Studies have shown that if a web site takes more than 8-10 seconds to load on a 56k modem then you risk losing the visitor. This means that the web page design needs to be less than 30 kilobytes in size. Web surfers hate to wait for slow loading web pages. If your web pages don't load fast enough, many web surfers will go away without taking a look at them. No matter how great your product is: if your web site is not fast enough, web surfers won't see it. Fast loading web pages are crucial if you want to sell something on the Internet. There are several things you can do to speed up your site. Of course, you should make sure that your web host provides fast and reliable servers. In addition to hosting your web site on a fast server, you can do the following to improve the loading time of your web pages:
Reduce the number of graphics:
A large number of graphics on your web pages can considerably slow down your page. For each graphic on your web page, the web browser has to make another connection to your server. If you cannot reduce the number of graphics on your web page, then try to combine several graphics to a single bigger one. Use the same graphics on your other web pages so that web browsers can load the graphics from the browser cache.
Optimize all heavy files:
As much as possible optimize heavy graphics, Flash files and scripts. In editors like fireworks and flash you can see the various options in the preview panel to reduce the sizes. See how popular web sites like google and yahoo have pages that are very small in size and thus load in seconds.
Specify the dimensions of your graphics:
Always make sure to include the height and width dimensions of your graphics in your HTML code. This means that every IMG tag should have the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes specified. If web browsers don't have to figure out the dimensions of your graphics, they can already display placeholders and start displaying the text of your web page before loading the graphics from the server.
Spread out your content:
In case you find yourself having very long pages of content, break them down into separate sections and thus bring down the sizes of the individual pages.
Make the top of your page interesting:
If a web page takes a long time to load, make sure that the top of the page contains something interesting because visitors will see that part first.
Optimize your HTML code:
Make sure that your site doesn't have any unwanted tags and that it is optimized.
Divide your tables:
Web pages that use a single large layout table take a long time to render in web browsers. Break up huge tables into several smaller ones.
Specify the dimensions of your tables
If you specify the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes for your tables, then web browsers don't have to load the complete table code to calculate the dimensions of the table.
Double check cell widths:
Take a moment to check the individual widths of each table cell. If the total is more than the specified table width, then web browsers will have problems displaying your table.
It's important to know the download times of your web pages. In general, your home page should load in 20 seconds on a dial-up connection and the top of your page should be displayed within 5-8 seconds.
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