As majority of search is now done on mobile devices, your website has to reflect how well your business packs a complete customer experience on the go, and on the smallest of screens. To support the mobile user experience, two ways of building websites, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) web design and Responsive Web Design (RWD) lead the mobile revolution.
While RWD promotes an integrated, seamless user experiences across devices, AMP web design crafts a user experience that is especially made for mobile. As a business owner in a bustling market such as the GTA, it’s important to weigh your options and decide whether it’s AMP web design or RWD that allows you to give your customers in the digital marketplace the same warm welcome they would receive in-store.
(Re)learning Responsive Web Design
Responsive Web Design was the first step towards optimizing the modern user experience – mobile being only part of its goal. Businesses that adopt RWD do not just target the mobile-centric lifestyle of the market in the GTA and provide optimal viewing experience and interaction with content; rather, RWD allows for content, including forms and custom applications, on these sites to be seamlessly consumed and interacted with across different devices as it flows seamlessly on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Thus, it can be said that RWD promotes flexibility to accommodate all users and their device of choice – a viable alternative to downloading mobile applications.
RWD is great for preserving the user experience across platforms and devices. It’s perfect for users who first searched for your business online on desktop, and decided your business was worth learning more about as they moved around, switching to their mobile phones or tablets to continue browsing your products or services, and placing their order. This is the essence of RWD, but what it packs in flexibility and seamless viewing and interaction, it lacks in speed and performance, especially on mobile.
Speed is a commonly acknowledged pitfall of RWD; the idea is sound and the vision is great, but the execution is a lot of times flawed. Because it aims to incorporate and present the same user experience in a seamless, integrated manner across all devices, it sometimes fails to account for different processing components among devices, resulting in slower loading times, higher bounce rate, and lower conversions – putting you further out of touch from your prospects in the GTA.
Discovering AMP
AMP web design is rising as a new way to build websites made for mobile, or made for mobile first. Because AMP sites are innately created and in a sense, automatically optimized for mobile, these perfect the mobile user experience and support the market in the GTA that lives, shops and needs access to information on the go using their mobile devices. AMP web design uses the same core components for building sites as we know them, but requires only lightweight, stripped down versions of HTML and JavaScript, streamlined CSS, and Google AMP Cache to deliver content that is especially made for mobile.
Because of its lightweight properties, AMP web design allows sites to load lightning fast to deliver content on mobile devices that users immediately need. As a business owner in the GTA, standing out in the bustling market requires a competitive advantage ranging from quality of products and services, to now using AMP web design that allows your site to perform faster, convert more leads from the market, and even be found better on mobile search.
Since AMP supports the made for mobile principle, sites built with AMP web design are displayed on top of other mobile search results. As AMP continues to evolve and grow, and more businesses and industries catch on, investing in AMP web design in its early stages to build a site for the mobile user turned potential customer can drive your website to the top of search. This allows you to not merely compete with your competition’s search rankings, but appear on the carousel above them that users see first, and are most likely to choose first.
Choosing What’s Best for Your Business
Some argue that AMP is not directly meant to replace RWD as a way to build websites for the modern consumer; however, as a business owner, it’s no secret that everything is a product of careful cost-benefit analysis, and to invest in two separate, but similar efforts is not the smartest way of maximizing resources. At the end of the day, it’s all about your goals as a business, and the types of interactions your website fosters to deliver a pleasant customer experience.
Choosing between AMP web design and RWD to improve how you do business in the bustling GTA market all still depends on your industry and the types of content and elements that allow you to deliver the best mobile experience and keep your customers happy.
AMP web design is focused on speed and helping your business get found first on mobile to stand out in a busy market, such as the GTA. It’s a straightforward way of delivering a customer experience that largely hinges on viewing content and accessing information on the go. To this end, RWD seeks to preserve and deliver the same customer experience across platforms, providing room for elements such as forms and custom applications that slow it down in most cases, but aim to assure the market that the same brand of customer service is available across all platforms.
If your website still relies on the frills of custom applications that sound great in theory, but are difficult to properly realize on mobile, taking that risk might work for a market that seeks to be entertained first. But the same can’t be said for the large majority that lives on mobile, and therefore needs everything delivered in an instant, and directly in a clean and concise manner that makes content easy to digest, interact with, and decide whether it’s worth delving into to get in touch with the business provider and subscribe as a happy customer.
As a business owner in the GTA, it is important to determine what type of information is available on your website and is consumed by your market that converts their visits into sales. If you use your website primarily to promote your latest offers, maintain a catalogue of your products and services, and provide potential customers with the information they need to decide on doing business with you, AMP web design is a great for connecting with them on mobile. This allows them to view your site and learn about your unique offerings as their needs arise, while they move around.
AMP web design is also gaining ground in e-commerce sites, so shopping on your website and instantly converting leads to sales you can count is becoming a breeze both for you, and your mobile customers. At the end of the day, it’s all about thinking forward and innovating on the customer experience your business currently provides, constantly building on what you have to offer to stay relevant and support the modern market’s needs.