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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%

#151

Post by mercer »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #14
mercer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little knowledge is needed to know how to speed up a website (or keep it from becoming slow). Almost every front-ender I've met, including those who never got beyond inserting jQuery snippets, knows enough.

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.

While you're right that properly understanding the full stack can help with many optimizations, my point was that there is usually plenty of low-hanging fruit that can be plucked by non-experts to significantly improve site speed.

As such, sure, it's useful to know the details, but it's usually far from necessary.

One example would be lazy-loading of images. I've worked at multiple agencies that definitely knew how to do this, but didn't, causing in the tens of megabytes of unnecessary data. Even just a small change to the templates + a jQuery plugin could have solved this one issue.

Of course, there are lots of reasons why a lot of this low-hanging fruit is left to rot, but they're not primarily to do with the developer's ability to understand all those details that you describe as necessary.

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

#152

Post by sureaboutthis »

mercer wrote: post #151
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.

While you're right that properly understanding the full stack can help with many optimizations, my point was that there is usually plenty of low-hanging fruit that can be plucked by non-experts to significantly improve site speed. As such, sure, it's useful to know the details, but it's usually far from necessary. One example would be lazy-loading of images. I've worked at multiple agencies that definitely knew how t…

That one won't or doesn't do the things to speed up a site has nothing to do with my point. After the low-hanging fruit, give your site to me and let's just see how much faster things will run.

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

#153

Post by kup0 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #140
manigandham wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerNews loads instantly, as do many other sites. HTML works fine. The problem is the stuff on the page, like ads delivered by Google AdX. Removing or optimizing those will make any page faster. No AMP necessary. Slow sites are not a technical problem, they are a business and marketing problem.

> HackerNews loads instantly, as do many other sites. HTML works fine. They load quickly, not instantly. That's the fundamental mistake you have in understanding why people prefer AMP, Facebook instant articles, and Apple News.

All AMP is doing is providing training wheels for developers to create non-crappy versions of their websites by restricting what they include.

AFAIK, there is no special magic to AMP that makes it fast, that can't be accomplished with simple CSS/HTML. It's just an on-rails subset of web technologies

Now, it may be arguable, in this screwed-up world, that the only way to remotely even get publishers to make better websites is something like AMP, because it's "marketable" or "friendly" compared to just saying "fix your slow website", I just wish this wasn't the case. But I believe anything AMP does can be accomplished through non-proprietary means using standard web technologies.

Not to mention, publishers probably only care about AMP because they feel forced to do so (because of carousel visibility, etc).

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

#154

Post by freedomben »

hnuser355 wrote: post #99
freedomben wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you find someone? "basic web dev" and "derive KKT conditions from scratch" do not sound like combinations that I would expect to find often, but it's always interesting to hear about different industries/expectations out there.

Sorry it was a joke :)

Oh haha, it was an excellent joke then cause I lol'ed :-D

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

#155

Post by Tsubasachan »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #142
manigandham wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you never leave Google's domain, thereby allowing it track you far more. Preloading is a minor detail considering how much privacy is removed.

Google already scraped the page to show the snippet, so they know what you're looking at. Whatever the privacy loss might be, people are happy to make that tradeoff with Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Similarly, they're happy to make that tradeoff on the web, which explains why AMP is used by so many search engines and link aggregators, not just Google.

People is so nebulous. I am people and I don't make that tradeoff.

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

#156

Post by lern_too_spel »

kup0 wrote: post #153
lern_too_spel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HackerNews loads instantly, as do many other sites. HTML works fine. They load quickly, not instantly. That's the fundamental mistake you have in understanding why people prefer AMP, Facebook instant articles, and Apple News.

All AMP is doing is providing training wheels for developers to create non-crappy versions of their websites by restricting what they include. AFAIK, there is no special magic to AMP that makes it fast, that can't be accomplished with simple CSS/HTML. It's just an on-rails subset of web technologies Now, it may be arguable, in this screwed-up world, that the only way to remotely even get publishers to make better web…

> AFAIK, there is no special magic to AMP that makes it fast, that can't be accomplished with simple CSS/HTML. It's just an on-rails subset of web technologies

The reason AMP loads instantly is that it is possible to validate AMP pages as safe to preload, so they are preloaded (when you interact with the carousel). That's why it's instant instead of just fast.

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

#157

Post by lern_too_spel »

Tsubasachan wrote: post #155
lern_too_spel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google already scraped the page to show the snippet, so they know what you're looking at. Whatever the privacy loss might be, people are happy to make that tradeoff with Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. Similarly, they're happy to make that tradeoff on the web, which explains why AMP is used by so many search engines and link aggregators, not just Google.

People is so nebulous. I am people and I don't make that tradeoff.

Tell me what privacy you think you're losing. Then avoid clicking on AMP results.

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

#158

Post by ivanfon »

ehsankia wrote: post #110
kentt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. However, I'm more in favour of AMP because if the reasons you mentioned. Essentially I think Google has tricked a lot of publishers into using less dark patterns and avoiding shooting themselves in the foot with heavy ads and tracking. It's not perfect but from an end user perspective I'm grateful for it.

It's also important to note that AMP isn't meant to be used for every site out there. It's only useful for specific sites that have a static landing pages. I still don't understand why sites like reddit use it either.

The SEO incentives are likely enough to make any and all types of websites interested in using it.

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

#159

Post by manigandham »

krageon wrote: post #150
manigandham wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average human response time is roughly 250ms so page loads within 1-2 seconds do not make a major impact on user interaction, especially if the actual text content is available immediately which can be done easily. AMP has little benefits to anyone but Google and the work it requires only takes away from the effort that could otherwise be spent on making the original website faster. We work with 1000s of publishe…

I was with you 100% about the AMP stuff, but a statement like "page loads within 1-2 seconds do not make a major impact" is just so laughably wrong that I have to wonder where you source your information. If you actually work in the space, it would behoove you to do some A/B testing on different page load speeds. You will quickly see that it does indeed make a huge impact on user interaction. That is leaving aside th…

Why is it wrong? My identity isn't hidden, you can easily check my industry experience. I'm speaking on TBs of data directly measured everyday on the publishers we work with.

I also said "especially if the actual text content is available immediately", which it almost always is. It's the other assets on the page that slow down loading. If you check the top 5k sites, none of them load any faster than 1-2 seconds, but many focus on optimizing for the first paint experience while loading the full site content over a few seconds. This is basically what AMP does, but taken to an extreme degree.

There are many other factors like content types, page depth, dwell time, user activity, etc. that all matter, and it really takes 3+ seconds to start seeing significant effects on user sessions and revenue. Publishers don't make performance a priority because of something called yield management and a host of other complex business reasons related to revenue. Making the site more performant is usually not worth the limited dev resources, which again are affected by things like AMP.

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

#160

Post by drb91 »

Lizzo wrote: post #149
drb91 wrote: post #127

It’s been about a decade since Google provided a decent user experience for search. We really need an alternative.

http://ddg.gg

That mostly offers the same functionality google does.

I’d love a search engine that gives users control over ranking, over whether the site runs ads, whether they are a business, whether they’re SEOd out the ass, by security, to blacklist results, to control how they’re displayed.

But of course none of these help display ads, so they have no value to companies.

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