Secrets to Fast Loading Websites

As a website designer, I consistently advise clients to reduce the number of graphics used on their sites and also to keep graphics relevant to the presentation.

When creating a website it is necessary to not only provide information about products and services but also to create a storefront. A site needs to be visually pleasing as well as provide a problem solving solution for your visitor. These are two key ingredients in creating an online store that will result in sales.

The other MAJOR ingredient is in putting together websites that are VERY fast to load. We live in a fast paced society and there are very few individuals that spend any time on the Internet that will wait longer than 30 seconds for your homepage to completely materialize on their screen. As a matter of fact, most users do not want to wait longer than 15 seconds before they are ready to throw in the towel and surf on over to another site.

Another reality is that most surfers DO NOT like to read. So how do you: 1) Create a site that will load quickly, 2) Be visually appealing, 3) Not contain a lot of text that will be skimmed over and 4) Hold your visitors interest.

The secrets are in both reducing the text into bite size pieces that will be read and optimizing the load time of that text and graphics. First set text into columns, break it down into smaller paragraphs and remove all unnecessary verbage.

The Next step is to deal with the graphics.

1) First of all reduce the physical size of the graphics to the smallest that will still produce the drama that is required. 2) Next, reduce the number of colors in the graphic without losing significant quality. I personally use U-lead's Gif Animator for this purpose but there are a number of very good graphic optimizers on the market that will do this for you. 3) And the very best method of reducing load time is with the use of TurboSite. This unique product uses an applet that preloads graphics for your visitor so when they visit pages on your site that are very graphics intensive, there is virtually no wait for loading when they arrive. TurboSite can be added to your website free from Intellisoft to use with 10 graphics or pages and also sells for only $39.95 for using with up to 50 graphics. It is a breeze to install and the results are incredible. Try it today at:http://www.intellisoft.com

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