As we embark on the 21st century, more and more households and workplaces are wiring themselves with high speed internet and faster computers. Unfortunately, most users of the internet still run narrowband connections.

Narrowband definitions vary slightly, but in general narrowband is defined as “Used to describe a connection over a computer network which supports a relatively low bit rate. Also sometimes used to describe content optimized for such connections.”

The problem with narrowband internet users, is the time it takes their computer to load web pages. When narrowband visitors download pages with ample image and audio content, they can be left waiting for over a minute.

Web designers often optimize their work by compressing images, while walking a fine line of quality vs. file size. The most common image compression formats are JPEG (Acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group) and GIF (Acronym for Graphic Interchange Format).

Adam Terlson, an enriched web designer from the United States feels web designers must take responsibility for load times.

“If you [the web designer] focus purely on load time, resorting to low quality graphics, on a page that is heavy on design, you will sacrifice your main appeal: a good appearance. If, however, you go purely on content, filling your page with [2-megabyte] graphics or something of the sort, you will lose the patience of the 56K viewers out there rather quickly. One must find a balance between the two so that the page still maintains a high quality appearance without taking excessive time to load.”

Many graphics-software makers realize the problem and have made adaptations to their software to assist webmasters. Adobe’s Photoshop contains a ‘Save For Web’ tool. Users are shown various compression methods, and how long the file will take to download at a specified speed.

Page Load Example

Ron Johnson, another web designer from the US, takes a less aggressive approach.

“I would rather the site load fast, rather than having high quality graphics. For me this would hold true throughout all websites. I however wouldn't mind waiting for an image to load if a web page had a link to it, compared to the graphic just being on the web page.”

There are a plethora of solutions for webmasters unsure if their websites load slowly. The most primitive solution, of course, is the stopwatch test. Grab a stopwatch, or any other timepiece that records seconds. Make sure you clear your offline content and cache, and load your website. Time the amount of time from the second hit ‘enter’, to the time the page is fully loaded. Repeat several times for accuracy.

Anything over five seconds is generally considered slow, and over 10 seconds users may leave. Please consider factors contributing to the load time. How fast is your computer generally? How fast is your connection? What browser are you using? Do you have other resource or bandwidth intensive applications running?

If you’re not keen on manually checking your website, the “Web Page Analyzer” (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/) might be of interest to you.

A Google search will produce many similar paid and free tools.