Slow sites drive visitors away. It's that simple. Not yours, you say? Think it's "worth
wait"? Sorry to break it to you pumpkin, it's not. You're on your way home. You have two choices. You can either take route that is shortest in terms of distance but has many stoplights, or you can take route that's a little longer distance-wise, but has no stoplights. Which do you choose?
I choose #2, and so do many web surfers.
Why? Because it's better to keep moving.
I want to look. I want to read. I want to buy. I *don't* want to wait 67 seconds for a page to download because site designer thought it would be a good idea to use a picture of his pet ferret in a snappy little beret as an image map.
We all know graphics slow a site down, so is it possible to keep visitors from mousing away without publishing a text-only site? Sure. It's simply a matter of balancing aesthetic appeal and load time. I'd like to discuss a couple of ways to do just that.
Before we get started, though, do me a favor and take a trip to Web Site Garage and get a free Tune Up on a page you'd like to speed up. Be sure and write down load times for your page under various modem speeds because you'll use these later as a benchmark to gauge effectiveness of your changes. Oh, and don't forget to make a backup copy of your page (and images) "as is", in case you aren't happy with changes and want to restore it to its original condition. Once you've done those things, we're ready to tackle two methods to trim load times: reduce number of images on your page(s) and reduce size of remaining images.
REDUCE THE NUMBER OF IMAGES ON YOUR PAGE(S)
Take a cold, objective look at your site. Try to view it through a visitor's eyes. Which graphics are necessary and which are superfluous?
Can you manipulate text with HTML (bold, italic, font face) as opposed to using a text graphic? Can a clickable image be replaced with a text link?
Cutting expendable graphics can greatly speed page load time. Assess each graphic one-by-one to determine if it should stay or go; keep only those that are essential.
Use Flash animation wisely.
No doubt about it, Flash movies are extremely cool - when done well. "Because it looks cool", however, isn't a reason to add something to your site.
I can think of few things more annoying than a Flash intro with no purpose. You've seen this, haven't you? You hit a site's home page and you're faced with an inane text message like, "Welcome to my Site!", which you're expected to watch as it dances, twists, morphs, and otherwise makes a horse's you-know-what out of itself.
