How to create a fast loading site
Even in these days of 2meg broadband, users still appreciate (no demand), fast performance of websites.
This is particularly vital for adwords browsers (your adwords strategy should deter these random clickers anyway, you want determined buyers). How many times have you clicked on an ad, and moved on before the page has completed loading? The adword advertiser has paid for your clickthrough, and lost a customer for life.
Total page weight is calculated by the number of bytes that make up the html and css, and the number of bytes that makes up the images. Some pages can deliver very slowly if there is excessive use of javascript, java or flash. Older browsers and PCs will really struggle if there’s lots of code to execute on page load.
In the old days we used to aim for a total page weight of 48k, now that’s crept up to around 120k. To achieve this you need to make sure that image use is limited, and carefully optimised. We had one client who once uploaded an 8meg image to their homepage, and complained that the page was loading slowly (it’s no longer possible to do this in reWrite!).
There’s another key. Make sure your webdesigner is separating design (css) from content. In modern browsers, this will enable your page to be parsed very quickly, and all available text should be displayed immediately.
Finally, make sure your hosting company is running fast hardware, with good bandwidth availability. You will not achieve this on a £2 per annum nastyspace hosting contract.
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