5 WordPress AMP Plugins to Speed Up Your Mobile Pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP as we usually call it, is a project from Google that is designed to make websites run faster on mobile devices. Technically speaking, in order for your website to be viewable on any device, your device has to download all resources from CSS to JS and fonts to other files. While you generally don’t have to wait too much on desktop computers connected to Wi-Fi, on mobile devices the case is not the same. Since you are either connected to LTE or 3G depending on where you live, it may take minutes for a website to load fully on your mobile device. Therefore you provide a bad user experience and your bounce rate increases. Furthermore, you end up consuming megabytes from your visitors’ mobile data plan.

When you activate AMP for your website, Google creates a basic version of your website and servers it to the visitors in a nick of time. Faster pages mean better rankings on search result, lower bounce rate and greater user experience. Yet, it’s quite easy for WordPress powered websites to switch to AMP with plugins. No hassle, no technical knowledge is required; here are the top 6 WordPress AMP plugins:

1) WP AMP Plugin

WP AMP is a premium WordPress plugin which enables your websites to open faster on mobile devices. Once this plugin is installed and activated, all pages on your website have an AMP version. The plugin offers some outstanding features, but limited support. This plugin can –

• Give your SEO a push-up
• Speed up your website on mobile phones.
• Enhance user experience on your website.
• Attract more traffic from Google search engine pages.
• Create custom AMP design with no requirement for coding.
• Increase sales on your WooCommerce site or place ads with AdSense.

This plugin also –

• Supports all content types and archives
• Enables you to embed audio, videos, images and iframes
• Allows you to customize the standard design/ create an entirely new design
• Tracks visitors with the help of Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and Google Tag Manager
• Supports WooCommerce sites

WP AMP is compatible with a host of different kinds of post types, like –

• Home pages
• Blog pages
• Categories
• Tags
• Static pages
• Search pages
• Custom post types
• WooCommerce shops, products etc.

With this plugin, you can customize –

• Your Logo
• Header menu
• Footer
• Color
• Font
• Posts and Post comments
• Ad Blocks, etc.

Using the built-in drag-and-drop page builder, you can also enable, disable, modify or rearrange the AMP blocks in the website. This plugin is great to add the AMP feature to your website and enables mobile redirects for it. You can use this plugin to make your site mobile-friendly, without having to change the theme files.

2) AMP BY AUTOMATTIC

Accelerated Mobile Pages Project enables the creation of faster websites and ads which are compatible across devices. With this plugin, all posts on the websites will generate AMP-compatible versions. Although the pages and archives are not currently supported by this AMP, it is being worked on. The plugin only creates AMP content, but it is not visible to the users when they visit your website from a mobile phone.

• Few things like colors can be modified with the AMP Customizer from the dashboard.
• The plugin comes with a default template setting, which is both appealing and minimalist.
• The customization comes with a mix of ease and extensibility.
• The default template will try to draw from different theme mods, if the active theme supports it

The user reviews about this plugin are a combination of good and not so good. While the plugin seems to create a beautiful AMP version for blog pages, the pages don’t trigger on a mobile phone. There are also some concerns about the support of the plugin. Some customers have complained of unresolved bugs in the plugin, which have inconvenienced users.

3) GLUE FOR YOAST SEO AND GOOGLE AMP

AMP Glue plugin enables integration of the Yoast SEO into your AMP pages. This ensures that your meta-data is implemented correctly. In addition to this, the Glue plugin provides a simpler way to customize your AMP pages. Some other features of this plugin are –

• Applies rudimentary styles in the form of colors and styles to align it to the look and feel of your main page.
• This adds a preview setting on all the posts edit screen.
• Allows you to add some extra tags and CSS manually in the header section.
• Aligns the styling as per your brand and makes it bit more stylish than usual.
• Automatically grabs the account code and ensures that the AMP pages are tracked.

However, this plugin can only be used by Yoast users.

4) CUSTOM AMP

The Custom AMP plugin is free and provides substantial benefits to WordPress users. Quite a few performance updates have been made on this plugin for faster content delivery. With the help of this plugin, you can change the content width, AMP icon, logo, WooCommerce content and similar functionalities by just activating the plugin.

• It allows you to customize every part of the website as per your discretion by overriding the default AMP template data.
• This plugin allows you to add featured images, analytics, navigation menu and even the comment count to the Meta AMP page with the help of this plugin.
• You can also add code to the header and footer and change AMP endpoint
• The plugin helps you to add menu for AMP pages and Google analytics code for AMP
• It shows your comments section on AMP Pages

Users have been happy with the Custom AMP plugin because it’s simple and effective.

5) WP AMP NINJA

The WP AMP Ninja is one of the best AMP plugins available for WordPress. It boosts traffic and increases conversions from mobile traffic. It is a premium WordPress plugin and supports all pages of a website, irrespective of the content type used for the page template. This plugin not only makes your website AMP compliant, but also enables your visitors to experience and consume your content real fast.

• The plugin supports out-of-the-box AdSense and Google Analytics.
• It doesn’t need any additional configuration. It’s a simple install-and-activate plugin
• Once installed, the plugin automatically generates the AMP versions of all your pages, posts and other custom content types.
• It supports audio, video, gif and iframe tags
• It displays your logo or name of the blog in the header
• It supports the featured image functionality
• It gives you the option to choose SCHEMA for each post type
• You can change the custom theme color, link color, Header menu, ability to add custom CSS and text color.
• The plugin supports social media icon integration

The final word

Nowadays, we spend more time on our phones than on computers; and so does our customers. As businesses, the best way to ensure that we get our target audience to stay on our websites is to see that our websites support AMP. It is now evident that the aforementioned plugins can make a website run at a good pace. Not to forget, a website in today’s age reflects a company’s image to new users and existing customers. A website with a good loading speed goes a long way in establishing the trust that the organization values time.