Website Load Speed

[MarkPearson]

Hello All,

It was recently brought to my attention that my website is slow at loading up?

Is there an online text I can use that tells me the times the site takes to load.

I use broadband and the sites homepage loads within 5 seconds fully (thats a 5 second count in my head)

If the result is that my site is slow loading, could this be affecting sales?

How can I fix this?

Feedback please....

www.rosesbydesign.com

Is it slow for you?

[Rob Holmes]

Hi Mark,

A key part of fast loading pages (and the first place to start) is the total size of whats being downloaded.

In your case your index page is 518k

This is too big.

It's mainly this graphic: http://www.rosesbydesign.com/front.swf

Which is over 300k!

Although designers can get away with larger, more graphic orientated pages nowadays the people still on dialup are left trying to catchup!

Here are the typical times your page will load depending on a connection speed.

56K 103.77 seconds
ISDN 128K 32.06 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps 3.15 seconds

The next stages after this are the efficiency of the code and the server speed.

Rob

[Rob Holmes]

Sorry I just read the rest of your post - yes it will definately affect sales.

Ideally you will need to deliver the page within 7 seconds or you'll start losing people - so at the moment you could well be losing most people if they are not on a 2Mb connection.

Heres a place that not only tests loading speeds but breaks pages down and shows you the strong and weak points from a page loading perspective.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

If you REALLY want the flash animation get your webbie to structure the code so the SWF file loads last - that way your 'slower' visitors have something to see whils they are waiting.

My suggestion is try a static graphic, optimise your other graphics and get your page down to 50k if you can and see if that increases your sales. You WILL have to compromise visual quality at the 50k level with no doubt at all. But then slowly (over a week) increase graphics again, watching the sales and you'll get a feel for the 'optimum' level

Rob

[Rob Holmes]

I tested a random sub-page and got the following page loading times..

56K 37.91 seconds
ISDN 128K 11.89 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps 1.40 seconds

So although this page is better it's still slow on dialup and the tests show it's mainly the graphics.

ROb

[DavidHorn]

Rob's absolutely right. That flash file is draining resources ... you will be losing customers.

Sure, it looks pretty but you're forcing your users (potential customers) to download something - and wait for something - that isn't really doing any selling for you.

You could achieve the same 'prettiness' effect much quicker with a more effectively created piece of flash (I find it hard to believe that you couldn't re-create that same animation in 100K) or even a static JPEG.

Check this article out: http://tinyurl.com/c3yvs to get really depressed about how long you have to capture a customers attention!

David

[lowcostinks]

the looks awsome! web site, 5 seconds is nothing mate

maybe if it takes over 1 min then i would have something to be worried about. the site is very nice and its fine. the best way to make your site faster is check if its on a UK host also get rid of flash and some images that are not needed.

[crus]

Hi Mark,

in addition to all the above good advice,
compress all the images you can to squeeze a bit more juice out of the connection, you can keep the flash just reengineer it as a single fram movie holder, then onload trigger the movie to bedgin and load in your main movie into the container. This way you have that flash file down to one or two k and can use older versions of the flash player for maximum compatibility.

It is essential that you get that load time down it will be costing you sales!

D

[mattk]

Let's be honest, if people can't afford a broadband connection, then they probably can't afford to rince £50 on personalised roses.

[crus]

Hi Mark,

I see your point,
but many of your potential customers will be accessing from locations where a broadband connection is shared.

A small office for example may have 4 or five people working from one connection and this quickly brings the connection speed down.

This is ignoring the fact that most peoples IPS run a lot slower than the stated DT rates.

D

[kevbcharlton]

4.06s ecs on mine, which is a shared office 2MB connection...

Aint too bad, but if the flash is over 300k then it will be eating up your bandwidth.

Your markup is very bloated too (done in tables) and if you need to have the big flash movie, you may be able to get the size down converting to a css layout.

[CG Effect]

Nice idea with the roses it's 3 sec on my 2mb conection thats faster than most sites I go on. Can't remember what it was like in the olden days. I would like a faster site but that means my work will look low quality. Whats valentines day anyway?

[Rob Holmes]

Nice idea with the roses it's 3 sec on my 2mb conection thats faster than most sites I go on.

I think you tested it after it's been updated :)

Rob

[kevbcharlton]

In terms of imagery you are right, but in terms of markup your site, and the roses site could both me reduced dramatically.

ImageMan, your site has the most amount of meta keywords I've ever seen on a site! Search Engines do not place importance on these any more and Google even punishes you if they are not relevant to that particluar page.

This bloated markup makes your site load slower, and as your images need to be high quality, reducing the code may be your only option.

[Tin]

kevcharlton wrote

ImageMan, your site has the most amount of meta keywords I've ever seen on a site! Search Engines do not place importance on these any more and Google even punishes you if they are not relevant to that particluar page

Erm, twaddle there Kevin I'm afraid. To sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak...
* Excessive keyword lists within the meta area simply reduce their effectiveness. The robot needs to determine the focus of each page and long lists of keywords hamper that end. Penalties from engines need a bit more going on than just that before they kick in as plenty of folk put excessive keywords in quite innocently so why would engines target this simple error?. They don't. Search results are about page relevance deemed from a search string and as any one page simply cannot be about all the keywords that might be listed on the page only connected keywords are called or used.
* You said search engines (plural) don't place importance on them anymore, incorrect, Yahoo and Msn value keywords but no longer place the same ignorant value that they used to place on them (this changed some 5 years ago) because of long standing abuse the keyword tag has been effectively devalued, which means that it is still used by the vast majority of engines but in singularity that tag simply does not have the power it used to. However, it still matters.
There is also the fact the most web directories require keywords on a page to be able to add pages/sites to their indexes and as most people know, getting in directories is quite important..

Just had a quick look at your site Kevin but it doesn't seem to work in Firefox, :? might just be me tho :-)

[JustOneUK]

Just had a quick look at your site Kevin but it doesn't seem to work in Firefox, :? might just be me tho :-)

don't recall him asking for a review :wink:

rotflmao!

[Tin]

I don't think Imageman did either. :-)

[kevbcharlton]

In firefox PC or MAc, seems fine to me on my PC...

With regards to the keywords, you are right, I really didnt mean to say that they not important, but there relevance has somewhat dwindled. I have used them on my site, but tried to keep them specific. Just making the point that if he wants to reduce the file size, thats definately something he could cut down on. It is recommended to have less than 200 chars, which is considerably less than he has.

[Tin]

Hi Kevin

Have just grabbed a snapshot of the design I got when I clicked on the site in your sig 30 mins ago.

http://www.engraved-zippo-lighters.co.uk/grove/oops.jpg

Obviously, it's bit different now. :-)

[kevbcharlton]

Hehe, was busy uploading my new portfolio site, and uploaded it to the wrong hosting!

how unprofessional.... :(

Fixed now! :lol:

[Tin]

image duly removed :-)

[CG Effect]

Thanks for the tip I'll paste my keywords into another app and sort it into a smaller list

[confused]

Let's be honest, if people can't afford a broadband connection, then they probably can't afford to rince £50 on personalised roses
I disagree strongly, VERY strongly, I have a friend that is LOADED, they live in a nice big house in the middle of nowhere and cant get broadband, I also know of several people that use the net about 6 times a year on dialup, for holidays, xmas pressies, PRESENTS - such as valentines day. And what about people that dont have a fast net conneciton at work since they dont "need it" at work, I still know of places like that. I think you really should do something about it.
Just my opinion of course.

CALV

[CG Effect]

I've just redone my metatags also found a compression setting that vastly improves image load speed without adding nasty artifacts to the images. i've used in photoshop jpeg level 10.

How does Pixar get their site loading so fast can somene inspect that one.

pixar.com have a gander at the new Cars trailer.

[Srivvy]

Hello Mark

Google recommend on their webmaster guidelines that you should keep your pages under 100k.

Some people believe that after that point no more information will be indexed.

Search engines are also looking at accessibility as a ranking criteria and a slow loading page would be less accessible for those on dial up.

[crus]

Hi Imageman,

if you can push your images through Fireworks, I used to find this helped trim a little. Otherwise there are some good commercial apps that can go further. XAT.com for example.

D

[Rob Holmes]

How does Pixar get their site loading so fast can somene inspect that one.

pixar.com have a gander at the new Cars trailer.

Pixar split their images so it's actually 6 or so images on their homepage that make up the image in the centre. They still add up to 70 - 80 k but are loaded in bitesize chunks :)

Try this online optimiser see if it helps: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/

Rob

[crus]

Looks like they are using AboveNet to me, a lot of it is not just who you host with but where they connect to.

I keep many of our boxes in Telehouse as this is a core hub for the UK and then outbound to the rest of the world.

The closer you get to one of the core data hubs the better for all your users.

D

[Rob Holmes]

Looks like they are using AboveNet to me, a lot of it is not just who you host with but where they connect to.

I keep many of our boxes in Telehouse as this is a core hub for the UK and then outbound to the rest of the world.

The closer you get to one of the core data hubs the better for all your users.

D

who pixar?

R