The importance of AMP and PWA in e-commerce

Successful mobile e-commerce depends on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that minimizes the time it takes to load a web page. Cafe24 helps merchants succeed by providing the latest mobile web technologies, AMP and PWA, for free.

The key to an online brand’s success lies in its one-of-a-kind products. But just offering good items sometimes isn’t enough. That is where online marketing comes in. Marketing using display and search ads can boost a brand’s e-commerce business.

Nevertheless, additional functions can further differentiate the online brand from the sea of other brands. For instance, they can help minimize the bounce rate of potential customers and increase the store’s site to appear near the top of search results.

Hence, mobile technologies AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and PWA (Progressive Web Apps) have been gaining much interest in the last couple of years for solving such challenges for online businesses.

AMP cuts down mobile page load times to one second

Google announced the AMP Project in 2015. Its goal is to provide a web component framework that is user-first. It also aims to ensure long-term success for all web publishers, merchants, and advertisers.

When a user accesses a mobile webpage backed by AMP, it takes less than one second for the page to load. This is because AMP only uses one-tenth of the data that is typically used by non-AMP formats.

According to the AMP Project, CNBC slashed its mobile loading time down to one-fourth the original time. This resulted in a 22% increase in users returning to the CNBC site within seven days.

At the Tokyo AMP Conf 2019, Malte Ubl, keynote speaker and Principal Engineer of Google said that AMP is going through a transformation. Today, AMP goes beyond mobile web pages to encompass ads, email, and more service areas. He emphasized that AMP is a web component framework that makes it easy to build websites that prioritizes user needs.

According to Google research, 53% of users will leave a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Also, 79% of users will not visit a site if there are problems in the site’s performance. Especially in e-commerce, even a one-second delay in page loading time will pull down conversion rates by 7%.

Mobile web app PWA increases online store traffic

PWA gives mobile web pages the appearance of native apps. This allows web pages to deliver an app-like experience to users.

PWA lets users skip the process of going to an app store, typing in the search bar, and clicking to install. Sites that have PWA capabilities feature an ‘Add to Home Screen’ button. Users can click on it to instantly add the webpage to their mobile home screens – just like a native app. PWA runs directly from the mobile device’s web browser. But once opened, the search bar at the top of the screen disappears and features the online store’s branding and hero images.

In order to use PWA, a service worker script must be installed into the mobile web browser. The script allows all interface elements in the web app – excluding its contents – to be pre-stored in the cache. PWA pulls up cached data, which cuts down median load times to less than one second, increases connection speeds four-fold, and decreases data usage to one-tenth the normal amount.

Both AMP and PWA increase conversion rates

The AMP and PWA technologies are gaining significance in the e-commerce sphere because of their effectiveness in raising online store conversion rates.

Many users give up browsing an online store when it takes a long time for web pages to load. Meanwhile, search engines like Google have a policy that lists faster sites at the top of the search results.

Online stores that utilize both AMP and PWA benefit from fast connections and accessibility. According to the Google developers’ blog, even Alibaba experienced mobile conversion rates as high as 76% through PWA.  Likewise, UK brand George.com upped its mobile conversion rate to 31% with PWA.

Cafe24 offers free AMP and PWA features

Global e-commerce platform Cafe24 provides free, easy-to-use AMP and PWA services for merchants on its platform. Merchants don’t need to have any coding knowledge and don’t need to hire external agencies. They can simply enable the AMP or PWA options on the settings page of their Cafe24 admin page.

“General merchants are not familiar with AMP,” said Tommy Kang, Head of Cafe24 E-commerce Development, at the AMP Conf 2019. “We made it easy for merchants to apply AMP to their online stores by providing automatically-generated AMP pages based on non-AMP pages.”

Cafe24’s AMP service makes it easy for merchants to design and edit the interface of their AMP-based online store, as well as store item data to the cache.

Cafe24 offers its PWA technology through its free Smart Web App service. This service functions in the same way as PWA, enabling users to install a web page in the format of a native app through the ‘Add to Home Screen’ button.

According to a survey by Cafe24, 49% of users shop for new items by browsing search engines on their mobile devices. Online brands already use about 10% to 15% of their revenue to maintain their business scale. Cafe24’s AMP and PWA services allow merchants to utilize the latest mobile technologies at no cost and expand their reach to more potential customers.