Speed Up Your Web Site!

Notice too many people bouncing off your index page?

Maybe they don't have 85 seconds to wait for it to download?

Do you know how long it takes your index page to download or do you have it in your cache (memory) and it pops up fast so you don't worry about it?

Not everyone in the world has access to high speed connections. Non-metropolitan areas are often cursed with older phone lines that can't even come close to a 33.6 connection!

After the recent humbling experience of temporarily being stripped of my DSL in favor of a 56.6 that only connected at 28.8 I quickly remembered why I had preached fast loading pages!

I immediately went back to my site, emptied my cache and watched my site slowly re-appear, 25 seconds later I finally had everything!

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To someone in a hurry it seemed like an eternity!
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I immediately got set to speed up my site!

Graphics are the single biggest drain on a pages download time. Actual text is tiny so if your site is taking too long to download it is usually pretty easy to spot the culprits.

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Speed Up Your Site!
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The process really is simple, the term "image compression" always made me feel it would somehow change the SIZE of my images which it does but not in the way you think.

It reduces the **file** size, not the **physical** size.

The entire process really should be called "color reduction" as that is in fact what you are doing.

An image can be made up of millions of colors, essentially the more colors the larger the file size and the longer to download.

Most images online are created using a palette of 256 colors which in many cases is too many.

Most of those 256 colors are simply shades of the primary colors and everything in between.

By reducing the number of colors the similar colors are blended together, with less colors to render the image appears much quicker!

Reducing an image from 256 colors to 96 or 64 can reduce the download time by 30-40%! Depending on the image there can be little or no visual change!

There is software you can buy to "compress" graphics, or there are several online tools you can use for free.

To help you understand the difference this can make for you I am going to attack my site:

Quick Facts:

• The Surf22 index page used to take 25 seconds to download over a 28.8 connection.

• There are 8 images (Don't forget your background if you have one), with three that have mouseovers that reveal another image so 11 graphics in total have to load.

• They are all small images, with the largest being 7k.

• Without the graphics the pages only takes 7 seconds to download.

All right, enough background information. Now for the test.

For this demo we will use NetMechanics GifBot (a handy free tool):

You can either give them your web page address in which case they run a link check first and then you can click on the file size of each image to reduce it or you can do each file individually by uploading it to their servers.

Either way they then show you your original image with a column of images beneath, each one using less and less colors.

As you'll scroll down you'll see the difference. At any point you can hold your mouse over an image to see the original to easily compare **exactly** how much difference there is.

In most cases you'll want to jump straight to the 64-96 colors although for smaller, less complicated images less colors can work.

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Do You Sell Products?

Don't reduce the colors so much no one wants to buy them!
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You then click the image and then right click to save it to your hard drive. That's it, you are done!

This is a simple, automated process!

Simply upload the new images to your web site and watch the improved download time and notice less people bouncing off your site!

What changes did this have on our demonstration site?

Surf22 now downloads in under 17 seconds, a 8 second or a 32% improvement!

Imagine on a site with larger graphics?

I have seen pages shave off 30 seconds from their download time!

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Why go through this simple process?
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A faster site means more visitors stick around.
The longer they stay, the more likely they are to buy right?

Other things you can do is breaking up your text, many sites use tables to help position text. That is great except the text doesn't appear until the table has fully loaded. Using small, separate tables gives your visitors something to look at while the rest loads below.

Also whenever possible, push scripts to the bottom of the page, (after the text) for the same reason.

In many cases you can use colored text and cells like http://www.marketinginsiders.com does.

Speed Up Your Site Today!

Happy Marketing!

Questions?
Send me an email: mike@surf22.com

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