27 replies to this topic

[deborah2002]

Hi all!

Is there an "optimum" byte size for a page? I mean, what is considered to be too big? This is a new one for me and I'm trying to figure out if I should break up the pages I have. Could someone let me know the biggest "byte size" I should shoot for before I go and break this stuff up? Thanks a million!

deb

[qwerty]

Deb, are you asking for a maximum size for users, or for spiders?

In the case of users, I prefer to deal with time. I try to make my pages small enough that it will take less then 15 seconds for them to load for someone on a 56k connection. Some say that standard is a myth (and some say it's actually 10 seconds), and I don't always stick to it, but I try.

[burgeltz]

Deborah,

There's an old study by Zona Research that said you'll lose 1/3 of your visitors if your page doesn't load within 8 seconds.

Working backwards from that number and assuming most people use dial-up connections means that an "optimial" page size would be around 56k.

If you don't like that 8 second benchmark, there are a number of tools out there that estimate page load time. My company makes one, and Dreamweaver has a built in estimator.

The 8 second rule is good, but hard to meet. My personal experience is that most e-commerce sites are close to 100k in size.

And keep in mind that how you write your HTML makes a big different in your page rendering time.

[deborah2002]

Well, I was trying to refer to "byte size", simply because I know download time will depend on wether they are on dial-up (always the kiss of death), broadband, etc.

As I said, I don't know too much about this stuff so I may sound like I understand all this more than I do. Is there a certain number I'm supposed to look at?

If this makes no sense, I apologize. I feel like I'm chasing my tail on this one~! :slap:

deb

[deborah2002]

Thanks for the reply, B, we just crossed our paths. I have a friend who has a page that is over 327k bytes. Now, again, I don't know much about this, but that sounds MONSTROUS even to me. Does that help? I know I'm not being totally clear in my questioning........................................

deb

[qwerty]

Byte size of the html document doesn't tell you very much, because it's really just the number of bytes taken up by the code. If the html calls numerous other documents, like graphics, then the load time will be affected by the size of those documents as well.

[pageoneresults]

The smaller the better! If a user visits a site and the content takes longer than 10 seconds to load on a 56k, then you may lose them. You can still have larger size pages but, you need to make sure that something of interest loads first while the rest of the elements are being rendered by the browser.

One other important aspect of page size is the text to html ratio. You want to make sure that you have as high of a text to html ratio that you can achieve. Many sites built using CSS usually have higher ratios than those built using standard html markup. This is due to the removal of markup code which greatly reduces page load times and improves functionality of the site overall.

Edited by pageoneresults, 08 August 2003 - 05:35 PM.

[Scottie]

Welcome, Edward!

[Matt B]

For both SE's and for visitors, regardless of connection speed, your page size should never exceed 50-60K (including images and code), half that is optimial if you like pages to load fast.

Good to see you, Edward!

[Ron Carnell]

LOL

This, at least, is one problem I rarely have to address. I retired to a little place in the sticks, seven miles from the nearest village, 30 miles from the nearest town boasting more than a bar and a gas station. I typically connect at 26.4K. If too many birds land on the telephone line at the same time, that drops to 22K. So, I've become a pretty good judge of what is "too big."

Strangely, though, I rarely see this as an advantage.

[Mel]

The smaller the better! If a user visits a site and the content takes longer than 10 seconds to load on a 56k, then you may lose them. You can still have larger size pages but, you need to make sure that something of interest loads first while the rest of the elements are being rendered by the browser...

I personally believe that a page over 30 kbytes in size needs to have some justification for being bigger than that.

I concur with the idea of having your important text (or whatever you think important) load first while waiting for the rest of the page to load.

One way to do this it to use layers, which will allow you to put your page text on the page before your header or graphics or menu system load.

[brianjulkunen]

I believe Google will index up to 110K of your site, has anyone heard of this or know for a fact?

[deborah2002]

Wow--I have never heard that before. I have checked and it seems google has all the pages (big bytes and all! ) of the site I'm referring to.

Does anyone else know anything about this 110k thing? I'd be interested to hear this one---new one to me!

thanks ya'll!
deb

[projectphp]

Does anyone else know anything about this 110k thing? I'd be interested to hear this one---new one to me!

101 KB actually.

Anything over that is ignored. try this link http://www.google.co...=utf-8&filter=0. Now the sitemap (www.three.com.au/sitemap.cfm) is listed as 101 KB, but if you look at the source of the cached version, it is cut off after 101KB, right in the middle of an image.

OK, just to wade in with MHO, I hate big files. Give me the #%@s. 15 KB is a good size for HTML code, i.e. if index.html is much bigger than 15 KB, that's a bit of trouble. Add in images and download time blows way out.

There are lots of things you can do to improve render time, including having set widths and heights on all images, break tables in to multiple tables, instead of one big one for the whole page, have really small images that are well optimised, and not too many complicated JavaScript writes.

That said, 15 KB is the goal. OK, OK, I'll let you have 20

[deborah2002]

Well, ya'll have noticed I'm also the "CSS tutorial" question too. I am hoping I can cut some of this out that way. Am I on the right track with this one? The page in question is a WHOPPER.

I guess what I'm driving at......I have "optimized" the page in question, I just never had the chance (know-how?) to go to CSS...hence, the tutorial question.

Seems like everday I come across yet something else to learn.

deb