Download speed is no longer an issue since most users are now on high-speed connections.
False. Although the Canadian broadband (high-speed Internet) adoption rate has outpaced that of the U.S., broadband has not yet achieved critical mass. According to Media Metrix Canada, as of March 2003, 53.6% of the Canadian online population accessed the Internet through broadband connections, compared to 33.8% of the U.S. online population.
This means almost 50% of online Canadians continue to access the Internet through slow dial-up connections. The broadband adoption rate is even lower in small communities, where infrastructure is inconsistent or non-existent. This fact is confirmed by NFO CFGroup, who reports that in communities of less than 10,000 people only one in five online households had access to high-speed in January 2003.
If you're working from the office on a high-speed platform, it's easy to forget that not everyone cruises the information highway in the luxury vehicle you enjoy, an oversight that can be especially costly if you're marketing to the U.S. In a groundbreaking 1999 study, Zona Research (now Sageza) reported that $4.35 billion in U.S. ecommerce sales was lost each year due to unacceptable download speeds and resulting user bailout behaviours.
Zona's latest research indicates that download speed remains very much an issue for users. Driven to your site by a specific need, they want in to get and out as quickly as possible and will back out quickly if they encounter significant delays. Here are some tips for ensuring your site keeps them around.
- Keep page sizes small. Zona reports that the bailout rate climbs steeply once page sizes exceed 35K
- Avoid gratuitous use of graphics. Every graphic you add will increase download time. Thoughtless use of graphics does little to enhance communication and may alienate users. Consider substituting text for graphics in your navigation interface. You can achieve some surprisingly elegant effects with stylesheets. (This site's interface is achieved mostly through stylesheets - the only graphics used are the logo, the gradient fills at left and right, and the "Top" graphic on each page.)
- Optimize graphics for fast download. The bigger the graphic and the more colours it contains, the slower the download. Use image editing tools to optimize (shrink) graphics for rapid download. Decrease image dimensions by cropping out irrelevant content, then scaling down image size. Reduce bit-depth by decreasing the number of colours.
- Use thumbnails. Thumbnails — small copies of an image linked to a full-sized version — can dramatically reduce download time, especially if your site contains numerous images (such as a photo gallery). While the thumbnails may not contain much detail, users can click through to the large versions at their discretion.
- Use height and width attributes for fast text loading. Speed up downloads by specifying the height and width of images. This enables the browser to free a predetermined area onscreen for the graphic. Browsers display the text while the graphic downloads, giving users something to read while they wait.
- Provide a text alternative for technology-intensive content. The "everyone's got broadband" argument is often used to justify the use of leading edge technologies or graphics-intensive design. We aren't saying these approaches don't have their place, but they should be used appropriately, with a text alternative for users with slow connections.
- Test your site on a dial-up connection. If you're working on a high-speed platform, find a friend or colleague with a dial-up connection, or use a service like HTML ToolBox. This useful tool tests load time at speeds ranging from 14.4 Kbps to T1 throughput and can identify where bottlenecks occur.
