Accelerated Mobile Pages - Google Announces New Analytics Component

You may have heard a cheer from marketing analysts around the world – Google recently announced a Google Analytics AMP Component. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the announcement, let's review AMP itself.

AMP

In case you missed it, Accelarated Mobile Pages was a recent open-source project, coordinated by Google, Twitter and others to help mobile pages load faster. Statistics show that users will leave a page within 3 seconds if it doesn't load on a mobile device. AMP seeks to solve that issue.

How? It comes at a cost: it makes the coding, HTML, a bit more limited so some normal functionalities on a page can't be used. It also has developers use a streamlined version of CSS. Lastly, Javascript can't be used at all.

What does this mean for you, the marketer or website analyst?

With the addition of AMP, any marketer or website analyst would want to see how these pages are performing vs. your other web pages. It goes without saying, if they're built differently, they'll perform differently.

However, in order to view the difference in analytics, you previously had to include custom JavaScript to pages, which proved tedius for marketers. What's more, it wasn't easy to view aspects like event triggers.

That's why Google Analytics announced they want to provide more support for AMP analytics. The analytics component provides a new format for HTML and enables measurement on AMP pages.

How It Works

Analytics on AMP is handled by a component from the Google Analytics developers. This <amp-analytics> can then be used to record pageviews, events, and even custom dimensions. This works to records events - i.e. button releases, clicks off a page, etc.

With this addition you no longer have to use JavaScript to ensure Analytics records an event. You decide which actions matter to your campaign and then select those within the configuration section.

Here's a more in-depth article on analytics and measurement from WordPress.

Getting Started with AMP

Before you get started with AMP Analytics, you’ll need to get started with AMP itself. The AMP website contains a great introduction to getting started. Once you have an AMP page up, it’s time to start thinking about how you’d like to measure its performance.

Getting Your Google Analytics Setup

Google recommends that you use a separate Google Analytics property to measure your AMP pages. AMP is a new technology that’s going to mature over time. Some of the features that we are used to with the standard version of Analytics do not work for this update. An example Google points to is that a single user opening an AMP version of a page and then the HTML version would be treated as two separated users in your Analytics.

Once you have your AMP page and new Google Analytics property set up, you’ll want to reference the requirements for using Analytics on AMP pages as well as the developers guide for instrumenting measurement.

With these new components, Google has us AMPed up for what's next.

Get help from ArcStone with the link below or read our free ebook "Google Analytics Setup Guide."

Topics: Digital Marketing