Why is my site loading so slowly?

Large, unoptimized image files can cause site slowdowns

This is the second most frequent cause for your site slowing down. Web pages are usually comprised of a number of elements such as the html coding, graphics, java applets, and possibly sound and video files. So, when someone accesses your page, they download a number of files to the browser, just not the html code. The size of your page is usually the sum of the size of all the files called up by that page. So, even though your html file may be only 5K, your web page may be several times larger. The larger your web page, the longer it will take to download it.

Even if your site is located on the fastest server and is connected by several heavy duty connections, you site can still load slowly because the speed with wich the page is downloaded to the viewer's browser is dependent on that particular user's own connection. When creating your web pages, your utmost concern should be the end users' connection speed and you should adjust your page size accordingly.

Currently, the guideline for the maximum permissible download time is about eight seconds. That means that if it takes longer than eight seconds for your page to download, you run the risk of visitors leaving your site before the first page even downloads.

In terms of page size, these eight seconds roughly translates to a maximum allowable web page size of about 60K. That means that all the parts of your web pages put together, i.e. html file, the graphics files, sound and video should not exceed a total size of 60K.

The above page size calculation was based on an end user modem speed of 56K. While this may seem slow to many endusers, at present, a significant number of Internet users are still using 56k dial up connections. With that in mind, it pays to be conservative in estimating file size downloads.

The biggest gains in page download speed result from optimizing your graphics. In many cases, customers have been able to cut their pages' download speed in half by simply optimizing their graphics without any loss in image quality.

To verify whether your pages are too large and to check how long the page takes to download under different modem speeds, submit your site for a free evaluation at NetMechanic.
NetMechanic will evaluate your page for browser compatibility and download speed and will offer suggestions as to how increase performance of your web site.

Many graphics software packages now include tools that will allow you to compress your images to smaller file size. If your software program does not have a graphic file compression tool, there are a number of third part utilites available, either as commercial software products, or as shareware.

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