Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Let me tell you about the time I spent three weeks building AMP landing pages for a client's Facebook ads campaign, convinced I was about to unlock some secret conversion hack. The promise was simple: pages that load in a blink to deliver conversions up to 34% higher than regular landing pages. Who wouldn't want that?
The reality? It was a complete disaster. Not because AMP doesn't work—it does, for the right use cases—but because I was solving the wrong problem entirely. While I was obsessing over shaving milliseconds off load times, I was ignoring the real friction points that were killing our conversions.
Here's what I learned from that expensive mistake, and the simple approach that actually moved the needle:
Why page speed isn't the bottleneck most businesses think it is
The real conversion killers in Facebook ad funnels (it's not what you think)
My 3-step landing page optimization framework that works better than AMP
Why message match matters more than load speed for Facebook traffic
The simple A/B test that saved us from months of technical complexity
If you're considering AMP for your Facebook ads—or if you're struggling with landing page conversions in general—this might save you from making the same mistakes I did. Let's dig into what actually works in 2025.
Industry Reality
What Every Marketer Has Been Told About Speed
Walk into any marketing conference or scroll through any growth blog, and you'll hear the same gospel repeated everywhere: "Speed kills conversions, and AMP is the cure."
The industry loves to throw around scary statistics like "for every second it takes for a retail website to load, conversions fall by up to 20%" or "most mobile site visitors leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load." These numbers aren't wrong, but they're incomplete.
Here's what the marketing industrial complex tells you about AMP:
Speed is everything: Faster pages automatically equal higher conversions
AMP is the solution: AMP pages load 4x faster than standard web pages and solve all your problems
Technical optimization wins: The more you optimize the technical side, the better your results
Facebook loves fast pages: Better page experience improves your ad quality scores
It's a competitive advantage: While others struggle with slow pages, you'll dominate with instant loads
This advice exists because it's partly true—speed does matter. AMP pages are so fast, they appear to load instantly, and that can improve user experience. But here's what nobody tells you: speed optimization is often a distraction from the real conversion killers.
The problem with this conventional wisdom? It assumes your biggest problem is technical when it's usually strategic. While you're optimizing load times, your real issues might be unclear messaging, wrong audience targeting, or a fundamental mismatch between your ad and landing page.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
So there I was, three weeks deep into building AMP landing pages for a client's Facebook ads campaign. This was an e-commerce store selling outdoor gear, and they were spending about $15K monthly on Facebook ads with mediocre conversion rates—around 1.8% when the industry average was closer to 3%.
The client had read somewhere that AMP could double conversion rates, and honestly, I was intrigued too. The promise was compelling: instant-loading pages that would eliminate the friction between clicking an ad and seeing the offer. We were going to be the fastest landing page in the West.
I dove deep into the technical implementation. Built custom AMP templates, optimized every component, stripped out unnecessary JavaScript. The pages loaded beautifully—we're talking under 0.5 seconds on mobile. I was proud of the technical achievement.
But here's where things got weird. We launched the AMP pages as a split test against the original landing pages, expecting to see that magical conversion lift. Instead, conversions actually dropped by 23%. The fast pages were converting worse than the "slow" ones.
My first instinct? The test must be wrong. Maybe we needed more data. Maybe mobile users needed time to adjust to the new experience. I kept the test running for another two weeks, hoping the numbers would turn around.
They didn't. If anything, the gap widened. Our beautiful, lightning-fast AMP pages were consistently underperforming the original, "inferior" landing pages. The client was frustrated, I was confused, and our ad spend was essentially going down the drain.
That's when I realized I'd been asking the wrong question entirely.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of asking "How do I make this page faster?" I should have been asking "Why aren't people converting on the current page?"
So I did what I should have done from day one: I talked to actual customers. Set up exit-intent surveys, conducted user interviews, analyzed heatmaps—the whole customer research playbook. And what I discovered completely changed my approach to landing page optimization.
The problem wasn't speed. The original pages loaded in about 2.5 seconds, which is perfectly acceptable. The real conversion killers were:
1. Message Mismatch Between Ad and Page
The Facebook ads promised "Gear for your next adventure" but the landing page led with "Professional outdoor equipment." Subtle difference, massive impact. People felt like they'd been bait-and-switched.
2. Cognitive Overload on Mobile
The AMP pages, while fast, actually made this worse. We'd stripped out so much functionality to meet AMP requirements that the user experience felt broken. No product zoom, limited filtering options, basic checkout flow.
3. Trust Signals Were Buried
In our quest for speed, we'd removed customer reviews, trust badges, and social proof elements that were crucial for first-time visitors from Facebook ads.
My New Framework: The MATCH Method
Instead of optimizing for speed, I developed what I call the MATCH method:
M - Message Consistency: Your ad headline should be the page headline. Word for word. No exceptions.
A - Audience Alignment: The landing page should feel like it was made specifically for the person who clicked your ad.
T - Trust Building: Load the page with social proof, especially for cold Facebook traffic.
C - Clear Action Path: One primary conversion goal, prominently displayed.
H - Human-Centered Copy: Write for humans, not search engines or speed tests.
I rebuilt the landing pages using this framework, ignoring AMP entirely. Load time went back up to 2.5 seconds, but conversions jumped to 4.2%—a 133% improvement over our AMP "optimization."
Speed Obsession
We spent weeks optimizing for the wrong metric while ignoring fundamental UX issues
Message Consistency
The ad headline became the page headline - simple but transformative for conversion alignment
Trust Rebuilding
Added back reviews and social proof that AMP restrictions had forced us to remove
Mobile Focus
Optimized for mobile experience without sacrificing functionality for speed compliance
The results spoke for themselves, but they also taught me something important about where to focus optimization efforts:
Final Test Results:
Original landing page: 1.8% conversion rate, 2.5s load time
AMP optimized page: 1.4% conversion rate, 0.5s load time
MATCH framework page: 4.2% conversion rate, 2.3s load time
The speed improvement from AMP was impressive technically, but it came at the cost of user experience and functionality. Meanwhile, focusing on message match and user psychology more than doubled our conversion rate.
Business Impact:
With the same $15K monthly ad spend, we went from generating about $27K in revenue (1.8x ROAS) to $63K in revenue (4.2x ROAS). The client was thrilled, and more importantly, we'd learned something valuable about optimization priorities.
The most surprising outcome? Mobile page speed scores actually improved slightly on the final version because we optimized images and cleaned up code—but speed was a byproduct of good development, not the primary focus.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience fundamentally changed how I approach landing page optimization. Here are the key lessons that now guide every project:
Speed is a red herring for most businesses: Unless your pages take 5+ seconds to load, speed probably isn't your conversion bottleneck
Message match trumps everything: A perfectly aligned message on a 3-second page beats a misaligned message on a 0.5-second page every time
AMP restrictions can hurt conversions: The framework limitations often force you to remove conversion-critical elements
Facebook traffic needs trust signals: Cold traffic from ads requires more social proof than organic traffic
Technical optimization without user research is guessing: Always understand your conversion barriers before optimizing
Mobile-first doesn't mean mobile-only: Optimize for mobile experience, but don't sacrifice functionality
Psychology beats technology: Understanding why people buy is more valuable than optimizing how fast they see your offer
The biggest lesson? Start with user research, not technical solutions. Talk to your customers, understand their journey, identify the real friction points—then optimize for those specific issues.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies considering AMP for Facebook ads:
Focus on trial conversion messaging rather than page speed optimization
Ensure feature benefits align between ads and landing pages
Test message match first, speed optimization second
Use social proof from trials instead of removing it for speed
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores running Facebook ads:
Match product imagery between ads and landing pages exactly
Prioritize mobile UX over mobile page speed scores
Keep customer reviews prominent for cold Facebook traffic
Test audience-specific landing pages before speed optimizations