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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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