Optimizing images seems less and less important these days as access speeds get higher and higher. And yet
slow web pages is still one of the biggest complaints people have about the web. While I realize that all pages are different, what is your general guideline or rule-of thumb for the total size of images on one web page?
WebSiteOptimization.com recommends all images should be less than 100K per page to keep the download fast. What do you think?
It’s the proverbial piece of string argument. It’s dependant on what the aim and purpose of your site is.
As you say, all pages are different, and it’s going to be a struggle to keep within that 100k if you’re working on a ‘gallery’ page/site – even using thumbs and lightboxing the resulting images for example.
I’m old school and prefer to worry about the content, layout and readability rather than filling the page with graphics. Given, images are a necessity, but I always try to keep these to an absolute minimum: header, 1 or 2 page graphics and minimally sized icons. Doing that, it’s easily possible to have a good looking site and keep it around the 50k mark or less.
Of course, the quality of your hosting provider is a major factor for image swamped sites too.
I put down 100k as the max size I aim for when putting images on a page. But there is an excpetion and that is when I am doing photo galleries when I will let the photos go up to about 350k.
On a non-photo gallery page I try and keep teh combined size of all images to a max of 300k so as not to hit browsing speed too hard
100k is the size at which my eyebrows go up… with galleries as mentioned above being the exception. More important than size is combining images for a page into a single sprite. A single 200k image sprite will deliver much faster page load than (10) 20k images — but then everyone knows that
Size and/or quality. So, would you upload an image which you proudly reduced to 30k and looks rubbish? Or make an executive decision on behalf of your viewers that 100k is worth the wait.
Pressing ‘Save for Web’ is the easy part. Having an eye for a good image to support your story or convey a message, make it look good, and make sure its a suitable k size is as rare as a Willy Wonka chocolate bar with a gold ticket.
I have found this to be subjective. Some of my clients let pass images I would raise my eyebrows at and walk away shaking my head like I am some kind of design police. ho hum..
Many social network sites know that people have no idea about optimization and so allow huge file size uploads, to then post-optimize using server side scripting…. leaving the sender none-the-wiser about what could / should be done.
So, unlimited bandwidth and monthly download usage should be on your hosting must have list. ;^)
100k… sure , whatever. . .
The size of images is very important. The images always should be small and optimized. Only if there is really need to show a bigger image of a product or anything else, then a link like “Enlarge” should be available.
Even on high speed Internet connections, downloading large files again and again may crowd the hard drive, as the temporary folders of browsers may store them for later use. So, the problems are everywhere.
A simple image on a website should have few KB. For me, 1MB is big.