Wired revamps mobile site to improve page speed

Wired magazine is revamping its mobile site in a bid to improve its page speed, reports Ross Benes of Digiday.

Benes writes, “Today, Wired is introducing a so-called Progressive Web App, which is a Google-backed protocol that lets web developers build mobile sites that load quickly like an app. Wired plans to make it available to a small number of users for about a month before rolling it out to all of its users, said Zack Tollman, Wired’s app architect. Unlike publisher apps for iOS or Android, PWAs are accessed through the open web like a regular website and don’t have to be downloaded. Once Wired’s PWA is rolled out to all users, Wired.com will function as a PWA for anyone who accesses the site through Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers.

“Wired believes a PWA will increase its page speed, which will get users to view more articles and result in more impressions per session. So, it deployed two web developers to work full time and four product managers to spend part of their time on the project for three months. The publisher is also looking at building products on top of the PWA, since PWAs allow for swiping interactivity, which opens the door to products like Snapchat-like mobile cards. That’s all down the road: The initial version rolling out is the same design and functionality as Wired’s mobile site. About 70 percent of Wired’s 11 million unique visitors last month came from mobile, according to comScore.”

Read more here.