This week, Chartbeat released a report that looks at both the loading speeds of both technologies, as well as how well users engage with the content. The results were very interesting to see. The report that was released showed that Facebook’s instant articles load a lot faster than Google’s accelerated mobile pages (AMP-pages).
With Facebook and Google (Alphabet) battling over mobile traffic, AMP (accelerated mobile pages) and Instant Articles are the new standards. Google has made a lot of progress over the last few months and convinced many publishers out there to adopt their technology.
Yet this research suggests that it might also be a smart thing to look at Facebooks Instant Articles – as they seem to be ridiculously fast.
How fast are AMP Pages?
Speed and usability are the two most important aspects of these technologies. The goal is to make mobile Internet usage and reading articles a lot more pleasant on a smaller screen. The data that was released, showed us about AMP pages load within 1.4 seconds on average. This means that AMP pages load on average about four times as fast as regular mobile optimized websites (5.3 seconds).
Now although Facebook instant articles load even faster, the adoption rate has been far less for this technology. Where is the amount of AMP pages seems to be increasing on a daily basis, the usage of instant articles appears to be stagnating.
So what is the big deal about loading times?
At the end of the day the whole reason why both companies are introducing this technology is to raise user engagement. Now the report shows that this is exactly the case.
Users who choose to use accelerated mobile pages, stay on the website for a lot longer than those who don’t. AMP content pages convinced users to stay on the site for approximately 48 seconds. Whereas regular mobile web pages only manage to keep the user on the page for 36 seconds.
According to the research, there is a direct correlation between loading times on mobile pages and user engagement.
You can read the full article here: link to full research: Link
