Many website designers fail to realize the importance of efficient
designing. People are much more likely to keep using a website
if it loads quickly and allows for easy navigation. Some
of the most popular websites, such as Google and Craig's
List, have efficient, fast-loading designs. Although inefficient
websites are less of a problem for people with high-speed
internet access, this type of connection is not available
in many rural areas of the United States, as well as many
foreign countries. By following the tips provided in this
article, you can design your website more efficiently.
1. Use Regular Text Links: Many websites use buttons,
images, or animated menus for navigation. All of these load
much slower than regular text links, which function just as
well.
2. Avoid Excess META Tags: While you should use some
META tags to improve your website's search engine listings
and ranking, remember that these also increase the loading
time.
3. Don't Use Background Images: Not only does using
an image for your website's background slow down the loading
time, it also often makes the text harder to read. By using
standard color codes for the background you can obtain a wide
range of color shades suitable for any application.
4. Advertising Considerations: If your website has advertisements
on it, avoid animated images and pop-ups. Regular JPG-format
banners and text links are the fastest-loading forms of advertising.
Consider exchanging links with other website owners rather
than using banner exchange services.
5. Avoid Putting Too Many Images on the Same Page: If
you have many images on the same page, especially if they each
take a long period of time to load, split them up into multiple
pages so that the user can decide whether to look at each image
or not. If your hosting provider allows PHP scripts, you could
still use one page but program it so that a different image
loads (in the same location) depending upon the user's selection
from a menu.
LessWaiting.com provides
a wide variety of features in a fast-loading easy-to-use
format.
