Page response time: Tips and Tricks

One of the major concerns of coders and developers is the initial load time of any website and application.

As per the research, if a page doesn't load in 8 seconds, 1/3 of the visitors move away. With over 110 million websites on the internet, nobody can afford to keep their visitors waiting for web pages to load.

Here are the few things that directly impact the load time:

• The file size of the HTML document
• The file size of other element in the document including scripts, images, and multimedia elements
• Level of HTML complexity
• Poorly written code
• Poorly nested tags
• Table based design
• The connection speed at the user end
• The server speed where website is being hosted

To improve the page load time, consider the following while coding your page:

1. Flash Content- Flash takes time to load so if it is not required, then avoid flash in your website. If used, always make sure that it is optimized and must have pre-loader.

2. Image size - Images should be optimized. Never use large size images unless absolutely required.

3. Markup Language- It should be w3c validated to avoid any coding errors, broken links, and unwanted tags. Website should be optimized for load time.

4. CSS - Use CSS to define style and formatting. It helps in reducing the HTML page size and browser can cache all the formatting and styling which results in faster load time.

5. Shorthand CSS - For best result, CSS should be validated and optimized properly.
6. Scripts - Like CSS, always try to define JavaScript externally.
7. Hand Coded code - Try to avoid any WYSIWYG software like dream-weaver, they usually add useless code in the page. Always keep your code clean and validated by removing extra space, code, tags etc.


Conclusion:
When 70-80% of traffic drives from the internet, no one can afford to loose client just because of load time. A faster download speed leads to increased usability, which, according to a study by Jakob Nielsen from useit.com, can increase your web site's sale/conversion rate by 100%.

About The Author
SEO-Semantic-XHTML.com transforms your design files from various familiar image formats (PSD, JPG, GIF, PNG, AI) into high quality cross-browser compatible, 100% hand coded, W3C validated (X)HTML/CSS markup. Visit SEO Semantic XHTML for our PSD to XHTML Conversion and PSD slicing services.