Optimize your page loading time at various internet speeds

There are millions of options and you have only seconds to make a decision. Every internet surfer has a time bomb attached to his head while surfing.
You waste your time on a slow website, and you are missing valuable information on another website.

So nobody wants to wait for information, if you don’t provide it, there are other better sites that will provide the same or better information.
This makes it crucial for every blogger to optimize his pages, so that the information a surfer is searching is delivered within no time.

- Images.
Images are crucial. You can’t take them off completely.Ensuring that the images that appear on your page are of low file size and is optimized for web, will bring down the page load time drastically. You can make sure that your images are optimized using photoshop.
Open the image in photoshop and select Save> Save as optimized and it will give the best option to save the image suitable for web.

Replacing CSS with images images with CSS, is a better option to bring down your page load time. many of the tabs, buttons etc can be easily replaced in a more professional and clean looking way using CSS.

- Tables.
Many Wordpress templates uses tables in it’s code. nothing wrong but too many tables can increase your page load time and increase the size of your code.Try to code without tables and replacing them with CSS.It helps in bringing down the page load time.

- Scripts.
Scripts from other sources are a major factor in increasing page load time for blogs. Since all of us use lot of third party addons like Mybloglog, Directory buttons, Technorati buttons, Widgets etc – all of these widgets call javascript from their own websites which increase the page load time drastically. If possible, cut down on the number of widgets, and keep only the essential ones. Otherwise, don’t put all of them on the index page at least.

- Video Ads.
Vide ads are a hot favorite these days.There are many video ads available, but unfortunately, they increase the page load time very much.
To beat it – try to place the ads in the lower end section of the template. please don’t place them at the header or top part of the template.In such a case, the content will display only after the video is loaded – on dial up connections. This will screw up the user-experience.

- Youtube videos.
Another element what’s very commonly used among bloggers. Though YouTube videos are optimized for quick loading, placing one video each in every post is a big mistake. If you post one youtube video on each post(at various times) then it all ends up on the index home page, on all the posts.This will make things horrible, forget about page load time, it gives more than one option to the user and it will confuse them.So make sure that out of all the posts that appear on the index page,only one video appears.If you have set 4 posts to appear on the home page, let there be one youtube video in every 4 posts – not more than that.

- Flash Content.
Flash is becoming less popular these days but, there are blogs that use small flash elements on the header and side templates. Very bad.As an SEO, i hate flash elements, because they only present visually appealing elements which does not work for visitors(though they are appealing to you).They are not SEO friendly and should be avoided from the template if possible.Worse, they increase the page load time by double.So cut them off your template and keep it minimal.

So, keep these elements on your template to a minimum and rely more on CSS where ever possible, so that your visitors find it easy and a pleasant experience to navigate/use the site.

If you are wondering how to find the page load time of your site or blog, here is a cool tool that will help you find it element by element.It shows how each element of your page template affects your page load time on each internet connection speeds. If you are using a T1 connection, then this post may not look useful for you but before deciding, try accessing your blog on a dial up connection. Because that is the real testing ground.If the blog takes time on a dial up connection – you need to use this tool and trim down those frills.

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