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Web optimization
is the art and science of making the site's web pages as
small and fast-loading as possible. Visitors do not want
to wait 30 seconds for your killer site with mega-graphics
to download. Also, many search engine robots will not wait
and will move on to another site to index. The main causes
of slow loading websites (besides your web hosting company)
are having too large of graphics, too much text or both.
Granted, the
look of the website is important and is an important factor
in retaining customers and having them navigate around your
website. But why have a killer site if it is too slow loading
and visitors move on before it loads? The basic design on
the website needs to be accomplished in an optimal fashion
with web optimization in mind from the very beginning (also,
search engine optimization should also be kept in mind from
the very beginning).
If your homepage
is loaded with large graphics, flash elements, streaming
java banners and large amounts of text, chances are only
your very close friends will stick around to see it. In
order to optimize the graphics for being fast-loading it
is important to have an image-editing program such as Adobe
Photoshop, ImageReady or Macromedia Fireworks on hand.
With Photoshop,
the graphics will ultimately need to be saved as .jpg (.jpeg
for Mac users) or .gif files. Using .png, .psd or .tif files
is a mistake since many browsers do not support these formats
and the later two can be quite hefty files. Remember all
graphics for the web need to be saved at 72dpi (as opposed
to 200 - 300 dpi for print). In Photoshop, also, it is not
enough to "Save" the files in .jpg or .gif format,
the designer has to use the "Save for web…" function
to get the smallest file sizes possible without losing image
quality.
ImageReady and
Fireworks are already set up for optimizing images for the
web so there is no need to distinguish between "Save"
and "Save for web…"
Web pages need
to load in less than 10 seconds otherwise much business
will be lost. Another culprit in regards to slow-loading
sites is too much text on a page. While this is not usually
an issue, there are some websites that try to put a novella
on their homepage with just a few links leading to inner
pages. If there is more than 700-800 words to a page, then
either cut the page in half and create another page or put
the overflow on another page.
Another issue
is websites that put the whole kitchen sink on the front
page - large graphics, Flash, Java, CGI scripts and lots
of text. While this may make your site the ultimate "bells
and whistles" site, you will have to pay a price.
If you can make
your site 30kb or less and have a good web host, you should
have little problems with your site loading quickly enough.
If a website is around 50kb, then it is about average. If
the website is over 100kb, then you should look for ways
to get your page size down to more acceptable levels.
There are some
free places on the Internet where you can check how quickly
your website loads to different modems, dsl / cable, etc.
Google also has a nice feature that has the page size at
the bottom of the listings, but you have to wait for re-indexing
to get this information for your own site. No matter what,
web optimization makes sense from a visitor standpoint and
a search engine optimization standpoint.
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