I was cruising the Xsitepro forum the other day and some of the people were showing off their websites. Lots of great looking sites when I stumbled on one guys site and it took forever to load…..I’m on a super fast cable line too!

Never upload your images in fullsize you images must be optimized for the web.

I did a little investigation and noticed his images were really huge. It’s an easy thing to overlook if you don’t know about image optimization. Basically the image is reduced in size by removing pixels, you want to degrade the image to the point where the image just starts to look a little fuzzy.

I took the time to explain a little about image optimization…thought some of you readers might like to take a look…..maybe you have some full size images on your site

Ben….checked out your site and it’s loading really slow for me.

So….I checked out some of your images and it looks like you haven’t optimized any of your images….except maybe the header.

Your screenshots and book images are all around or over 1000 KB….you could optimize those…..I think to at least 50% of the current size or more without losing too much quality.

You’ll get even more sales when you page loads faster Laughing

Hope that helps

Scott

Ben….I’m procrastinating on doing my work Very Happy

I said above:

Your screenshots and book images are all around or over 1000 KB….you could optimize those…..I think to at least 50% of the current size or more without losing too much quality.

If you or anyone else doesn’t know what or how to optimize an image, I thought I’d explain it a little.

In photoshop you have the option of saving the file or saving it for web. When you save it for web, you have the option of deciding how much to optimize the image. For instance the image of you book covers is over 1000KB that’s actually over 1 MB which is huge. Some poor guy on a dial up will start cussing you out if he clicks on your link Laughing

When “Saving for Web” you can reduce the file size by reducing the quality of the image. Often times the image will look virtually identical to the naked eye when optimized but will be minus a few pixels Smile

Since most people don’t have photoshop, there are services on the web…just google “image optimizer” and you should find a few services.

I found one service at: http://www.imageoptimizer.net/Pages/?

Just follow the directions to optimize your image.

I saved your book cover image (which is actually all the book covers) on my computer. And for Step 1====> locate the image on your computer

Step 2===> Fill in the image size…in your case 563 x 2326. In case you need to find out how big an image is, you can use your graphics program or just use your browser “right click” the image and you’ll get all kinds of information……You can play around with the next category “Optimize for” I think I used Normal

Step 3===> Use “No Special Effects”

Now click “optimze Now”

I was able to reduce your image down to 202 KB….That’s an image that is 5 times smaller and just might load 5 times faster!

When I first designing websites I made the mistake of not optimizing my images. My site seemed to load fast so I didn’t see a big deal…..Well, what happens is once you load your site through your url in your browser the computer remembers the site and loads it from memory….so you’ll never really see how fast or slow the site loads.

If you google website optimization and image optimization you’ll find some good stuff.

Good Luck,

Scott

[tags]image optimization, website image, full-size image, optimize image[/tags]