'Accelerated mobile pages' or AMP as it is referred to popularly, isn't exactly a new tech. innovation. That being the case, I am surprised to find that several popular Indian websites, including news sites, haven't yet taken to it. Why, for that matter, I still come across popular sites which don't have mobile versions of their pages and which are not secure (https://).
What exactly is AMP? To put it very simply, it is a stripped down version of html with its own simplified stylesheet. It makes for faster loading of the page on a mobile device (mobile or tablet) and consumes less data while doing so.
India is one country where internet access on mobile devices happens mainly through cellular wireless & Wi-fi technology. Last I checked, about 88% of internet access was happening in India through mobile devices. This is much higher than the percentage globally as well as in many other countries for a variety of historical & current reasons that I'll not get into here. Given that, it is all the more important to have mobile friendly pages & AMP. Nothing is as off-putting as having to scroll left and right as well as up and down to read the content of a page which is not mobile-friendly. Similarly, long loading times for a page, particularly on slow networks, can put a person off a particular site forever.
Finally, a good deal of news is read today by people on SM networks and through popular news aggregator apps. While for a relatively new site, it may be tough to gain acceptance with the top aggregator sites like Flipboard, Apple News, Google News or MSN, a start should be made with the 2nd or 3rd tier news aggregator apps.
I hear people complaining that the number of eyeballs they are getting for their site is dismal and that spending money on getting SEO / SEM done for several months didn't improve the eyeballs number per week or per month to any great extent. While eyeballs are dependent on a whole lot of factors, content quality & cross-referencing being just two important ones out of the whole lot, doing many of the things mentioned earlier in this post, together with SEO, should certainly bring about a significant improvement in metrics like new & unique visitors, return visitors, average session duration & stickiness and bounce rate among others.
What are the benchmark metrics for one's digital site that one should aspire for? That's a real tricky one. If one sets the bar too low, one might reach them soon enough but still not be visible and 'readable' enough. If, on the other hand, they are set too high, attaining them might be a frustrating process and possibly an unattainable one within a reasonable time frame. It would be a good idea to set the bar after taking into account the genre, the domain and the type and kind of content that one aims to put up. Pioneering a new genre may seem like an exciting idea but do remember that this requires a fair amount of potential viewer and reader education and may appear to be a rather painstaking and lugubrious process after a while. Moving into an already crowded domain again may not be a good idea unless the differentiators are well-defined and researched well. Finally, one would do well to keep in mind that there is no switch that one can flick on to open the floodgates of visitors and that the various processes mentioned earlier are expected to bring about a slow and steady progress over a period of time rather than any one-time dramatic upsurge.
Why am I doling out all this advice? I am hoping that this will encourage Indian folks who have put up news sites or are planning to do so soon to stick to the task and not give up too fast or too soon. In much of the developed world, the print media is gradually sunsetting and digital media is coming up and finding new ways of monetising the site and of sustaining the business. India is a great exception to this trend for reasons which should be obvious. However, despite the time and phase lag, all this should change in the next 5 years or so. Given the poor quality, objectivity & credibility of much of Indian mainstream print media, this is one's chance to get in early and establish one's news and current affairs site without going the route that much of current Indian mainstream media has taken.
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