|
One of the biggest problems you will encounter, and one that visitors really hate,
is slow loading pages. This is usually caused by having either too many graphics,
or graphics that are too large. But not to worry, there are some simple solutions.
Contrary to what the Internet industry wants you to believe; about 90% of Internet
users are still using slow dial-up connections. Download speeds of 3k to 5k
per second are not uncommon. Faster cable and DSL connections that offer up
to 250k download speeds still often only download at a rate of 50k to 60k.
Ideally, a page should load in 20 seconds or less. So with a dial-up connection,
that great looking 250k graphic you have on your page will take about 62 seconds
to download. Then if you have other graphics it could easily take over two minutes
to see the page. I don't know about you, but I don't wait more than a minute
for a page to load. I use a high speed cable connection to the internet, and
I've still gone to pages that were so graphics intensive that my browser timed
out before the page could load. If this happens, or people just get tired of
waiting, then your site is useless because no one will ever see it.
The best thing you can do is not get carried away with graphics. Using them
sparingly is the easiest way to keep the size of a page down, so that it will
load faster. If for some reason, you need to have a lot of graphics there are
two ways to make them load more quickly.
The first thing to try is to optimize your graphics. Most graphics programs
have this feature built into them. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator call this
feature "Save for web." When you choose this option you are given
several choices for your graphic, which will determine the final size of your
image. It's not uncommon for me to optimize a 250k image down to 30k and not
be able to tell the difference between this image and the original.
Another option is to slice the image. Again, most graphics programs offer this
feature. You can slice a graphic into as many smaller pieces as you want. Then
create a table with cell padding and borders set to 0. Then put each of the
pieces into the table in the proper order. These smaller graphics, even though
they equal the same size as your original one, will load faster than the one
big graphic.
There is one other little trick, and that's to use the same graphic several
times on one page. For example, if you have a button for people to order products
or services from your site, use the same graphic. Don’t have different
buttons, like "Order Sweater," "Order Shirt," etc. Just
use an "Order Now" button. The browser only loads that button once,
and puts it everywhere on the page it belongs. You could have 100 of the same
buttons on a page, and they will all appear in the time it takes to load just
one button.
After you've created your webpage, optimized and sliced your images, you need
to see just how fast it will load at different connect speeds. You can do this
easily by going to (AOL members: //watson.addy.com). Just put the URL of the
page you want to test, and they will tell you how fast the page will load at
various connect speeds. It's fast, easy and and costs nothing.
So remember to think of your visitors first, not your design skills. You may
want to show the world what a fantastic website designer you are, but if no
one sees your page then your efforts are being wasted.
About the Author:
Jeff Colburn |
