Speed up your home page
Practical tips for faster web sites

We all notice delays, whether it's waiting in line for a 'quick' meal, getting stuck in traffic, or waiting for a slow web site. The delay itself can become what we focus on.

With a home page that displays very quickly, your web site visitors will notice your site, not the time it takes to load. They'll feel welcome and ready to view more of your site.

Tips:

• Good things come in small packages
  Make sure graphics and photographs are compressed as small as possible, while still preserving great image quality. Also, avoid resizing graphics smaller on web pages. The file size remains the same, often larger than necessary. Instead, save and use a smaller version of the original graphic which will display much faster.
   
• Don't take the long way home
  Avoid using an 'opening page' or 'splash screen' which is a page that displays instead of the actual home page. Visitors can't access the actual site until they click again. While opening pages can display quickly, they can also be frustrating.
   
  Consider ways to put the opening page message on the actual home page and remove the opening page. Visitors get two advantages from this change: they go directly to your home page and the always see your key message right your home page.
   
• Save movies for the weekend
  Avoid using animations (Flash or other technology) on the home page. While animations can provide visual interest, some web site users find them frustrating. This is especially true when someone is quickly looking for information on a web site and the animation becomes an interruption to their process.
   
  Consider using animations as a web site feature that visitors can choose to display or not. Rather than starting an animation as soon as a web page loads, let a visitor click a link to start it. That choice is more user-friendly and helps visitors feel better about your web site.
   
  In addition, while animations can provide a sense of entertainment, their value is can be more effective to demonstrate product features, processes, or other items where motion is the best way to illustrate a point. Again, the key is giving visitors the choice to view an animation or not.
   
• Remember, cookies are a treat
  Avoid the use of browser cookies on the home page. This can frustrate web site visitors who set their browser to notify of requested cookies. Rather than easily viewing the home page, they are interrupted and need to acknowledge the notification which can negatively affect their perception of how fast the home page is.
   
  Are cookies actually required on the home page itself? If possible, consider using cookies only on pages where the use of a cookie will truly benefit your visitors. It's much less impact for a visitor to accept or deny a cookie on a page other than the home page.
   
• Watch the Java
  Avoid using a Java applet to implement navigation menus or rollovers. Pages using Java are generally slower because the applet must always load first. Instead, consider using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or JavaScript. They don't require Java and result in faster page display.

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