Getting Your Web Pages to Display Faster

To many organizations, putting up a web site still means putting up the electronic equivalent of a brochure-static, one-way communication. Perhaps not surprisingly, the group or person in charge of the site inevitably begins to focus on the graphics. In another article, I discuss the lure of images and how web developers often stray from their plans. They lose sight of the purpose and content when faced with a blank screen and the potential for dazzling visual display.

While there are some outstanding examples of text only sites on the web, for most business sites it's still true that you need images, however simple or elaborate. It is still painfully slow for many readers to browse. Be considerate of your readers, and they are likely to come more often and stay longer. Here are some ways to make your graphical pages load faster.

One. Content is king on the Net. People return again and again to helpful sites that teach, entertain, provoke or answer questions. Keep sentences and paragraphs short and lively. Use text as much as possible.  Keep your files small and make use of hyperlinking. Where you have put a new section title or heading in a print document, start a new page and make links (both ways!) between the pages.

Two. Minimize the number of graphic elements per page and reuse them as much as possible. This lets the reader's browser display a copy it has already downloaded from the cache, and will save time in downloading new images.

Three. Try using brightly colored titles and key words and vary the font size for drama. Use the "blockquote"; command to indent paragraphs and create a visual effect or add white space to the page.

Four. Create a low resolution version of the page that can be served to the reader quickly while the more elaborate version is loading. This gets the reader onto the page quickly, even though your beautiful design will not be their first impression.

Five. Work hard to shave the size off of the image files. If you aren't a designer, find a designer who can advise you how to do this important step. Make it a game. Allow yourself 30K in images per page. See what adjustments you can make in color depth, resolution, number of colors (don't use more than 256), and changing file formats. GIF files are most commonly used on the Internet. Try saving your images as JPG or JPEG. It won't affect the image much visually, but the JPG compression may make your image file size smaller. Smaller files load faster on the screen.

Six. Experiment. Does one 50K image load faster than ten 5K images arranged in a similar pattern? With one graphic you will control how it displays on every screen and browser, however, you run the risk of annoying viewers with slow equipment or connections (in early 1997, about 30% of web surfers still use 9600 baud modems). Test your files on several different  computers and browsers. Using several smaller images may create other problems.  To arrange them as you want, you will have to use tables. A significant number of viewers use older browsers (AOL, NetCom, CompuServe especially) and cannot display most tables properly.  They will only see an annoying scramble of words and/or pictures, and will click past your site.

Seven. Acknowledge that about 30% of web users surf with the "autoload images"; feature disabled deliberately.   Be sure that when you create your pages you complete the  ``ALT=" tag for every image. Repeat the graphic effect (such as bullet or rule) with the ASCII text characters that will give a similar effect. Put a small letter ``o" for a bullet image and use an underscore to create an alternate line.

Finally, be sure to use hyperlinked text navigation aids on your pages. Have you ever gone to a site where the page loads and you find yourself staring at empty boxes and have no idea what they are or where to go because there are no aids for getting off that page? From a design standpoint it may look less polished, however, it's user-friendly. And isn't your goal to get your viewers to stay?

Copyright 1997 by Kaye Vivian (kvivian@cloud9.net).  All rights reserved.

Permission to reprint is granted providing the text is not changed and this copyright notice remains attached.

Page last updated: January 4, 1999