Plan A Roadrunner Fast Website

The “RoadRunner” is a symbol for what your website should be all about; speed.

We live in an age of instant gratification, where no one wants to wait for anything anymore.

This is why our newest technologies focus on speed.  Weather it be fast foods, Emails, Instant Messaging, newer, faster computer chips or even digital cameras;  the most profitable and most used services or products offer speed as a purchasing incentive .

Speed is extremely important to the Internet.   With all the information that is available on the internet, web surfers demand fast internet connections, fast downloads and quick loading web sites.

With the ultra fast broadband connections we now have available to us, the problem of slow loading web sites should not be an issue.    Unfortunately, a great number of Internet users either cannot afford broadband, do not have it available to them in some rural areas or simply choose to use dial up modems.   In any event, recent studies show that more than half the people surfing the Internet still use modems with connect speeds below 60 kbps.

What I am getting at is that  people often become aggravated when websites take an unusually long time to load.     In fact, studies show that they will leave a web site if it takes more than 15 seconds to load.

Again, people are impatient, and to display your web site quickly requires dropping the unnecessary frills that are sometimes placed on a web site to attract the visitors attention.

Following these tips will win the race for speed and help your site load more quickly.

Keep your web page files in the 40 to 50 KB range. This includes graphics, HTML, Java Script and fonts.  This file size should load relatively fast even with a slow modem connection.

Use graphics sparingly.  Unless you have a picture or video web site, its better to keep your .jpeg or .gif pics to a minimum.  Even though we know that pictures and graphics enhance a web site’s presence, the time required to load large pictures can cause you to lose a potential customer if they are connected by modem.

Use thumbnails if you must have a series of pictures on your site.  The customer can select which picture or graphic is of interest instead of waiting for all the pictures to load.

Minimize the use of flash player introductions on your site. They take a long time to load and if used on your home page,  you may loose up to half of your potential customers because of the wait.

If you can’t live without having a flash introduction on your web site, be sure to include a prominent click out option so the visitor can click out of a slow loading flash player.

You might still be able to salvage a potential sale if your visitor can get easy access to the remainder of your site.  Remember that currently, search engines do not index flash player contents.

If important presentation content is primarily in this format, it will not be indexed,  and you will probably lose some valuable hits.

When creating your web site, ensure that pages can be accessed from anywhere using no more than 3 clicks.    Create an archive page if you site is large or grows to the point where it is over two levels down from the home page.

Having a potential customer with slow Internet access click and wait for several pages to load before finding the actual page being looked for, will lose you business.    Outdated pages should always be kept for reference in an archives or index for easy reference.  This will enable your visitors easy access and quick loading for specific items

You web site needs to function at the speed of light these days to stay ahead of the wolfpack in the internet marketing business. Creating a Roadrunner type web site that loads quickly will keep your customers interest and on hold them on your site long enough to purchase your product or service.