In designing your web site, in most cases you want to use lots of caution with splash screens, animations, large graphics, and other cute things that add interest but slow down the loading. Unless you are an entertainment site, your visitor is probably coming to your site for information. Focus on delivering that information - even if you are using broadband. Otherwise, the user surfs on to another site for their information. The user today has a short attention span.
In distributing information, a maximum of a one-second response time is needed to insure the user feels he or she is moving freely through an information space. Anything more than this and the user will notice a delay. A ten second response time or better is necessary if you wish the user to keep their attention on the task. Anything more than this and the user will turn to other tasks while waiting on the computer.
What this means in simple terms, then, is a Web page should load in ten seconds or less or you will see a dramatic increase in bailout rates. Jakob Nielsen, probably the top web design expert, says "I have since become a reformed 'sinner' believing that fast response times are the most important design criterion for web pages." For users with a dialup modem, this means the page file size (including all graphics) should be 34KB or less. For broadband networks, you should shoot for the one second loading.
Studies have shown that if you stay within the 10 second limit for dialup users, your bailout rate (percent of users that don't wait for the page to load) is 7-10%. Above this the bailout rate quickly jumps to 25-30%. Most good web design editing programs (such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver) include, on the status bar, the current load time for a designated dialup speed. In addition to the high bailout rate, slow loading translates to the user as a reduced level of trust, and the user goes elsewhere.
In other words, you need to learn how to design effective pages that load fast. Most of my clients have a hard time understanding this. They often take a brochure they've done and want to build a Web page from it. It is loaded with graphics, lots of text, and fonts that don't do well on a Web page. Sometimes they use a font the user doesn't have and load it as a graphic, increasing the load time of the page. Then they wonder why their hit rate is so low. Sometimes the hit rate is there, but there is little response. Keep the page simple but target the need of the user and call for action.
I like to use a main web page (Home page) that loads quickly and takes the user from a menu to whatever their specific need is. The call to action is another screen down. It is a lot easier for the user to click down a few screens staying involved than wait (frustrated) while a splash screen loads with animation and sound with little content. The pages themselves are almost like sound bytes, leading the user onward with short content bytes.
The actual load time will probably be more than what the editor says on that status bar. There is an overhead associated with loading the page no matter how fast the page is designed to load. This will vary with the host, so choose your host carefully. The overhead includes the server throughput, the host/Internet connection, and the Internet speed.
There are proven ways to design good pages without sacrificing much quality.
- Minimize
graphics. Reuse the graphics you do use, navigational icons, logos,
arrows, and buttons. Graphics, once downloaded, are kept in a cache
on your computer and are not reloaded when the user moves to a second
page using the same graphic unless the cache is full.
- Keep your
graphic files small, practicing saving graphics in different ways to
see which is smaller while getting the quality you need.
- Be sure
to put the height and width of the graphic in the HTML load statement.
This permits the rest of the page to continue loading while the graphic
loads. The user can then read your text while the graphics load.
- Use flash
animations, but use them sparingly. With a Flash, the entire first screen
loading of the Flash is considered part of the page load. A GIF or JPG
on that can take as much time as the graphic alone. Vector graphic Flash
SWFs can take as little as 2-3 seconds, a better choice but still a
good chunk of that 10 second load.
- Use standard
fonts as much as possible. Using special fonts as graphic files for
headlines can increase loading time. Save these fonts for headlines.
- Use JavaScript
and other high-level tools to get special effects.
- Use tables containing cells with background colors to add color variety to the page without eating load time for a graphic..
For our sharp-eyed web designers reading this, you'll notice some of our pages on this Web site take longer than the recommended ten seconds on a dialup to load. In fact, our welcome page (which varies with time) takes just under 20 seconds at 56K as this page is written, but only 1 second at 128K. The welcome page is information dense with little animation. We are primarily targeting a broadband audience. If we were a mission agency targeting missionaries in foreign and remote areas, we would target for a 56K audience at the 10 second load. We are constantly trying to develop methods to get the information we want onto the page without giving you a lot of load time. There are always compromises.
Let us Help You with Your Web Site Design or Analyze Your Current Web Site...
Let
us Help You Get a Great Position in the Search Engines...
Do Your Own Search Engine Positioning and Save!....
All
Rights Reserved
Copyright 2005, Oregon Professional
Microsystems
20020 Marigold Ct. Suite 24
West Linn, Or 97068 (Portland Metro Area)
(503) 697-4773
Get
Much More Web Traffic....
Get
the
e-Book and
Sky-Rocket
Your Traffic!