve seen in our Scam Numbers website example, AMP can be a great tool to build great websites, with almost no compromise. If you navigate through the pages on the reverse phone lookup website from our example, you can see that they implemented a very nice design, they’ve even simulated chart-like sections, and they have an advanced phone numbers reviews system built purely with AMP. AMP is definitely the future of the web, and it’s time for more companies and web development companies to start recommending it to their clients. What are your thoughts on this great technology?