Enterprise Nation

Earlier this month Google.com announced that website load times would be incorporated into their page ranking algorithms, and the service will eventually move to all international Google sites as well. Optimising your website for faster load times is something that will not only benefit your Google rankings, but also your customer support and reader retention.

Use only what you need

Websites aren't buffets, so don't feel the need to stack up on pictures, animated graphics, or widgets unless you need them. If you're a business, then chances are the people who visit your site are either potential customers or partners and your website is making your first impression for you.

A homepage that is cluttered with media players, scrolling news feeds, and flash videos will slow down computers, and maybe even deter those with slower connections to keep browsing. You don't need a special effects extravaganza to prove to visitors that you're professional, but you do need your visitors to stay on your site if you want to make lasting impression.

Easy on the Javascript

Some special coding can help to enhance the browsing experience for visitors, such as Javascript that allows mouse-over animations for icons, buttons, and links. The process can be optimised, however, by putting your Javascript as external files that are linked via script tags. This will help the page load faster, and also prevent search engines from picking up the script as extra features that add to your load times.

Pay Attention to Third-Party Content

Make sure your partners, your advertisers, and any other third-party content providers have their work optimised for your site as well. While you may not have control over which advertisements or which automatic links are posted on your site, you can decide on who you are contracted with.

Some marketing companies will post videos, flash ads, and even audio tracks onto your site at random, which can both distract your visitors as well as slow down your website considerably. If you take the time to remove interactive media from your site, is it worth it to allow your partners to post them for only a small portion of revenue?

Watch your Images

While pictures can enhance your website greatly, take care not go overboard with the digital effects. A bright logo with a picture of office employees getting along nicely is simple and standard, while an animated logo with scrolling pictures of everyone in the company is unnecessary, distracting, and slow.

While you don't necessarily have to take down all the extra images, you can go one step better and designate a page for all of them. That way, anyone who only wants information, or those with slower connections, don't have to wait for everything to load before they can proceed.

While you're at it, think about reducing image files or only posting thumbnails, which can help to maximise the time they take to load, and helps enhance your website navigation. Different files like JPGs and GIFs have different load times depending on the quality, with GIFs usually being faster, while JPGs tend to look better for larger pictures.

Space out your Tables

If your website is chart and graph heavy, your website may take longer to load since all the information needs to download before the final product can be shown. You can reduce the rendering time by making the graphs, tables, and charts as simple and easy to read as possible.

Removing extra rows and columns not only helps the whole page, but also gives your visitor a better chance of finding exactly what their looking for. If possible, use CSS (cascading style sheets) to implement your tables instead of nesting them through your web editor.

Optimising any website for speed will depend entirely on the actual content, so make sure that you look at what you actually need and not what would be more pleasing visually. Making a great looking website with sub par content can hurt your image, since it shows that you prefer flash over substance. Talk to your web designer if you have any questions, and have outside parties preview your changes before you finalise them.

David Liu is a writer and comedian based in San Diego, California.  He has extensive experience working with web designers, providing expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs. You can find him, and more information on web site designers, at Resource Nation.

Photo credit: Éole