When I first started building MoveMeQuotes.com in 2010, I was all about fancy and cool.
…Until speed came onto my radar as being a vital component of a search engine friendly website.
When I first started speed testing my (fancy/cool) website… I was pulling 15+ second load times.
…Which was/is AWFUL.
Thus starting me on the journey of simplification, optimization, and code cleaning… which eventually lead me to AMP.
AMP is a protocol that essentially strips your website of all complex code and boils it down to its most essential/clean version.
The problem is it often strips your website of so much code that it often breaks the site—like buttons, forms, comment section—nothing works breaks… like, bad.
But… if you stick with it and diligently fix the code, rework your layout, download the right plugins and get clever about how you do things… the benefit is lightning speed.
I opted in, spent hundreds of hours getting it to function properly as an AMP-based website, and eventually got it loading sub-second.
The problem was the ongoing work never got easier. Everything kept taking 5x more work than it otherwise should’ve/would’ve and simple things like allowing comments were ongoing issues.
But, I always kept my head down, put in the 5x more work, and told myself the speed was worth it.
This weekend, however, I finally decided to challenge that belief and reverted back to an updated (faster) version of an old website-theme I used to use.
And lo-and-behold… sub-second load times.
The lesson today is this: challenge old beliefs from time-to-time. 5x more work might not be the current reality our old thinking is making it out to be.