The following advertising button was taken from John Chow’s sponsor panel. Can you spot the differences in these two images?


Unoptimized Image Example Optimized Image Size

I’ll get back to these images later.

Patience Does Not Exist Online

Internet users do not have any patience. Today’s computers come with processors that are packing dual, and even quad cores. Internet browsers have tabs to allow users to browse multiple websites with greater ease. More and more homes each day upgrade to broadband internet. Cell phones have built in mp3 players, navigation capabilities, video playback, games, and soon cell phones will even have built in video projectors. As a society, we love to do too many things at the same time. Every device is a multi-function device nowadays. Because of this technology and information overload, internet users do not have any patience.

Because of this, you need to make sure whatever you have to say can be delivered to the reader as fast as possible. However, you can be the best writer in the world and be able to articulate everything and organize your thoughts into short concise paragraphs and still fail at this. Why? Because your blog is too bloated and takes far too long to load.

Shed Some Fat From Your Blog or Website

Long load times for a blog will drive away all but the most dedicated visitors and even if they do wait until the blog loads, its probably on the 5th browser tab while a faster loading website gets more attention. In an older post, I wrote that it is important to watch what plugins you install on your blog as it may slow your blog down to a crawl. Another cause of a slow loading blog is bloated images.

Let’s get back to the images I presented at the beginning of this post. Its safe to say that most of you could not see any differences in the two buttons, even though it is side by side for close inspection. The one on the left is in .jpg form and is the original. The one on the right is in .gif form and has been optimized for size using Adobe ImageReady. The original .jpg version is 55K while the optimized .gif version is only 6K! By simply optimizing a single 125×125 graphic, a savings of 49K is realized.

Does This Even Mean Anything?

With today’s fast internet access, and this optimization only shedding 49K, does this even mean anything in the real world? Sure! If you have several images on your main page, the savings could jump to 200 - 300K in savings per page view. If you have a busy blog, the savings climb exponentially. Also, optimizing your images could mean the difference between surviving a rush of traffic from Digg or your server crumbling under the immense load. Either way, image optimization does not take much time at all and can result in significantly improved page load times–especially for your visitors who are still on slower internet connections.

A blog that is more available, and fast is a blog that will allow you to make more money. Even on JohnChow.com, which pulls in a healthy six figure sum annually, there is room for optimization as his designer just finished optimizing the site, but it looks like he didn’t go over the banner ads. Start burning that fat! :)

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