The more large images you have your homepage slower it will be to download. Nobody is saying get rid of all images from a homepage - as with many things in life - they key to success is balance. Try not to sacrifice your web site's aesthetic for quicker download times but, at same time, don't have large images or animations on homepage, as these will take longer to download.

Does Your Homepage Need To Go On A Diet?

As a rule of thumb it is recommended that a homepage be around 40 - 50 Kilobytes in size. Any larger and will be a slow downloading homepage, any smaller and it will be quicker than average. One of best ways to decrease download times is to reduce number of images being used or optimise them by reducing number of colours they use or cropping them slightly.

Other pages on your web site are less important than homepage when it comes to download speed as by this point users will already have made commitment to enter main body of web site and will therefore be willing to wait a little longer for information they require.

Michael Cheney, www.magnet4web.com ©

Michael Cheney is the Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM:

"High five Michael! Your bible is superb! The world needs to read it and learn from it." - Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of "Guerrilla Marketing"

Content is King

This phrase applies equally as well to newsletters as it does to a website's content. Your newsletter may be well-designed, easy on eye and technically sound but if it doesn't contain information that recipients find of value it is worthless.

Creating a newsletter can achieve many objectives and therefore you must decide on which are most important to you. Do you want to use newsletter to facilitate increased traffic, enable capture of marketing information, push direct sales, improve public relations, generate product feedback or foster loyalty? Your newsletter needs to be tailored to needs and objectives of your business in this regard.

Generating repeat traffic is one of easier objectives to attain via a newsletter - including relevant links to certain areas of your site, or featuring competitions / special offers can all drive traffic to your site.

Summary

Engaging in newsletter activity is electronic equivalent of knocking on your customer's door - your business has potential to sell, whether this be selling products, services or ethos of your company - potential should not be overlooked.

Michael Cheney, www.magnet4web.com (c)