Forum Moderators: phranque
The sites are made up from:
HTML code: 25kb
Images: 40 totalling 110kb (poor optimisation)
Scripts: 10kb
Unfortunately I can't make any changes to the web site so I ask this:
..What are the general standards of design which apply here
..What % of users are on a modem (country tourism portal)
..What number of users will not wait for the download
Thoughts?
As far as modem statistics go, you're pretty much on your own I think. It depends on the country being targeted (e.g. Ireland, say, is far behind Germany on broadband takeup), and the demographic (business travellers may be browsing the site on the company's leased line, rather than at home on the dial-up).
Whether users will wait for the download depends on the perceived worth of the site:
1 - Is the site genuinely useful to consumers, or one of the vanity sites that look great but offer little? If it's useful, users will put up with a delay (up to a point).
2 - Do you have many decent competitors? If so, users just won't bother waiting that long before trying the next site.
3 - Is useful content easy to find? Long page loading times aren't as much of an issue if it only takes a couple of clicks to get where you want.
Sorry I haven't got any more definite answers!
Put your text at the top of the code (css) and your users can be reading it whilst the images download.
Exactly. I recently saw a 500k page, most of which was an exceedingly large .bmp... (*cough*morons*cough*).
But 150k can still be a subjective loading time of less than 10 seconds. If possible, optimizing only the images can get excellent results without the risk of introducing bugs- I have been able to reassure clients that the appearance did not change, only the file size (and download time!).
If the download time is more than 8 seconds, I assume I'm losing about 1/3 of my surfers. Of course broadband users might be my main demographic, but I'd rather not alienate others.
The only way to simplify the question is to figure out what your objectives are. How do you measure them? For my province's tourism website, it should be how many people request their brochure, or call for information. Will a faster site make for a better browsing experience and get people to ask for the brochure?
Especially if you have good traffic, you can draw conclusions very fast. If you can be permitted to make even very small changes (just optimize a couple images), then track the results and roll-back if it doesn't work. I also wish more governmental sites did some basic usability testing...
i know, cause my site is 1.6mb (index page) and i get over 2million hits per day..
1.6M!? Damn. You're kidding right?
