By Florie Lyn Masarate

Have you noticed that websites today are adapting the concept of television?

Nowadays, web sites are complete with state-of-the-art graphics, sounds and videos. To top it all up, advertisements are also rampant. On a single page alone, you get to see a lot of products or services being offered. Makes one wonder if websites are giving television a run for their money.

But what website owners are missing out is that their visitors are not there to watch television. If they were, they would not be browsing on your site in the first place.

Visitors are there for a purpose; to get information fast and leave. With all the things you have put into your site, chances are your visitors will long be gone before your main page can even load. The fact is, most are viewing your web site on a screen that is between 15 and 19 inches wide, can only see 216 colors, and can only download at 28.8 kb per second.

As a website owner, you should make sure you are on a 28.8 connection; type in the URL for your web page; hit enter, and hold your breath. Your web page should be no larger then 50K. Less than 30K is best.

Take note that the number one visited web site home page is under 21k. You heard right. Yahoo's home page is only 20k. One of the main reasons why it is quite popular in any part of the world. This might seem like very little but you really can do a lot within that size.

Why do you do that?

Use more design and fewer graphic. For a web page to be successful, it needs to download quickly and look good. The most common dilemma that owners encounter is they are torn between downloading quickly and looking good.

Instead of designing graphics and taking pictures and turning them into jpgs to make your web page look good, try using color schemes. Use cell colors to make boarders. Use the negative space on your web site. What is not there is just as important as what is there.

Remember sometimes less is more. When in doubt think of a typical visitor coming to your web page. Would that extra graphic sell them or keep them coming back again and again. If the answer is yes, by all means keep it.

If the answer is "well maybe" or "it just looks good there", yank it. Viewers will appreciate not waiting more then they have to. The web is here to make our life easier not to sit in front of a screen waiting for heavy web pages to download.

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