Communication is all about an exchange of information.
How Your Website Design Pages Communicate With Your Visitors Computer
Your computer communicates when it is online too. It exchanges information with every website you visit. Your computer goes through a longer process when it communicates on the internet.
Even if you do not notice any part of this communication it still happens.
When someone goes to your website for the first time, every object on each of your web pages they visit will be sent from your host server to the user's computer.
These visitors may be your potential clients.
On future visits your visitor's computer will need to make a round trip to your server to identify everything that was not stored on his computer during the previous visits.
Your visitor's web browser stores some files on his PC and will only download these again when he tell his web browser to do so.
Don't Make Your Visitors Wait
Here is the hard part.
Your visitor will not be patient. If you make him wait for anything he will click away from your website, just like you do yourself.
He will not wait while your pages load. He will click away while your fantastically useful flash graphic has a little bar showing 45% loaded. He will even cancel a download if he file you created was just too big.
The biggest theme in website design should be minimalism.
Your website has to take into consideration the tiny attention span of your visitors have. If you want better online business this attention span is your primary concern.
You want your visitors to like your websites. For them to like your website they have to see it, quickly. Only then can you work towards capturing their attention further and cultivating repeat visits.
Keep It Simple: Reduce Graphics
All too often website designers have a sweet spot for fantastic graphics. This creates conflict.
Why?
You have to reduce your graphics as much as you can.
Reduce them either in quantity or size. You need to reduce them in any way you can.
Tip: One trick that works here, if you really must have a graphic you can put it on the lower half of the page. Allow the text to come in first and while the client is reading your image can be loading. When he scrolls down to the image, it will be ready.
Let Flash Files Fly
Be wary of visitors who hate your flash files.
Flash is great for some things, like significantly increasing the size of your page and slowing the clients download time.
Tip: If you are working with a website designer, or a design firm ask about their testing method. There are some really complex ways to test how quickly a webpage loads but they are not real life.
If you want to test how fast a page loads elsewhere, do a real test. Call a user in a distant country and read your URL, then start a timer. Ask people who you consider as your potential clients, is this time too long?
Forget Network Simulators: Do Live Tests
There are tools called network simulators. They are tools that are supposed to slow the network between your server (on the left side of the room) and your PC (on the right). The simulation is supposed to show what the "real user" will see.
They don't work.
OK. That may be an overly negative point of view. A network simulator slows traffic down and gives a result that is closer to real life than doing nothing.
But network simulators show the scenario with a server doing only one thing, and using a PC that is probably top of the line, and sitting in the same room. In the same room! Network simulators don't work.
Make the call, do a real live test.
Use Primary Business Objectives For Each Web Page To Design Your Page
If you are having trouble scaling down, go back to the designer. Review each item on your webpage cover each item on the page. Identify the reason for each object on your webpage; see what it does and how it contributes to your primary business objective.
Each web page should only have one primary business objective.
This primary objective can be:
- Make a sale
- Get client contact details
- Entertain
- To get readers from point A to point B
- Or a thousand other options
If any item on your page does not support that primary business objective, remove it from your web page or your website.
By focusing on the purpose for each page and streamlining all of the objects on that page you give you readers a good experience.
You pages will load quickly and your message will come across clearly.
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