Help required - speed of access to a website
Discussion
Hi Guys and Gals.
I wonder if you can help me out. We are having a debate at work re: the speed of access of our website. Admittedly it ain't lightning quick, but is it really that bad? The site in question is...
www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/analyst/anlpub.htm
I believe that the problems were having is due to the design of the page. The above page has over 40 objects to load and is nearly 300KB of data, and it loads quite a lot of javascrpt and images for the menus.
This page www.rsc.org/test/New_RSC_fiona2.htm however should load much quicker (10 objects and 130KB). (Note, I know the links don't all work on this page)
Any comments will be gratefully received.
I have my flame proof coat on, but please note I'm not the site designer, just the poor sod who has to try and make it run quicker.
TIA
>>> Edited by FunkyGibbon on Thursday 6th February 09:48
I wonder if you can help me out. We are having a debate at work re: the speed of access of our website. Admittedly it ain't lightning quick, but is it really that bad? The site in question is...
www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/analyst/anlpub.htm
I believe that the problems were having is due to the design of the page. The above page has over 40 objects to load and is nearly 300KB of data, and it loads quite a lot of javascrpt and images for the menus.
This page www.rsc.org/test/New_RSC_fiona2.htm however should load much quicker (10 objects and 130KB). (Note, I know the links don't all work on this page)
Any comments will be gratefully received.
I have my flame proof coat on, but please note I'm not the site designer, just the poor sod who has to try and make it run quicker.
TIA
>>> Edited by FunkyGibbon on Thursday 6th February 09:48
Seconded!
I gave up waiting for the 1st page (and I'm on a 2meg link that's not being used by anything else at the moment!)
2nd page looks just as nice (IMO) and loads much more quickly. Still think it'd be too much for dialup, though!
{Edited to correct 2meg for 2k
}
>> Edited by pdv6 on Thursday 6th February 10:22
I gave up waiting for the 1st page (and I'm on a 2meg link that's not being used by anything else at the moment!)
2nd page looks just as nice (IMO) and loads much more quickly. Still think it'd be too much for dialup, though!
{Edited to correct 2meg for 2k
} >> Edited by pdv6 on Thursday 6th February 10:22
Yep, big line - too slow.
You have something like 12 seconds from them hitting enter to get the information that they want, or at least provide and obvious pointer to it. If you dont get them to the data in that time its very unlikely that they will come back.
Thats at 56K mind you, as thats what most surfers use for access still.
Matt.
You have something like 12 seconds from them hitting enter to get the information that they want, or at least provide and obvious pointer to it. If you dont get them to the data in that time its very unlikely that they will come back.
Thats at 56K mind you, as thats what most surfers use for access still.
Matt.
It's definitely slow, but I'm not sure it's just down to the site content - there's not a huge amount to download. Where is the server hosted? There is quite a long wait prior to the page starting to build which often indicates an overstressed server and / or poor bandwidth to the server. Even the size of the big main image (the black one) is pretty small and should load much much faster than it does.
Suggest using CSS styles for the buttons instead of images as it will load much faster.
Suggest using CSS styles for the buttons instead of images as it will load much faster.
First link, its slow, but not so slow I would close it, unless downloading at the same time, [I tend to be quite Impatient when it come to web sites, I will close it if its not there quick enough] however, as yours shows some kind of activity, I would wait for it to load.
Second link is far quicker, and personaly Im not a fan of these java objects. If you have to choose what to do about it, DONT have a welcome page that says 'please select java or html' these are really annoying and the extra time is wasted on this.
Oh, BTW, htis is on a 128kbs connection
Second link is far quicker, and personaly Im not a fan of these java objects. If you have to choose what to do about it, DONT have a welcome page that says 'please select java or html' these are really annoying and the extra time is wasted on this.
Oh, BTW, htis is on a 128kbs connection
Thanks folks!
I'm trying to persuade the web designers to ditch the graphical mavigation for text. So its pleasing to see that the second page is much better.
The server is hosted in house and has a 2M link to UUNET (though we will be upgrading later). Also on the same box is www.chemsoc.org/ which doesn't seem to have as many complaints about it.
Incidentally the web site gets nearly 1 million requests per day. So I guess a bigger pipe would help as well.
Edited to add the the server is a 400MHz Xeon Compaq, with 2 GB RAM.
>> Edited by FunkyGibbon on Thursday 6th February 10:54
I'm trying to persuade the web designers to ditch the graphical mavigation for text. So its pleasing to see that the second page is much better.
The server is hosted in house and has a 2M link to UUNET (though we will be upgrading later). Also on the same box is www.chemsoc.org/ which doesn't seem to have as many complaints about it.
Incidentally the web site gets nearly 1 million requests per day. So I guess a bigger pipe would help as well.
Edited to add the the server is a 400MHz Xeon Compaq, with 2 GB RAM.
>> Edited by FunkyGibbon on Thursday 6th February 10:54
Interesting..
the first time I clicked on both links I got the pages up instantly (we are on a 2mb pipe). the second time BOTH took more than 10 seconds (the golden rule is 7 seconds or the punter will get bored and go elsewhare).
I'd have thought that the second time they should have been quicker because of cacheing etc.
Is it more of a traffic/bandwidth thing? If you are getting a million hits a day (define hits, do you mean visits, page views or bits of info served) you might want to host it at a dedicated site.
D.
the first time I clicked on both links I got the pages up instantly (we are on a 2mb pipe). the second time BOTH took more than 10 seconds (the golden rule is 7 seconds or the punter will get bored and go elsewhare).
I'd have thought that the second time they should have been quicker because of cacheing etc.
Is it more of a traffic/bandwidth thing? If you are getting a million hits a day (define hits, do you mean visits, page views or bits of info served) you might want to host it at a dedicated site.
D.
davidd said: Interesting..
Is it more of a traffic/bandwidth thing? If you are getting a million hits a day (define hits, do you mean visits, page views or bits of info served) you might want to host it at a dedicated site.
D.
hits = total number of http requests the server has fielded.
It could be bandwidth, but we have other services (3 other web servers, ftp server, and mail server) all on the same box and all connected via the same network card (though bound to separate IP addresses). These seem to be unaffected.
Dunno if this helps - when accessing the pages with a clean local cache the text loads double quick (on a 512k link here) - it's the images that take quite a long time to come through - all from your site's /images/ folder - could it possibly be a hardware/storage issue i.e. is the images folder on a different disk perhaps or is there a disk fragmentaiton issue perhaps. Or is there some kind of server-software related issue with the handling of the images?
Had to give my twopenny's worth.
Had to give my twopenny's worth.
Oh dear - fails all the useability test.
No idea who you are using to design it - but it's a tragic case of graphic designers that have no idea about "programming"....
Ufortunatly you are near to that "start again" point. I would suggest you take a day off and read
http://usability.gov/ and http://usability.gov/guidelines/
J
No idea who you are using to design it - but it's a tragic case of graphic designers that have no idea about "programming"....
Ufortunatly you are near to that "start again" point. I would suggest you take a day off and read
http://usability.gov/ and http://usability.gov/guidelines/
J
Version1:
First of all "fastpublishing.gif" - 46K! I'd reccomend using flash to do that.
Image optimisation is appauling - I knocked half the size off of the first few i tried.
Like everyone's said drop the graphics.
Version2:
Make AnalystNov into a GIF (24K) rather than a jpg
Sort Journals.gif into a Flash file or question wether you actually need it in there (35K)
Conclusion
Consider putting the site up on the web rather than in house - dedicated server if nessecary.
Shoot the original web designer as anyone who knows what they are doing would never have come up with something this big in the first place!
(sorry if I'm a little harsh but I loose business to people like this everyday!)
If you want to ask any more specific questions email me through my profile - always glad to help a PH'er out.
First of all "fastpublishing.gif" - 46K! I'd reccomend using flash to do that.
Image optimisation is appauling - I knocked half the size off of the first few i tried.
Like everyone's said drop the graphics.
Version2:
Make AnalystNov into a GIF (24K) rather than a jpg
Sort Journals.gif into a Flash file or question wether you actually need it in there (35K)
Conclusion
Consider putting the site up on the web rather than in house - dedicated server if nessecary.
Shoot the original web designer as anyone who knows what they are doing would never have come up with something this big in the first place!
(sorry if I'm a little harsh but I loose business to people like this everyday!)
If you want to ask any more specific questions email me through my profile - always glad to help a PH'er out.
joust said: Oh dear - fails all the useability test.
No idea who you are using to design it - but it's a tragic case of graphic designers that have no idea about "programming"....
Ufortunatly you are near to that "start again" point. I would suggest you take a day off and read
http://usability.gov/ and http://usability.gov/guidelines/
J
Not forgetting crackpot Jakob over at www.useit.com
Matt.
plotloss said:
Not forgetting crackpot Jakob over at www.useit.com
Matt.
Unfortuanately hes a bit TOO much of a usablility nut sometimes! His books are rather good though like - Homepage Usability: 55 Websites Deconstructed.
Thanks again guys. As I stated at the top, I'm not the designer, but I am aware of all the issues you've all raised. And in the past I have raised these too.
The problem we had with the latest redesign we had was that it was designed by committee. Trouble was they ignore my and my team's extensive knowledge on technical site design and went with this anyway.
The problem I now face is that they see the problem as mine, not one of design.
We are moving to a server farm and bigger internet connection, but this won't get over the fact that the design sucks.
Ho humm, and thanks again for you comments.
The problem we had with the latest redesign we had was that it was designed by committee. Trouble was they ignore my and my team's extensive knowledge on technical site design and went with this anyway.
The problem I now face is that they see the problem as mine, not one of design.
We are moving to a server farm and bigger internet connection, but this won't get over the fact that the design sucks.
Ho humm, and thanks again for you comments.
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