PAGE VIEWS: Every time someone views a page on your site, visit is also recorded in "page views". Example: One page with 4 pictures is equal to 1 page view.

UNIQUE URL'S: Every time someone views a page on your site, during a 24 hour period of time, page is logged as a unique URL. Example: One visitor viewing 1 page with 4 graphics would be counted at 5.

UNIQUE SITES: This is number of unique visitors to your site. Example: Each visitor to your site during a one month period is counted as "1" unique site, no matter how many times they visited your site.

Just to show you how numbers vary, below are some numbers from my site in September 2001.

Hit's: 77,158 Page Views: 10,855 Unique URL's: 548 Unique Sites: 5347

3. No Flash, JAVA, Javascript, SSI, CGI, Style Sheets, XML or DHTML is used. They all have their place, on web, but I don't need or want them at loading time.

4. All other TABLE formatting and all other .gif or .jpg files are placed after information in Step 1.

All timings were done using IE5.5. As IE is predominant browser (like it or not), and looks like remaining so, I'm not too concerned about Netscape (in addition, there is an ongoing problem with Netscape and Moreover.com newsfeed that I have yet to fix).

If you click on this link: http://submissionjunction.com/olddefault.htm you'll experience load time of my previous homepage. If it loads in less than 8 seconds on your screen, then your lines and connections are very good and your traffic is light. Usually, it has taken as many as 15+ seconds to load, as I said.

Now, click on http://submissionjunction.com . It should load in 6 seconds or less, in off-peak times. And, at normal peak times, loading should not exceed 10 seconds (bearing in mind however, that in severe traffic snarls, all bets are off).

Of course, with much faster CPU speed, browser would be able to format and present information more quickly. On internet, however, one must always cater for lowest common denominator.

There are, no doubt, more sophisticated ways of achieving reductions in load time. If simple measures however, such as above, achieve desired result, why bother with more complex methods?

Your objective should be to get your message in front of your prospects' eyes, as quickly and as easily as possible!

Visiting a web site is much like knocking on somebody's door. After you knock, you expect occupier to open it quickly. If it's a store, and nobody answers or they're too slow, we'll walk away, right...and go down road to competition, right?

So, quicker I get my message across to you, quicker we both win. And, isn't that what we all want?

P.S. If you don't do anything else, even placing a comment like "Page Loading...Please Wait" is better than just a blank screen, while browser formats your page. But, don't take toooo long...!