One of the principles of usability is fast downloading of a web page. Here’s a neat tool that helps to check web page download time. This will help your website from search engine optimization perspective as well.
Tips for reducing download time for a web page:
- Use div’s rather than tables for layout.
- Use XHTML rather than HTML.
- Separate content from presentation completely by using external StyleSheet.
- Do not add inline styles or scripts. All JavaScript should be in external file.
- Optimize the size of images. Make sure that you use GIF images or JPEG images appropriately depending upon the file size and required resolution.
- Keep the length of the page not too long. This will help reduce the size of the page and is user-friendly as the visitor doesn’t have to scroll too much.
- Optimize the size of all multimedia files such as video, audio and flash.
- Do not use frames.
- Make sure your hosting server can provide required bandwidth for your website.
- Note that adding advertisements on your web page usually increases the download time.