| LED Digest 2139: Designing & Slow Loading Sites |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 14, 2006 Issue #2139 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Site Loading Times ==-- ~ Tracy Coyle "Designers that create sites with [slow] load times...aren't doing their clients any good." ~ James Miller "Not paying attention to loading times is just sloppy." ~ Andreas Huttenrauch "A site should be designed with the end-user in mind. Not the designer." ~ Tom Anson "...dial-up is not the enemy. Placing ourselves in the center of design choices is." ~ Salem Kashou "It seems there are a few types of webmaster: the creatives and marketers." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== The WayBack Machine ==-- ~ Lee Roberts ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Tracy Coyle Subject: Load times > What a shock this morning when I looked at stats... that showed > that 30.43% of visitors to [my new site] site were dial-up users. - Greg Watson, LED 2137 Imagine my surprise that some web designers consider 30% of potential customers not important. I use dial-up. Despite the fact that everyone I know complains that as an early adopter of everything internet, I should have been on broadband a long time ago. We have a home office, 80% of our time spent there, and an office to see clients, 20% of our time there. Broadband is not available in our client seeing office - old area, old building, ornery landlords. So, I would have to maintain TWO accounts, one to access broadband at home (at a cost of $60 per month) and one to access at client office (at an additional cost of $20 per month) or I can keep my dial-up service at $20 , use it both places and save the money. Duh!? 95% of our internet work is email and court filings and the speed is almost completely irrelevant. I also design our websites (I have 6 sites I maintain) and load times are less than 10 secs for 28k across the board. Even those sites that are heavily dependent on databases (www.dailyblognews.net for one). Designers that create sites with noticeable load times even for broadband - even if it is only a couple of seconds - are not in my opinion, doing their clients any good. Tracy Coyle -------- new post - same topic -------- From: James Miller Subject: Loading times Not paying attention to loading times is just sloppy. I have broadband here in deepest Suffolk in the UK, but all I get is a 500Kb connection as I'm just on the limit of broadband from my exchange. My son gets several times this in Winchester, which is a major town of about 50,000 people. So don't believe because someone has broadband, they can download a large file in seconds. But still it's a lot better than dialup. A few rules that web site designers should use :- 1) The most important is that if you can, follow the dear old BBC. Their web site must be one of the busiest in the world and each page is a separate HTML page. No on-line database or complicated ASP etc. means that there is much less handshaking before the actual page arrives in your browser. 2) Compress graphics. I've seen sites that use a 250Kb gif, when if it was compressed it would be perhaps a quarter of this. 3) Use proper small images rather than large ones with a height and width. Some galleries do this and they are excruciatingly slow. 4) If you want a large image, put the small one in a web page and ask people to click for the large. 5) Don't use complicated menus that need a whole load of unnecessary junk to be downloaded from the Internet. 6) Keep pages reasonably small. Don't have a long page that goes on and on. 7) If you have a large PDF document on your site, put up an HTML preview of some of it, so punters can check if they want to spend a long time downloading. I actually don't like PDF, as it's another thing for the punter to install. 8) Avoid Flash. Never seen any point to it anyway, as it just annoys clients. But above all keep things simple, even if this means a few more pages. James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Andreas Huttenrauch Subject: Loading times > Ok, so you "only" have 70% high speed user access, that's > an overwhelming majority... the relatively few dialup users > will just have to get used to waiting longer for pages to load. - Mark Whitman, LED 2138 I disagree with Mark's opinions on loading times. If 30% of visitors are on dialup, that means you could increase site revenue by almost 43% simply by catering to these users. Same goes for lower resolutions. Is their money not good enough? Furthermore, as broadband and low resolutions are shrinking, their counterparts in mobile devices are coming in strong. Slow connections and low resolutions will not get "extinct" for a very long time. A site should be designed with the end-user in mind. Not the designer. Andreas Huttenrauch Globi Web Solutions www.globi.ca -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Loading times Hi all you fellow LED-ers. I'm really not surprised at all that Greg Watson (LED 2137) found that such a high percentage of his site visitors (30.43%) were still on dial-up. And, while it is true that this still leaves about 70% who are on high speed (as Mark Whitman points out), depending on your market, it might not be wise to be as dismissive as Mark seems to be. Dial-up may go the route of 640x480 screen resolutions and 14.4 modems (and other dinosaurs), but you need to know your market. Not everyone has the option to have state-of-the-art internet (as Carrie Cassidy pointed out). And, as Lee Roberts noted (LED 2138), many adults access the internet during the day from work. For my website, a high percentage of customers that come during the evening hours are on dial-up; most coming during the day are at work. Even a lot of my newsletter subscribers are having the newsletter sent to a work email address. While I don't think we should be enslaved to those whose set-up is somewhat behind the times, there are a few things that can be done for their benefit without constricting our design too much. Avoiding tables (or at least defining the size of each element in a table) and defining the size of graphics helps with loading times quite a lot (I've been told). And, as Carrie noted, keeping the number of clicks required to accomplish a task to a minimum is a great idea. IMHO, dial-up is not the enemy. Placing ourselves in the center of design choices is. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Salem Kashou Subject: Loading times Hello Everybody! Lots of smart points regarding loading times and viewer effect. It's also smart to consider the flipside: the webmaster. Most sites load slowly for a few reasons, but mainly due to images and over-coding. Depending on circumstances, there should be careful consideration to all causes. Over the years I have observed that many successful enterprises use less images, while image placement becomes more strategic. My main point: If a site has fewer images, it should be easier to maintain, which saves the viewer loading time and, webmaster image-editing time (those billing by the hour will have to spend more time doing other things to spur client ROI). What this leads to is the inherant benefit of having more text (SEO) and, bear with me, a reduction of image-stealing, the concern du jour. It seems there are a few types of webmaster: the creatives and marketers. Assumptions: The creatives are images-heavy and not always text-conscious while the marketers are search-aware, code heavy and use a google-esque appearance. Based on these assumptions, who do you think is best suited to increase traffic / money? The answer should help guide loading time concerns. Happy Easter! Salem Kashou http://www.portioncontrol.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Lee Roberts Subject: WayBack > The Wayback Machine located at Archive.org only shows > changes to the home page. It only shows the major changes. - Lee Roberts, LED 2137 Perhaps I should clarify myself. I gotta do that once in awhile anyways. "It only shows the major changes" refers to changing a word or sentence compared to changing a paragraph or more. You could change the spelling of a word and that wouldn't or hasn't reflected in a change. Changing a sentence hasn't resulted in an asterisk either. But then that's my experience. If anyone has found a different experience I'd be joyed to learn of it. Thank you Bob for requiring me to clarify my position. While Bob Goldman says he has internal pages indexed by Archive.org, I've never seen a site where this has happened. That of course doesn't dispute Bob's correction. I would like to see this, not to dispute but as a curiosity. Sincerely, Lee Roberts http://www.roserockdesign.com http://www.applepiecart.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. "Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar." - Nnamdi Azikiwe |
