Size Matters, It's True what they say!
Yes, it really does and the smaller your webpage the better it
is.
Size is an area where people can lose focus when they are
concentrating on the look and branding of their website.
In print and other forms of media, size and complexity of images
is not necessarily related to the viability of the advertising
itself.
But in the ether of the Internet, the time for a page to load is
incredibly important to the chances of it being viewed.
Soon, when Broadband is everywhere, the threshold of what is
considered allowable will increase, but till that time, size
will be a very important factor.
8 seconds is all you have got.
You need to grab the visitor by the horns, tell them they need
what you have got and give it to them! There is no time to stuff
around impressing them with your "wizzy this" and "wazzy that"
If your site is there to sell something, then that is what you
need to focus on.
People talk about "Content being king" and this is very true. If
your content is text, then you get a lot of bang for your buck,
if it is rich media like photos, video, and audio then you may
need to be a little clever in the way you present this so as to
not push people away purely because of the time they had to wait
to see it.
On a dialup connection, 8 seconds gets you about 30 kb, that is
usually enough for a few pictures and some text. If you are
clever enough about it, you can make it work for you.
Here are some ideas to think about when you are looking to
reduce the size of your pages.