Your
web sites loading speed has a significant impact on
your visitors' loyalty. A slow web site will cost you sales.
Most visitors won't wait more than10 seconds for your web
pages to load. Apply these techniques to speed up your pages,
keep potential buyers at your site, and increase sales.
Six
tips to speed up your web pages.
1. Give
viewers something to read as quickly as possible.
2. Provide
a lot of graphics or images only if you know your audience
has fast Internet connections. (Your load time will vary depending
on your visitors' access speed.)
3. If
you're targeting the general public, avoid large and unnecessary
graphics, animated graphics, sound, movies, Flash animation,
and large banners -- especially on your home page. (Graphics
slow your web pages down considerably.)
4. Use
graphics and images that support your sales message and illustrate
the benefits of your products or services.
5. Keep
your pages short. Split up long pages into several pages.
Breaking up pages into several pages also allows you to track
which pages potential buyers go to.
6. Avoid
links to slow-loading pages.
Visitors
like pictures without sacrificing speed. Apply these tips to
optimize your images.
- Keep
images and graphics as small as possible, both in dimensions
and file size. The larger the file size, the longer the
images take to download.
- Dont
make visitors wait for images theyre not interested
in. If you want to illustrate your products with large images,
provide thumbnails (small graphics), and let visitors decide
if they want to click on them to view larger images that
take time to download. Mention the download time.
- Crop
images (cut off extra areas around the images).
- Keep
the resolution of your images to 72 dpi, the maximum resolution
a computer monitor can read.
- Reduce
your file size by saving images in the proper graphic format
(GIF or JPEG).
- Reduce
the number of colors. Use solid colors rather than gradients.
The more color in an image, the bigger the file size is,
and the more time it takes to download.
Graphic
Resource: Paint Shop Pro is a popular, inexpensive graphic program
to design and edit your images. You can download a trial version
at http://www.jasc.com.
Studies
indicate that billions of dollars in online sales may be lost
each year in the U.S. due to unacceptable download speeds. Don't
lose sales with a slow web site. Apply these techniques now!
If you need assistance implementing any of these strategies,
turn to your professional web designer and ask for help instead
of wasting your valuable time.