Bogging Down Your Site With Massive Media
By: John Vinson
There are few things that will completely drive traffic away from your site. One is navigation, which we’ve touched upon before. What can turn away visitors before they even begin navigating is when a site doesn’t load. Or has the perception that it won’t.
What causes load problems tends to be associated with media, particularly over-sized media. The funny thing is that keeping things at a decent size is quite an easy feat. Images especially. A rule of thumb to live by when dealing with images is the 30k rule. Meaning that you want to keep any image you post on a website smaller than 30k. There are exceptions to this rule, for example if you’re posting art and resolution is key to demonstrating your work. For the most part though, 30k is a good number to live by.
There are programs out there that can assist you with compression, and keeping your images at a decent size. JPEG Wizard, and GifBot are quality programs for assisting with image compression.
Other multimedia you’ll want to keep an eye on is Flash, and Java. These can be effective tools for design, but unfortunately can really bog down load times. Especially for those who have a slower internet connection. A key here is to not overuse multimedia. Don’t create your entire site in flash, when only a small widget will be effective for what you’re trying to accomplish. As with many aspects of web design, moderation is key.
