The Seven Sins

Failing to test loading time on an average computer.

The short attention spans of most people today will cause them to move on quickly if your site takes more than a few seconds to appear on their screens.

Excessive use of large graphics, animations and other devices that increase the file size of the pages on your site will increase the time it takes for the page to appear on the viewer’s screen.

There are thousands of sites that take several minutes or longer to load on a typical computer. Many of them are elaborate creations with the potential to win design prizes from the artistic community, but they accomplish little or nothing for the people who are paying the bills.

If you own a high-powered computer with a lightning-speed processor and a ton of memory, or if you have high-speed Internet access, don’t use your own system to test your site’s loading time. Find a friend with an average setup and a dial-up modem like the one owned by the vast majority of Web surfers.

Then, if your site takes more than 10 or 15 seconds to load, you and your designer need to sit down and decide what has to go.