Refinery29 AMP+

Tech/Role: AMP, Engineer, Senior Director

Refinery29 was a custom hosted WordPress with a headless React based front-end. The FE was an SPA (Single Page Application) and responsive for both desktop and mobile browsers. The site performed poorly on mobile browsers, particularly over mobile non-wifi traffic. This performance affected both SEO traffic and ad viewability.

After making improvements to the AMP version of the site, also built in React but using SSR (Server Side Rendering) I was able to make large improvements to the site speed and ad viewability. This lead to a major change in how we proceeded to deliver the site to mobile users; I proposed that we use AMP for all mobile traffic.

AMP has limitations when it is delivered by Google. All code must adhere to Google’s standards and requirements when they host your site. However self-hosted AMP does not need to meet all of those requirements, it is possible to run any JavaScript you desire on your self-hosted AMP site. Therefore I created AMP+, a site that uses AMP as a framework and provides limited JS for certain functionality that is not AMP capable while still following as much of the AMP standard as possible to gain from its performance improvements. Third-party integrations like Wunderkind (formerly Bounce Exchange) pop-overs to encourage email subscription are not AMP compatible but are easily integrated into AMP+ and still follow all GDPR and CCPA consent rules.

Thus AMP+ when officially deployed drove a 50% increase in ad viewability and nearly doubled ad inventory. Mobile pageviews and time on site were up, and page performance skyrocketed!