Image optimization

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We hear a lot of fuss these days about page loading times. A couple of years ago I had a dial up connection, and it was very slow. If there was a page that contained a lot of graphics or clipart, the page would be so slow I could leave the room, do some mundane chore and come back a while later to see the page was STILL loading!

Some studies indicate that the average web surfer will only wait about 8 seconds for a page to load using a 56K modem. You may think no one uses a 56K modem anymore but they do, and I'm guessing you don't want to alienate any of your visitors. What if the 20% of your visitors still using an older modem turned out to be the 20% of your best customers that may visit and purchase from your ecommerce site?

Before the days of tabbed browsing you were stuck waiting. Tabbed browsers made a slow loading page more bearable because I could open another tab, chose a text heavy site and I could sometimes read an article in another tab while the slower one loaded. With more and more people using tabbed browsers, their popularity has soared.

There are things that can be done to ensure a web page loads the fastest it possibly can. Improper use of graphics and images is one frequent problem that can be solved if you know what to do. Uncompressed, unoptimized graphics or clipart can slow your browser down significantly and affect the visitors to your site and also your sales. If you are a web site owner, optimizing your images will have advantages such as:

Striking a balance between image quality and it's actual size is optimal in having your site available to visitors quickly and showing your photos or products with the best clipart, graphics or photographs possible. On the internet, people pay more attention to product images, because they are not shopping in the physical sense where they can actually pick up your item and examine it. They rely on your presentation of the product. Here are a few goals to keep in mind:

In the next article, Image Optimizing Tutorial, we'll take you step by step to reducing your image files.

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© 2002 and beyond by - L. Schoen
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For more information and articles about Paint Shop Pro and graphic design,
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