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Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

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Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#41

Post by privateSFacct »

Here's the reality. The Taboola news carousals at the bottom of most slow loading actual news sites are filled with total junk. One page per image websites, super slow, adblock goes crazy. I've literally NEVER had a good experience with these "Stories you may like"

Google does something with a news carousel that loads fast and the content isn't crap. I get why publishers running things like taboola think it's terrible, but as a user interested in reading some quick news without going blind, I like it.

Hacker news is the exception in terms of a quick loading / clean website.

I was a google reader user heavily - so I like the more stripped down view of things even if it's "terrible".

One other note about this study. This company's goal is not to educate but to sign up users. At least for myself, Folks who want / like a stripped down experience may just be less interested in being marketed to.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#42

Post by notatoad »

setquk wrote: post #3
emayljames wrote: post #2

Hopefully this one-sided, web damaging framework will die a death like IE finally did, with its awful standards.

Definitely. I can’t understand why the hell anyone would want to use it anyway. The experience is terrible.

So you prefer when pages take >10s to load, have interstitial ads covering the content, and have ads that load in while you scroll, causing the content to jump around on you?

I'm pretty happy with amp as an alternative to newspapers' awful websites.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#43

Post by izacus »

tyingq wrote: post #30
izacus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conspirancy theory completely ignores the whole shitshow of 15MB+ textual websites we've had to endure in those last years.

"Conspiracy theory" is an interesting take. Are you suggesting Google's motives here are purely altruistic...solely to improve the web?

No, I'm not implying they're purely anything. As most of these things go, they're a mix of both business convenience and someone pushing to fix a problem they perceive on the web. Your post took into account only one dimension of an issue.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#44

Post by krn »

I think that AMP made Google's search results feel like they were essentially just Google's own pages. Because that's exactly what the user sees in his address bar, when he visits an accelerated mobile page: google.com/amp/. And that encourages him to hit "Back" as soon as he is done with it, instead of checking out the newly discovered website. Because he never felt like he had discovered anything. He never felt that he had left Google.

The fact, that there are no AMP pages in Google's search results on Firefox Mobile, was the final reason for me to make the switch. I feel like I am browsing the world wide web again, not just a Google's snapshot of it.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#45

Post by tyingq »

izacus wrote: post #31

What exactly are "leads" in this context?

The article heavily implies sales leads...collected email addresses to try and convert into sales.

They sell managed wordpress hosting.

However, their site doesn't appear to have much in terms of collecting leads. No newsletters, no trial accounts, etc. They just have paid plans you can sign up for. I guess the "contact us" page could be considered a lead generator.

So, I'm as confused as you are. Lead generation would be pretty bad if you don't collect leads :)

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#46

Post by grogenaut »

tyingq wrote: post #26
madeofpalk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?

It does hijack the back button for carousel loaded pages in a way that's odd. Search for some newsworthy word, say "trump". Click a carousel story. Swipe right (another hijack), and the page loads a story from a competitor to the publisher of the original loaded AMP page. Now, hit the back button. One assumes it would go to the original loaded story, right? Nope, it goes back to Google. Surely that wasn't intentional…

Going back to google makes sense as my intention is to read the news of the day, not cross reference. Stack behavior would drive me crazy here.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#47

Post by tyingq »

izacus wrote: post #43
tyingq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Conspiracy theory" is an interesting take. Are you suggesting Google's motives here are purely altruistic...solely to improve the web?

No, I'm not implying they're purely anything. As most of these things go, they're a mix of both business convenience and someone pushing to fix a problem they perceive on the web. Your post took into account only one dimension of an issue.

"Your post took into account only one dimension of an issue"

No, pretty sure I covered both. Maybe you're thinking of one of the replies to my post?

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#48

Post by walshemj »

mort96 wrote: post #23
sureaboutthis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speeding a site up is one thing. Speeding it up substantially is another and I doubt your example of one who only knows how to insert jQuery snippets knows enough to both understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser.

You don't need to know enough to understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser, you just need to know enough to remove the tags related to ad networks and tracking to see huge load time and ux improvements. It's not really the web developers who are the issue; they just implement what the people above them in the org chart wants. You could argue that the web developers should push back on…

From experience its not the tracking code that's the big slowdown, its poor page design, bloated implementation no you do not need custom fonts.

The worst culprit is not knowing how to use photoshop to optimise images properly.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#49

Post by tyingq »

grogenaut wrote: post #46
tyingq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does hijack the back button for carousel loaded pages in a way that's odd. Search for some newsworthy word, say "trump". Click a carousel story. Swipe right (another hijack), and the page loads a story from a competitor to the publisher of the original loaded AMP page. Now, hit the back button. One assumes it would go to the original loaded story, right? Nope, it goes back to Google. Surely that wasn't intentional…

Going back to google makes sense as my intention is to read the news of the day, not cross reference. Stack behavior would drive me crazy here.

I suppose, but that sort of reinforces the real purpose of AMP. No publisher in their right mind would give up the top part of their page and enable left/right swipe to navigate to competitors, give up the back button control, etc. It's basically a protection racket. Pay up (in control terms), or get pushed down the search results page.

Feels a lot like the old "digg bar" (https://moz.com/ugc/die-diggbar-die-die-should-you-kill-the-...)

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#50

Post by grogenaut »

hellisothers wrote: post #37
xiphias2 wrote: post #5

Front end engineers are not selected for their skills in understanding algorithms and data structures. It's quite easy to speed up a web site if you understand how CPU works on a low level and how Javascript is compiled to machine code, but it requires a lot of knowledge.

The obsession with data structures and algos is getting out of control, cargo culting this idea around is going to lead to requiring an L5 to change a button color.

If setting the color theme for the company having a l7 make that choice would be reasonable. One site I worked on had 172 shades of the main color by engineers "guessed". An l6 spent over a year in comitte and editor dropping that to 16.
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