BigCommerce Brings Google AMP to Ecommerce Sites Worldwide

Today, BigCommerce is excited to announce the first native ecommerce integration for accelerated mobile pages  –– i.e. Google AMP.

This integration simplifies category and product detail pages, improving mobile site speed and click-through for online sellers.

“Mobile has become the primary shopping method for many online consumers, and ecommerce brands are increasingly realizing that their mobile sites need greater prioritization,” said Brian Dhatt, chief technology officer for BigCommerce.

“AMP effectively removes extraneous details that distract from the shopping experience, allowing shoppers to quickly access catalog and product pages, find the information that is most relevant to their purchase decision and proceed to checkout without the typical friction often associated with mobile shopping.”

What is Google AMP?

AMP is an open-source framework launched by Google, aimed at making the mobile web a faster, more beautiful experience.

Higher performance and engagement

Web pages and ads published in the AMP open-source format load near instantly, giving users a smooth, more engaging experience on mobile and desktop.

In a closed beta conducted in mid-2017, BigCommerce merchants that utilized AMP on category pages saw, on average, a 20% improvement in click-through rate.

Additional benefits include:

  • Increased page load speed: AMP alleviates heavy design elements that slow down page load speed. On average, a 100-millisecond delay in site load time drops conversion by seven percent, and by simplifying a site’s content on mobile devices, AMP helps to decrease the time to first byte.
  • Optimized search engine visibility: BigCommerce’s native support designates your site as AMP-enabled in Google search results. According to a 2017 survey, the majority of consumers are more inclined to click on an AMP-enabled link than one that is not.
  • Staying on the cutting edge: By enabling AMP support in the control panel, BigCommerce is the first ecommerce platform to natively offer all customers AMP-enabled product and category pages out of the box — without the need for custom coding or costly third-party apps — providing merchants a competitive advantage.

“Until now, many ecommerce brands have been unable to adopt AMP into their stores due to excessive coding requirements and lack of costly development resources,” said Ben Moore, CEO at Pixel Union, a leading ecommerce design agency and BigCommerce partner since 2015.

“Today, we are thrilled to be partnering with BigCommerce to offer AMP-enabled ecommerce themes across our entire Pixel Union catalog, giving online merchants a game-changing solution for harnessing the growth of mobile commerce and the power of world-class mobile design.”

AMP-Ready Themes

Out-of-the-box mobile-readiness so you can focus on marketing, not the technology.

Get your AMP optimized theme.

This added support for AMP follows BigCommerce’s release of Akamai Image Manager in January 2018, which gave BigCommerce merchants the ability to automatically optimize website imagery across all device types, resulting in faster page load times and higher conversion rates.

These ongoing efforts to increase page load speed, especially on mobile, follow the company’s close partnership with Google and recent Google’s announcement of the “Mobile Speed Update.”

The Mobile Speed Update is a new ranking algorithm for mobile search which will use mobile page load speeds as a ranking factor. This will affect all sites by July 2018.

This means that faster loading sites will benefit from improved visibility (Google started using site speed in desktop web search rankings in 2010).

Test Drive a Powerful Mobile Commerce Experience

Launch your 15-day free sandbox store to trial run AMP-optimized themes, automatic Akamai image manager, one-page checkout with Apple Pay, Amazon Pay and more. 

This is mobile commerce for the future. 

Your mobile commerce sandbox store.

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