Keep website load time low
Load time is important because not everybody is on high speed Internet. There are more and more people getting it every day but there are still a lot of people on dial-up. I have not seen any current data on this other than
55% of all of all US households have broadband. Dial-up is on its way out but it is not dead. I have seen some sites that actually had 1 MB sized web pages using flash and audio. You can have large web pages if you specialize in media such as audio, video, or pictures. Everyone else should keep their pages small. My rule has always been to keep web pages below 200k. This loads just fine in dial up. Make it smaller if you can. If you have a busy website this can save you money in bandwidth costs. Sure it is easier to not worry about this but why would you want to risk losing a percentage of your customers. Lack of broadband does not mean lack of money. A lot of dial up users are AOL users and they are often sitting at their computer with credit card in hand.
