SPIDER FRIENDLY CONTENT PAGES

It is virtually impossible to build a site in which each page brings good search engine position. The home page, for example, will likely change frequently. Thus spiders will not find it the same when they return, which they do, roughly once each month.
Pages devoted to selling product do not often rank well. The same is true of a page where visitors can subscribe to your newsletter. Or the one you pop up to say thanks when they do subscribe. So how does one go about getting good search engine positions?

Great Content Is The Answer

So what is great content? Any information surfers may need. However, it must also be a topic that enhances your site purpose. That is, there is no room on a site devoted to baseball for a piece describing the inner workings of steam engines.
Assuming you have a clear read on who your visitors are, then it's only a matter of selecting a topic likely to be of interest to at least some of them. Given this, write the page for your visitors, not the search engines. Then do what you can to make the spiders happy.

Happy Spiders?

Not likely. It is impossible to please them all. Some see "Market," "MARKET," and "market" as separate words; others see only one repeated three times. Some see "market" as "marketing;" most require a specific match. "Markets" may be seen as "Market," but in other cases both forms may be required.
Okay, we'll include all cases in our keyword tag: Market, MARKET, market, Markets, MARKETS, markets, Marketing, MARKETING, marketing.
That's got it covered fine, but how do we make this work with a spider that considers more than three repetitions as spam? One that might even consider all of the above as 9 repetitions of one word?

You Can't Get There From Here

Search engines are competing in a multi-billion dollar race. The winner will be the one that can most consistently present the most relevant information available in response to a query.
Be assured that with the stakes this high, the competition is fierce. They are not about to reveal their latest wrinkle to improve their listings. Which leaves us with empirical evidence and educated guesses.
Try to sort this all out for each search engine, and you'll go crazy. Not to mention constant changes which mean one or more of the carefully defined "rules" no longer holds.
Even supposing you had an accurate listing of the rules for each engine. Would you seriously consider creating a separate page for each? Not me. I have much more profitable ways in which to use my time.
Take the longer view. Spiders are getting smarter every day. And they are becoming smarter at a rapidly increasing rate. Some are now reading a page as if with a thesaurus in hand, thus being able to see house and home as having similar meanings.
Grammar checkers exist; I expect to see these and related tools implemented in spider logic. In the not-to-distant future, those keyword-rich doorway pages are going to be discarded.
Meanwhile we need to create some great content pages and try to make the spiders as happy as possible. Here's my approach.

Finding Keywords

Given a topic and a mental draft of what needs to be written, I identify 1 to 3 keyword phases. I work at this, trying to put myself in the shoes of one who will search for this information. If I am building a major page, or one of a set of related topics, I may take the time to visit GoTo.Com to find phrases actually entered.

Meta Tags

I build a rough draft of the title and description tags before beginning to write. They must serve two purposes. First the title is the headline of an ad which draws the reader into the ad copy (description). And the description must compel a click to my site. Second, though, to please the spiders, keywords need to be included, and the closer to the beginning of the statements the better. (I try not to think about the fact that some spiders will ignore both tags.)
Since Excite limits a title to 70 characters, I try to hold under this. If I go over, I try to work things out so that truncation does little harm. I try to hold the description under 150 characters, the limit at AltaVista. I use these limits because together, AltaVista and Excite dominate among search engines.

These two tags are so vitally important, that I review them often as I write.
The keyword tag, on the other hand, gets little attention. This tag has been so abused, I simply can't get a handle on what works best. Some meta tag checkers still claim you ought to use all 1000 characters allowed. This seems unwise.
I include only my keyword phrases, all in lower case. But I do add the plural case and "ing" when appropriate.

The Content

When I begin to write, I think only of communicating as effectively as possible with my visitor. I keep the keywords in mind and seek to build in a theme based upon them. After editing a first draft, I will often lay it aside for a day or two before continuing. My visitors are my target here, not the spiders.

The Spider's Turn

If I can build some header tags with keywords, I will. I don't bother with ALT assignments or comments in the source, although this reportedly gives a boost with some search engines.
I work at including keywords as close to the top of the page as possible, in the first 100-200 words. For this is the part of the page in which one expects to find the subject defined, followed by further explanation and expansion. Even now, spiders also expect this.
I also work at rephrasing things to add more repetitions of keywords and to bring them as close to the beginning of paragraphs as possible.
And I make a point of repeating the keywords in the close of the page, a sort of "theme" wrap up, if you will.
One further thing I do is look for words I incidentally used so frequently they may dilute the weight of the keywords. For example, if I have used "buildings" too often, I may replace some instances with "structures" or a specific name for a type.
But throughout, I absolutely refuse to sacrifice readability. To me, my visitor is far more important than any search engine.

Other Guidelines

Keyword density is the percentage of words that the keywords are to the total number of words. It is considered quite differently by different spiders. Some suggest as much as 15% of a page be keywords. To me this is nonsense, for it makes the page unintelligible to a visitor. I have never been able to get above 2% without decreasing readability, even when using three keywords.
Page length expected also differs drastically. Many claim short pages are better. 300-600 words is often suggested. But Excite doesn't care how long a page is. I say what needs saying as briefly as possible and call it good.

Never Look Back

When the page is polished, I submit it to the major search engines. Then I do something you really ought to try.

Source:http://www.webdesignwisdom.com

Designing Your Website

When preparing to design your website, you must first decide on your website's focus.If you're designing a mini-site, your website should focus on one particular product. However, content sites are a bit different. If you're developing a content site, your site should focus on a subject on which you have a great deal of knowledge. And, should relate to your products or services. In addition, your images, ezine and content should also relate.

Designing Your Site

When you begin designing your site, your top priority must be your products. If your potential customers can't find your products, you're not going to make any sales. It's that simple. Every part of your website should have one specific purpose -- to lead your potential customers to your products. For example, if you will be providing your visitors with tutorials, these tutorials should relate to your products or services. They should identify a problem, provide instruction to assist your visitors, and promote your products as the solution.

Your Storefront

The main page of your website is your storefront. It should load quickly and provide your visitors with a complete overview of everything your website offers. Instead of trying to cram all of your information into your main page, consider creating sections. These sections can contain highlights of your information with a link to further information. You can divide your page into sections by using tables. These tables can contain colored heading sections for information such as news, articles, products or whatever you'd like. It's much better to keep your main page down to the most essential elements. You can then use links to additional pages to provide the detailed information. A good rule of thumb is "less is more." In other words, keep your main page as small as possible, while at the same time, include your most important elements.

Load Time

According to two surveys conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group, ecommerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customer click-away caused by slow loading websites.The main page of your website should load within 8 seconds or less with a 56K modem.There are many things that can cause a web page to load slowly including:

=> Large graphics

=> Too many graphics

=> Animated graphics

=> Too many banners

=> Special Effects

=> Large pages

Optimization

You can significantly decrease your site's load time simply by optimizing your graphics. This process will decrease your graphic's file size without sacrificing the graphic's quality.You can optimize your images right online.

Enhancing Your Site

There are a number of ways you can enhance your site without using a lot of graphics. For example, if you can use the same small images such as bullets or arrows, it will give the illusion that you're using a lot of graphics. However, your graphic will only have to load one time. This will enable you to "recycle" your images to keep your page's load time down, while at the same time, enhancing your site's appearance.In addition, you can enhance your site by using tables with colored backgrounds instead of images. If an image doesn't enhance your page in some way, you'll be better off to just leave it out.

Tables

If you'd like to set up your web page using tables, try to place your Heading text above your table code. If this isn't possible, make sure you include your most relevant keyword phrase within your top left table cell. This will assist you in ranking higher in the Search Engines.

Screen Resolutions

When designing your site, keep in mind, your visitors will have many different screen resolutions. The resolution of a monitor refers to the total number of pixels. The higher the resolution, the greater the number of pixels. Higher resolutions present higher quality images. To accommodate the majority of your visitors, use a standard screen resolution of 800x600 pixels. Another way to ensure that your web page will look great to all of your visitors is to set it up using tables. Instead of using a fixed width within your table code, use a percentage. This will enable your web page to span a certain percentage of your visitors' screen size. For example, if you set your table width at 90%, your web page will automatically resize and span 90% of your visitors' screen size, no matter what screen resolution they're using.

Colors

Although there are an unlimited number of background and text colors you could use for your web page, a white background with black text will be your best option.You must be very cautious when selecting your background and text colors, as reading on a computer screen is much more difficult than paper. You must make your web page as easy to read as possible. You can add color to your pages using tables with colored cells.

Web Browsers

Before you begin the actual design process, I highly recommend that you download and install two web browsers -- Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. These are the two most widely used browsers on the Internet. Why download and install both browsers? So you can view your pages through both browsers, as they are not created equally. Your page might look great when viewed through Internet Explorer, but may not display well when viewed through Navigator

Source:http://www.web-source.net/internet_business_6.htm

LayOut Considerations for Web Design

While surfing the web, you’ve probably come upon many sites that have had a layout you’ve found interesting. Have you ever tried looking at their HTML sourcecode to see exactly how they did it? If you haven’t, I suggest trying sometime. You can pick up lots of ideas by looking at the coding of other sites. Virtually all browsers have a "View Source" option somewhere in their menu.

Feel free to place comments between the closing comment tag if it will make it easier for you to read and update your coding. But remember, these comments will be seen by anyone who decides to view the source code of your page, with no way to hide it. Also, if you comment too extensively, it will lengthen the download time of your site.

Proportions play a great role in how professional your site looks. For example, if you have a large sized graphic at the top of your page, but the text below it takes up even less room than the graphic does, it will look quite awkward to the visitor.

Another example is having a twenty word heading for a ten word paragraph. Sure, common sense will tell you not to do that, but I still see many pages coded like that in my daily surfing.

Blank lines placed repeatedly between objects on a page can cause visual discomfort and often even confusion to someone visiting your site. If you place a significant whitespace gap between sections on a page, a visitor may assume an upper section is the end of the page if they don’t realize there is a scrollbar. Having a few screenlengths of blank space on a page tends to look obnoxious, and is heavily frowned upon.

Some people like to use capital letters instead of heading tags to emphasize a heading text. Generally, capital letters look very awkward on a page unless bolded or otherwise differentiated from the text around it. If you are trying to emphasize a word or a phrase in a paragraph, bolding, italicizing, or changing its texts color is often a wiser choice than placing it in capital letters.

Fonts and text attributes, as well as text coloring, can add a special touch to help please the eyes of your visitors, as long as their sizes are not greatly out of proportion, and if multiple colors are used, they aren’t too disturbing or clashy. Excessively large or small text sizes may cause your page to seem less professional.

The p tag plays an important role in displaying paragraphs. Each p tag will cause a blank line between it and the text preceeding it, useful in making a page read just like a book. Indentations are generally not used on the web, and an indent tag was never created. If you try to place a tab in your web page it will just be considered whitespace and ignored. So between two words, as long as there are one or more spaces, only the first of the spaces will be displayed, the rest ignored.Looking at the source code of this page will show you how a paragraph tag helps layout.
Separation of paragraphs - along with proper heading for each section - helps a page to be more easily read and navigated. Writing in complete sentences with proper grammar and spelling will aid in giving your page a more professional read.

Source: http://www.neonlollipops.com

Is Your Site Ready for the Average User?

If you have been using computers and surfing the Internet for some time, as is likely the case since you're visiting a site for webmasters, you would probably have acquired a large number of skills that enable you to find things on the Internet, navigate a site, deal with the annoyances that some sites pose, and the like. The problem with such proficiency is that it is easy to lose touch with how a large portion of Internet users actually operate on the Web, and thus design a site that does not take advantage of the special needs of these "average users".

What is the "Average User"?

I realize that some of you will probably take exception to my use of the term "average user". After all, it is difficult to pinpoint what an average user is. The "average user" in the computer industry is vastly different from, say, the "average user" in the agricultural sector.

My use of "average user" here might appear to some to have the connotation of "novice user". I refrained from using "novice" because many of these users are not exactly new to using a computer yet their level of competence in surfing the Internet and their knowledge of the use of the computer is at best rudimentary. With the explosion of the Internet reaching into many homes in the world, it seems to me that such users are continually increasing in number. Where once upon a time when we think of a computer user we imagine a nerd, now, just about everyone uses a computer, even my elderly parents. This widespread use of computers also means that the computer is no longer the province of an elite few who actually understand the innards of a computer. The average user is no longer that computer professional, but the large number of people who treat the computer as an appliance, somewhat the way we regard our toasters or VCRs.
This in turn has implications on the things you can do on your site and the things you might want to avoid.

1. Visiting a Site When a URL is Known

If I were to give you a URL like "thesitewizard.com", how would you visit that site? Typically, you would type it into the location bar (also known as the "address bar") in your browser and the browser would immediately retrieve the page from the site.
It's amusing to watch how the "average user" actually handles a URL. Take my mother for example. After watching a TV show which gave her a URL "oprah.com" to visit, she went to her browser, typed "oprah.com" into the Google search engine form, and sent the query to Google. When Google returned the search results, among which was a link to (what else?) oprah.com, she would click the link to finally visit "oprah.com".
She's not alone in this. According to a report from Metacrawler, some of the top search engine queries were for terms like "hotmail.com", "www.hotmail.com", "google", "yahoo" and the like! It looks like many people do not know that they can directly access the URL by typing it into their browser's address bar.
The lesson here is simple. Even if your site is a local site that advertises its URL via local TV, calling cards, printed newspapers, etc, it pays to have your site listed in the search engines. Otherwise, some of your "average users" will come to you and complain that your site could not be found!

2. Reviewing Search Engine Results
I find it educational to watch others search the Net and then navigate the web sites they find. One of the things I notice among these "average users" is that they really read the title of the pages returned on the searches.
For example, when you search Google for, say, "chicken recipes", Google returns a list of pages with the titles of the pages hyperlinked. My observation is that most people review the list carefully and only click those hyperlinks which have titles that appear relevant to them. In this regard, I'm fairly confident that most experienced searchers do the same too.
Lesson: make sure your pages have an appropriate TITLE tag. The TITLE tag should contain the keywords that you're targeting in the search engines so that people who search for those words will see the relevance of your page and click on the link. The TITLE should also be more than just a string of keywords strung together - it should make sense and sound relevant.

3. Reading the Web Page
Where the design of a web page is concerned, the KISS principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") may actually help you to keep your visitor. A cluttered page with too much information tends to confuse visitors, and cause them to think that the information cannot be found on your site.
It doesn't mean that your site has to have the spartan appearance of the Google search engine or thesitewizard.com. It can be decorated with colours and images, etc. But if there is some central information that you want to convey, or product that you want to sell, making it appear prominently on the page helps the average user zero in on what he/she is looking for.

4. Dealing with Pop-ups
There are two conflicting views regarding how newbies or perhaps even the typical web user deal with pop-up windows.
Some webmasters say that when they put their newsletter subscription forms in a window that pops up automatically when their site is loaded, their subscription rates rise markedly. As such, they recommend that you do the same, suggesting that your newsletter subscription rates will soar when you do so.
My experience with watching a few people surf the Internet was quite different. One of them got confused by pop-up advertisement windows appearing, and being unable to figure out how to go on from there, closed all the windows (which alas also terminated his dial-up connection) and had to start all over again. Another person was faced with a site that opened a hyperlink in a new window. After that person was through with that window, she found she could not use the BACK button to return to the original window. (She could not go back using that button since the original site was in a different browser window!)
In general, these people did not appear to do too well when confronted with multiple windows appearing. In fact, although they use their computer often to do word processing, play games and surf the Internet, it looks to me like they do not how to run multiple programs simultaneously and switch between them.
These observations (which are fairly recent) presents a problem for me as a webmaster. Although I make it a policy never to introduce pop-up windows in my site, I used to habitually code all my off-site links to open in new browser windows. However, in view of this discovery, it looks like I have the massive job of removing this "feature" from all my sites, since it is possible that the "typical" user doesn't know how to manage more than one window at a time.
As for the pop-up advertisement and newsletter subscription windows, all I can say is that if you really think you need that, you should do a test run on your site before you implement it site-wide. What works on one site might fail in another because the latter attracts a different crowd with a different level of expertise. If you can, try to garner visitor feedback as well as check the impact of those pop-ups on your advertisement click throughs and subscription rates. You should also see if it hurts the number of people visiting deeper pages on your site - this might be an indication that they got lost after they saw your pop-up.

5. Browser Start Page
The average user seems to rely on his start page which is usually set for him by default by his ISP. Since such users learned to access the Net from that page, and they access a search engine from that page, that start page becomes the launching pad from which they access the Internet.
Some sites apparently realise this, and thus try to get visitors to change their start page to point to a page on their site. This is easy to accomplish for visitors using Internet Explorer ("IE") since the start page can be changed with a script in IE. They provide a link to the script which the user merely has to click to change the start page.
If you are planning to create your own start page for your visitors, my suggestion is that you also put links to search engines on that page or perhaps even put a search box directly on that page (some search engines even provide you the HTML code to do this). This makes the page more useful to those users, thus increasing the chances that they will stick to your start page. That is, don't just stick your advertisements onto that page. Make it useful as well.
Note that the fact that they rely on the start page does not mean that they stay an inordinate amount of time on it staring at it. Bear this in mind before you persuade all your visitors to use your start page. You might wind up paying for the bandwidth each time they log on without correspondingly gaining from the advertising revenue.

The Average-User-Friendly Site
It is possible to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the "average user" in the design and planning of your web site. Doing so not only produces a user friendly site, but also helps you accomplish the goals for your site.

Copyright 2002-2003 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.

Is Your Site Ready for the Average User?

If you have been using computers and surfing the Internet for some time, as is likely the case since you're visiting a site for webmasters, you would probably have acquired a large number of skills that enable you to find things on the Internet, navigate a site, deal with the annoyances that some sites pose, and the like. The problem with such proficiency is that it is easy to lose touch with how a large portion of Internet users actually operate on the Web, and thus design a site that does not take advantage of the special needs of these "average users".

What is the "Average User"?

I realize that some of you will probably take exception to my use of the term "average user". After all, it is difficult to pinpoint what an average user is. The "average user" in the computer industry is vastly different from, say, the "average user" in the agricultural sector.

My use of "average user" here might appear to some to have the connotation of "novice user". I refrained from using "novice" because many of these users are not exactly new to using a computer yet their level of competence in surfing the Internet and their knowledge of the use of the computer is at best rudimentary. With the explosion of the Internet reaching into many homes in the world, it seems to me that such users are continually increasing in number. Where once upon a time when we think of a computer user we imagine a nerd, now, just about everyone uses a computer, even my elderly parents. This widespread use of computers also means that the computer is no longer the province of an elite few who actually understand the innards of a computer. The average user is no longer that computer professional, but the large number of people who treat the computer as an appliance, somewhat the way we regard our toasters or VCRs.
This in turn has implications on the things you can do on your site and the things you might want to avoid.

1. Visiting a Site When a URL is Known

If I were to give you a URL like "thesitewizard.com", how would you visit that site? Typically, you would type it into the location bar (also known as the "address bar") in your browser and the browser would immediately retrieve the page from the site.
It's amusing to watch how the "average user" actually handles a URL. Take my mother for example. After watching a TV show which gave her a URL "oprah.com" to visit, she went to her browser, typed "oprah.com" into the Google search engine form, and sent the query to Google. When Google returned the search results, among which was a link to (what else?) oprah.com, she would click the link to finally visit "oprah.com".
She's not alone in this. According to a report from Metacrawler, some of the top search engine queries were for terms like "hotmail.com", "www.hotmail.com", "google", "yahoo" and the like! It looks like many people do not know that they can directly access the URL by typing it into their browser's address bar.
The lesson here is simple. Even if your site is a local site that advertises its URL via local TV, calling cards, printed newspapers, etc, it pays to have your site listed in the search engines. Otherwise, some of your "average users" will come to you and complain that your site could not be found!

2. Reviewing Search Engine Results
I find it educational to watch others search the Net and then navigate the web sites they find. One of the things I notice among these "average users" is that they really read the title of the pages returned on the searches.
For example, when you search Google for, say, "chicken recipes", Google returns a list of pages with the titles of the pages hyperlinked. My observation is that most people review the list carefully and only click those hyperlinks which have titles that appear relevant to them. In this regard, I'm fairly confident that most experienced searchers do the same too.
Lesson: make sure your pages have an appropriate TITLE tag. The TITLE tag should contain the keywords that you're targeting in the search engines so that people who search for those words will see the relevance of your page and click on the link. The TITLE should also be more than just a string of keywords strung together - it should make sense and sound relevant.

3. Reading the Web Page
Where the design of a web page is concerned, the KISS principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") may actually help you to keep your visitor. A cluttered page with too much information tends to confuse visitors, and cause them to think that the information cannot be found on your site.
It doesn't mean that your site has to have the spartan appearance of the Google search engine or thesitewizard.com. It can be decorated with colours and images, etc. But if there is some central information that you want to convey, or product that you want to sell, making it appear prominently on the page helps the average user zero in on what he/she is looking for.

4. Dealing with Pop-ups
There are two conflicting views regarding how newbies or perhaps even the typical web user deal with pop-up windows.
Some webmasters say that when they put their newsletter subscription forms in a window that pops up automatically when their site is loaded, their subscription rates rise markedly. As such, they recommend that you do the same, suggesting that your newsletter subscription rates will soar when you do so.
My experience with watching a few people surf the Internet was quite different. One of them got confused by pop-up advertisement windows appearing, and being unable to figure out how to go on from there, closed all the windows (which alas also terminated his dial-up connection) and had to start all over again. Another person was faced with a site that opened a hyperlink in a new window. After that person was through with that window, she found she could not use the BACK button to return to the original window. (She could not go back using that button since the original site was in a different browser window!)
In general, these people did not appear to do too well when confronted with multiple windows appearing. In fact, although they use their computer often to do word processing, play games and surf the Internet, it looks to me like they do not how to run multiple programs simultaneously and switch between them.
These observations (which are fairly recent) presents a problem for me as a webmaster. Although I make it a policy never to introduce pop-up windows in my site, I used to habitually code all my off-site links to open in new browser windows. However, in view of this discovery, it looks like I have the massive job of removing this "feature" from all my sites, since it is possible that the "typical" user doesn't know how to manage more than one window at a time.
As for the pop-up advertisement and newsletter subscription windows, all I can say is that if you really think you need that, you should do a test run on your site before you implement it site-wide. What works on one site might fail in another because the latter attracts a different crowd with a different level of expertise. If you can, try to garner visitor feedback as well as check the impact of those pop-ups on your advertisement click throughs and subscription rates. You should also see if it hurts the number of people visiting deeper pages on your site - this might be an indication that they got lost after they saw your pop-up.

5. Browser Start Page
The average user seems to rely on his start page which is usually set for him by default by his ISP. Since such users learned to access the Net from that page, and they access a search engine from that page, that start page becomes the launching pad from which they access the Internet.
Some sites apparently realise this, and thus try to get visitors to change their start page to point to a page on their site. This is easy to accomplish for visitors using Internet Explorer ("IE") since the start page can be changed with a script in IE. They provide a link to the script which the user merely has to click to change the start page.
If you are planning to create your own start page for your visitors, my suggestion is that you also put links to search engines on that page or perhaps even put a search box directly on that page (some search engines even provide you the HTML code to do this). This makes the page more useful to those users, thus increasing the chances that they will stick to your start page. That is, don't just stick your advertisements onto that page. Make it useful as well.
Note that the fact that they rely on the start page does not mean that they stay an inordinate amount of time on it staring at it. Bear this in mind before you persuade all your visitors to use your start page. You might wind up paying for the bandwidth each time they log on without correspondingly gaining from the advertising revenue.

The Average-User-Friendly Site
It is possible to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the "average user" in the design and planning of your web site. Doing so not only produces a user friendly site, but also helps you accomplish the goals for your site.

Copyright 2002-2003 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.

Web design - A Quick Loading Site

Do you want your site to load quickly? If it is your personal homepage, it may be a big deal to you. If you are trying to run a business, or offer people important information, this can be very important. If your front page takes a great deal of time to load into a browser, then you may want to do a little redesigning to increase the number of visitors that decide to stay at your site.

First, remember that not everyone has a T1, cable modem, or ISDN connection to the internet. In fact, there are still a large number of surfers with modems less than 56K. So, as web designers we must see to it that our sites load as quickly as possible without losing anything important.

Let's start with the obvious bandwidth hogs: images and other media. My suggestion here is to take out every form of multimedia embedded in you front page except for images. Sure, a background song can be nice, but these sound files can take up a great deal of bandwidth, especially if the sound is a .wav file. (I made a 30 second .wav on my computer- It came out around 140K). Videos can be even more taxing, (1 MB or more at times) and should probably be avoided unless absolutely necessary. As a surfer, if I have to wait more than 10 seconds for something like this to load, I'm tempted to hit "Stop" or "Back". So if you use these, keep the file sizes small (Probably 30-40K or less would be OK). Better yet, save them for a later page.

Your images will be your next big worry. These can also get quite large, so caution is necessary when dealing with images. For starters, do not make an image any larger than you need it to be for the effect you desire. If you have an image that is 600 pixels x 600 pixels, your page could take forever to load. One of the easiest ways to reduce the file size of your image is to simply give the image smaller dimensions. Go to your image editing program, and resize or resample your image to make it smaller. You can also compress your images using special services on the web which reduce the file size of images for you, and let you choose the images that still look good once they are compressed. There are links to an image program, an image rendering tutorial, and image file size reduction services at the bottom of the article for you.

After you have the images as compact as you can make them, you can save loading time on other pages by using one or more of the images from the front page on other pages. The image you loaded for the viewer on the front page will be in the browser's cache, and will load instantly when it is called on your other pages! This will allow you to load other things you may need without needing to worry about the image again.

Another trick you can use is to define the width and height in all of your image tags. This way, the browser knows how much space the image will use on the page, and will not have to adjust everything once the image starts loading. It will save a little time, and will also keep the page from jumping when an image loads.

Finally, be sure your front page is as short as possible as well. A longer page can take a long time to load, even if it is all text. Put extra information on another page and use a link for people to go view it. You will save a little extra time, and maybe reduce clutter a little bit.
Well, I am done thinking for today, maybe I'll have a few more speed tips for you in a future article. Until then, have fun with your speed enhanced web sites!

source: http://www.pageresource.com/zine/quick.htm

Looking at Screen Size and Web Page Resolutions

Web page resolution is a big deal. Depending upon where you go, you should design pages for the lowest common denominator (640x480), the most common (800x600), or the most cutting edge (1280x1024 or 1024x768). But the truth is, you should design your site for the customers who come to it.

Basic Resolution Facts
640x480 is not dead
While 640x480 is not as required as it used to be, 640x480 is still around. Older computers, laptops with smaller screens, and people who need larger fonts do browse the Web. Even if you choose not to design your page to this resolution you should test your site at this resolution.

800x600 is not guaranteed
Many Web site design guides recommend designing Web sites for 800x600 resolution. While this resolution is more common on the Web at large, this may not be the case for your customers. If you're planning on redesigning your Web site, take a few weeks to analyze your browser statistics to determine the most common resolutions used by your customers.

1024x768 and higher are still less common
This resolution can be fairly hard to read for many people. A 14-inch flat panel monitor might support 1024x768, but the text is virtually unreadable. Also, many computers sold are set up with lower resolutions by default.

Resolution Items to Think About

Not all users maximize
If you determine that your customers browse at 1024x768, you may be building pages that require horizontal scrolling. Why? Because while they are browsing at that resolution, they don't maximize their browser window, so 800x600 might fit their window better.

Don't forget the browser
Browsers subtract as much as 50 pixels on the right and left, and 200 pixels on the top and bottom. So if you create a table that's 800 pixels wide, customers with maximized browsers on 800x600 resolution screens will have to scroll horizontally.

What to Do?

Determine who views your site
Review your Web logs, or put up a poll or a script to determine what your readers actually use. Use the real-world browser size script to track your readers.
Base your redesign on your customers
When you redesign your site, build it based on the facts of your Web site. Do not base it on statistics of "the Web" or other sites.
Test your site in various resolutions
Either change your own screen size or use a testing site.
Don't expect your customers to change
They won't. And placing restrictions on them just encourages them to leave.

source: http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesign/a/aa123002a.htm