Page Load Times:
The Need for Speed
Part 2 of 2
by Brandon Jubar
First ThingsFirst
Make the Top of the Page VERY Useful
At least some of the most important content on every page in your Parish Web
site must appear at the top. Preferably in the upper left of the page. There are two major
reasons for this:
The top of the page is rendered in your visitors browser first, and often it is
all that people will see initially. Seconds before any scroll bars appear, and thus allow
visitors to move down your page, this content at the top of your page will be available
for your visitors to read. So, make it good?
Studies have shown that, when viewing a Web site, a user's eyes move across the
screen from upper left to bottom right... which is to be expected, since this is the
direction in which we read printed material (at least in most Western countries). So it
follows that if you may only have a visitor's attention for an extremely short period of
time, put the most relevant, important information exactly where they will see it quickly:
as close to the upper left-hand corner of the screen as possible.
This habit of looking from upper left to lower right also makes it appropriate
to layout certain pages to take advantage of it. Main topic area pages, if they contain
explanations of the sub-level pages, are a prime example.
Using our example from the article "Designing Web Usability: Web Site
Layout", one of the main topic areas would be "For Teens Only...". When a
visitor clicks through to that page, you may want to have a grid-style layout to present
the different sub-areas. The idea would be to place the most popular sub-area in the upper
left of the content area.
| Youth
Group |
Religious
Education |
| The description of the type of content found in this
sub-area could go here. |
By including descriptions, you increase the likelihood
that visitors find what they are looking for quickly and easily |
| Service
Opportunities |
Lifestyle |
Your visitors will almost ignore your navigation,
looking straight to the content instead.
|
Of course, they will then usually skim your content. |
| Opinion
Page |
Message
Boards |
| The moral of the story is, keep your navigation small,
because your visitors won't spend much time looking at it. |
Make an effort to include navigational tools within
your content. |
Nested Tables: Place Important Info in the Top Level
A good way to increase the apparent speed at which your page loads is to make
sure that the most important content is in the top level of a table. Most designers will
use nested tables to facilitate the proper placement of elements on the page. Basically,
the designer creates an HTML table to use as a layout grid.
HTML does not support placing text and graphics anywhere accept flush right/left
or center. Therefore, a designer can place these elements in the table cell which
encompasses the area of the page where s/he desires the element to be. Sometimes, to be
even more precise or to better organize text, the designer will place another table within
a cell of the main table. This is called a nested table.
Browsers deal with these nested tables by rendering the top level (main
table)first, then working down through the various levels. Any text or graphic which is in
a cell of the main table will be rendered much quicker in the user's browser window.
Final Note on Speed
By using these tips, you can keep the average page size on your Parish Web site
relatively small, and also give the illusion of even faster load times. This, in turn,
should greatly decrease your visitor bail-out rate and improve the overall 'stickiness' of
your site.
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