Does ecommerce page file size count anymore?

[jsinger]

We used to work hard to make our pages load fast. Every graphic file was scrunched to a minimum. No bloat. Only a few products were placed on each page. Dial up customers complimented our site for its fast loading.

But I noticed a few years ago that most of the successful sites in our category piled dozens of products on each page, even the main page where quick loading had been deemed vital. Everyone started designing for large monitors of course. Page file size seemed to have been forgotten as a constraint in commerce web design.

Do you worry about page file size anymore? Do you bother to optimize graphics for fast loading?

This was once a red hot discussion topic in the days of dial-up. Does anything go nowadays? What are the limits?

[lorax]

IMO image sizes still matter. BUT I think there's some level of expectation for having to wait (a reasonably short wait) while product images download (e.g. catalog and category pages NOT product pages). I also think it's obvious that the faster those pages can load the better. I say show them what you've got but do your best to make it fast.

[jsinger]

Just inspected a dozen of the most popular e-commerce sites...Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. Home page file size ranged from 200k to 500k.

Mostly it's "Anything Goes"

---------------------------------------
"In olden days a delay of loading
Was looked on as something loathing,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.

Good web authors too who once knew shorter words,
Now only use long letter words
Writing prose, Anything Goes." [Cole Porter, sorta]

[rocknbil]

IMO? It all counts. Even if it flies, sooner or later some hotshot developer will come along ant make an idiot of you for having a 500 K size, or using deprecated tags or . . . whatever, if that sort of thing bothers you or your bosses. :-)

..Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. Home page file size ranged from 200k to 500k.

The can get away with it for the obvious reasons. I often wonder if similar accessibility law suits might someday arise due to this issue; if they can sue you for accessibility faults, why can't they sue you because someone's on dialup and your page never loads? It's not that much of a stretch.

You can make a comparison with the business owner who cheats (majorly) on taxes, or people who use their uncle's handicapped pass to use handicapped parking when you're perfectly healthy, or any other thing that people "get away with." Doing the right thing is often a more difficult task, but there is a good deal of satisfaction in that if you respect your own work.

I just do the very best I can, optimizing images as best as possibly without major quality loss. After pursuing all possibilities, sometimes a fat page is the best you can do.