subject: Too many images can hurt your website [print this page] Too many images can hurt your website Too many images can hurt your website
Wondering how to make a website? Here are a couple of tips I thought I'd personally present to you that I've picked up whilst operating my Perth web design and online business consulting company during the previous 5 years.
A typical oversight people make any time they're making a website is to jam it full of pictures. While tempting, you have to resist -- otherwise, you'll finish up with graphical overload.
So, Why is that a bad thing? Here's why.
Slow page loading times
The 1st justification to cut down on graphics is that the more there are, and the larger they tend to be, the more time it can take each of your webpages to download. Those tend to be impatient when waiting for webpages to download -- you just have around 5 seconds just before your customer clicks the actual Back button.
How can you solve this? The initial and most obivous solution will be to utilize fewer photos, and also be sure that your pictures are optimised. This can make their file sizes smaller. Say you decided to only resize graphics by specifying a width and height in HTML or CSS, they will probably still be slow to download simply because the complete file size is being used.
You ought to consider turning on data compresion in your image editor. JPEG files can frequently be compressed up to 25% before there is some sort of obvious variation in quality. Try various formats and data compresion settings to see exactly what works.
Your pages turn out to be overwhelming
If you use a website with much more than 4 pictures on the web page at a time, your eye balls will be pulled all over the place. They are unsure where to focus mainly because the web page simply has too much going on.
Perhaps you have paid attention to how most magazines use one main image on their front page? Putting two photos on the front page is considered to be bad: the reader won't know exactly where to look.
The same is true with regard to your internet site. Although you may have much more than one thing to say, it's more effective to 'go large' with 1 image and then clarify the other points in text, close to or below it.
It takes away from the actual information
Consumers don't normally come to your website to look at images, they're seeking for important information. Excessive use of graphics could draw attention away from your information, or, even worse, push readers to look for it. Every time your images get in the way of individuals easily making use of your web site, you will be suffering from visual overload. And that is definitely the last issue you are looking for.
What's the remedy? Select which graphics will be the most valuable and pitch the rest. Remember, don't add more pictures simply to appear nice, every single image must have a distinct purpose.
An Exception: Photo Galleries
If the function of your website is photography demonstration, then clearly numerous pictures are appropriate. In spite of this, don't simply stick up many huge photographs -- provide thumbnails: smaller versions of each photograph. When interested, the visitor can easily click on one in order to make it larger.
This fits more photos on each and every page, and avoids wasting user download time in addition to your data transfer.
Bear in mind that in all web design, the graphics are usually there purely to support the information. Even when the content is actually visual.
