Posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 3:58 pm.
Whilst on holiday (vacation) in North Africa last week, I watched an interesting news report on BBC World News. The reported covered an experiment where a Durban IT company raced a traditional carrier pigeon against the speed of the ADSL Internet service provided in South Africa.
With a memory Stick strapped to its’ leg, Winston the carrier pigeon took just 2 hours to carry the 4GB of data 60 miles. In contrast the ADSL had sent a meager 4% of the data between the two offices.
Watch The BBC Reports
- BBC: Africa Gets Connected – http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/africa_gets_connected.html
- BBC: Pigeon Vs Broadband – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8248056.stm
Broadband for all?
What this report taught me as a UK based web designer, was that if I wanted to make my websites more accessible to the world (and not just the UK), then file sizes are VERY important. Having been pampered with reasonable Broadband Internet access in the UK for years, it can become easy to forget that not all of your web-site’s global audience share the same luxury. Optimising your web-site’s file sizes is as important as ever – particularly if you are intending to share your web-site with the rest of the world.
Average Global Download Speeds (MBPS)
Our simple diagram below demonstrates the dramatic differences in average internet download speeds across the world. Upon closer analysis some results are suprising.
In last week’s web design video blog, Michael and Nick talked (and sang!) about Optimising CSS. This week’s video takes a step back and looks at the web-site as a whole.
Video Script
James: Hi and welcome to our video blog – Whilst I was in Tunisia, I watched a BBC report that demonstrated how South Africa have been suffering with ‘poor internet connection speeds’ ahead of the new Seacom cable that is being laid under the sea connecting Mumbai to east Africa.
James: For more about this BBC report, check out our supporting blog post at crearedesign.co.uk/blog
Nick: What is important to consider when being based in ‘well connected’ countries like North America, Japan or Western Europe is that not everyone in the world can load your web pages as quickly as you can.
James: Optimising your web pages files is as important as ever – particularly if you or your client value the global market. This chart – Which is available in a clearer format on our supporting blog, demonstrates the contrast between different country’s average download speed.
Nick: Continuing last week’s theme of file optimising, we have prepared a few recommendations that could be integrated into a web designer’s system of designing, preparing, launching and maintaining a website.
James: Create a ‘Low Graphics’ version of your website that is clearly linked from your homepage. This lower resolution version of your website may exclude CSS, images and be a simple presentation of HTML Text. This is also referred to as a ‘text only’ version of the website.
James: A good example of this can been seen on the BBC News web-site or even the newly launched ‘Lite’ version of Facebook.
Nick: Be Careful when creating ‘Low Graphic’ versions of your website as if not done correctly – can harm your Organic SEO.
James: Build your website correctly – use DIV’s and CSS to create your pages and templates – ensuring that your content to code ratio is in favour of the content. Where possible use real HTML text in place of Graphics – this will also help with your SEO.
Saving graphics from Photoshop using the ‘Save For Web Feature’.
Use media in moderation – Flash, Video etc.
Our final recommendation just again re-enforces using the minimal amount of coding possible on all files – whether it be CSS, HTML, Scripts
Channel
on September 20th, 2009 Says:
I fully understand the concept of optimising file sizes to address the needs of a wider market, espcially as broadband may not be as common in many developing countries as it is here in the UK or in Europe and North America. However my website purely targets UK. I am not certain if optimising file size of my website is as big a concern for my as it was a few years ago. In the market my company’s website targets, I think it is better if I offer richer content with multi-media which unfortunately also increases file size.
The issue of file size that you have pointed out is certainly important however its relevance depends largely on the market your website targets.