Tips for Making your Build a Niche Store Load Faster

May 22, 2008

Does your site load too slow or do you just want to Speed up the Load Time for Build a Niche Store? In this post about The 20 Reasons you will Fail with Build a Niche Store, we will look at tips for speeding up your page load time!
Image courtesy of: http://blogs.cisco.com/sp/2007/11/

Website speed used to be quite an issue with many users still using dial up internet access. Today and throughout 2008, it is predicted that broadband access in the US market will increase dramatically due to a broadband stimulus bill passed by Congress, designed to make it more affordable and accessible to everyone! (read more) To most webmasters, this means the struggle to balance great content with small file size is quickly diminishing, but what about search spiders, don’t they prefer fast loading sites also? My own understanding was YES… but according to a Matt Cutts (GoogleGuy) post :

As long as Google can load your web pages, it doesn’t really make a different whether the pages load in half a second or 5 seconds

…it makes no difference! Now, if your server times out… that’s another story as nobody can access the site!

Checking your Website Load Time

Rochelle from Niche Store Strategies recently asked, How can we check our site speed if we are on a Broadband connection? In order to see how quickly your site or pages load, there are several resources you can use:

1.  Website Speed Checker - I have used this utility for many years! Not only does it show you the speed with different connections, it also shows you which components of your site are hogging those resources!
2. Alexa - While Alexa offers some detailed stats on your site, it will only have complete stats if visitors were using the Alexa toolbar.
3. Firefox Plugin - While I have used it… it just seems too cumbersome to me!

Aside from the few listed above, you can probably find many other sites to help you find out how long your site loads. Dreamweaver and other html editors actually have tools built in to give you a good idea. Again, my favorite is the first link over at: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/index.html

In order to understand the speed impact, it may be helpful to know your OWN connection speed. Head over to the Speakeasy Speed Test and choose one of the servers closest to your home. In my case, I chose the Atlanta Server and my speed results were as follows:

• Download Speed: 3087kbps (385.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
• Upload Speed: 504kbps (63 KB/sec transfer rate)

Seeing this reminds me I need to call my ISP and complain that I am not getting the speed I pay for! LOL I also see that I should be loading pages approximately 55 times quicker than a dial-up 56k modem. (56k modem runs at approximately 56,000 kiloBITS - kbps, or 5.6 kiloBYTES - KB per second)

What do I Look For?

For this example, I am going to use 2 of my own sites:

1. Wifi 3.0 Products - This site is not new, but is one of the default BANS templates with little to no optimization.
2. Cabinets for Sale - One of my 12 week series sites with a custom template and header graphic.

Go to the Website Speed Checkerand plug your own domain into the url box. I used the Wifi 3.0 domain first just to see the load from an out of the box site. Even with no logo image, the site comes in at more than 170,000 KB, most of which are the eBay thumbnail images! Aside from those, the main image (which is currently blank) is almost 24k by itself. If you are using BANS out of the box, there is not much you can do with the html page size… you can however exercise some control over the images!

The general goal in the past was to get below 25kb in page size, which is on the far left side of impossible if you plan on using ANY images! Sites in the 75kb-100kb are the norm now and many are MUCH higher due to the targeting of visitors. In other words, if you are promoting a site selling $500 items, chances are good your target visitors will already have broadband also. If on the other hand, you are promoting a penny item, you may want to keep design to a minimum!

Once you have the provided list of files and sizes, you can quickly identify where to optimize!

How do I Optimize my File Sizes?

The first thing to look at are the LARGEST images! In the case of the Wifi 3.0 site, I can see that the logo.jpg file, even though it is blank, is more than 23k in size. I can reduce this easily by going to an online Image Optimization utility, placing my image url in the source box and letting it do its own magic!

In this case, since it is a single color file, there are no real gains in file reduction. Using the logo from the Buy Cabinets site however, I can reduce me image size from 16k down to 7k, without any image quality loss!

1. Place URL of logo in url field
   (I used: http://www.buy-cabinets.com/themes/sepia/images/logo.jpg)
2. Click on Optimize
3. Right-click over the top image (Your original logo) and choose SAVE to your hard drive with a unique name. This will be your backup image!
4. Review optimized images starting at the bottom. Most often, the highest gain in file size equals the lowest quality image. I chose the 2nd from the bottom with a value of Quality: 20 and almost 55% in image size reduction!
5. Right-click over the top of the optimized image and save it to your local hard drive.
6. Login to your BANS store and replace the original logo with your new one!

The next thing to consider are the number of auction listings your site displays. More products equals longer load times! I try to stay as low as possible while still showing a satisfactory amount to keep the visitor looking! Anywhere from 10-20 is a good number to stick with… I truthfully think you are wasting space showing more than that on a single page anyhow!

The third and most often overlooked load time killer are banners that come from other domains! On the fine designer shoe site, I use several banners from a third party affiliate company. I have seen these banners take 5 second or longer to load themselves, which also delays the overall page load time! I have an option to save the banners and load them locally, but I would sacrifice some of my click tracking capabilities. I have notified the affiliate manager and hopefully, we can get that taken care of!

Can I OVER Optimize?

Yes… humans are visual by nature! We LOVE to see pictures! Even though search engines prefer text, if you remove all images in order to make the site load quicker, your page views will likely suffer at the same time!

Always consider your target audience! Chances are pretty good that those shopping online are broadband users or are shopping from a workplace versus a dial up from home. You may not need to optimize at all!

On a completely separate note…

In my reading romp last night I stumbled over to Alan’s site, Affiliate Confession, and found out that he won a great contest earlier this week! Along with the brand new Macbook Air he won, he was sent an extra Nike Golf Polo from Market Leverage which he is giving away to one person.

The best part of all this is just how easy it is to enter! You just visit his site and leave a comment on his post about winning the contest! He is going to randomly choose a winner next Weds. around noon.

Win a Nice Nike Golf Shirt

I have mentioned Alan and his blog in the past and today, he has been added to my blogroll… His site content is right up our alley as he is both an Affiliate Marketer and a BANS user! Now you have a chance to get a free shirt! What could be better?

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