According to a recent study, Shoppers will wait four seconds for a page to load. The study was commisioned by a company that provides high bandwidth services, but seems about right.
Recent blog postings have talked about “page rage” and “mouse rage” occurring in surfers who do not feel their page is loading fast enough. These are the same people who honk in the Wendy’s drive-thru when the line is long. We live in an ever-impatient society. If you want to keep these customers - who may not take time to comparison shop or ask presales questions - make sure your pages load quick!
There are several strategies to decrease your page loading time:
1. Get better hosting, or a dedicated server
If you have the budget, consider a dedicated server or a third party solution. Or go with a smaller hosting company like VI-Solutions.
2. Optimize your graphics
Make sure any graphics on your site are at 72 or 96ppi, and the exact size they are being used at. Many novices accidentally save graphics at resolutions way too high.
3. Load graphics after your page loads
Use a little javascript to load graphics after the page has loaded, if needed.
4. Clean up your HTML
Use external files to load Javascript and CSS files. Use CSS-based layout, and fewer HTML comments.
Tags: search engine optimization, website development, website design, seo
