Minimizing load time for web pages

Web page optimization can be approached from two sides: the user and the editor. Users can improve loading times by optimizing the configuration of a web browser and removing unwanted content with the help of various browser extensions.

In this article, however, we will focus on the editor side. We will be looking at issues that can assist you in preparing and displaying the contents of your web pages.

As an editor, you are responsible for the content of web pages. In addition to creating the individual elements of the web presence like text, tables, and images, editing tasks frequently include web page design.

This involves format templates in the form of cascading style sheets (CSS) [1] and also active content produced with JavaScript, such as the popular components Ajax, jQuery, and JSON. You can tame these technologies with the help of various tools for validating content.

Readability

Formulating content that is as easy to read as possible may sound like a totally obvious concept. Even so, authors frequently devote only passing attention to readability. Ideas and the text that originates from them need to be expressed clearly so that, for example, automated translations are successful, thereby allowing you to reach readers from all over the world.

The back translation of an automatically generated translation is a good indicator of the international attractiveness of a web page (Figure 1). You can use the translation services from Google [2] or Yandex (in Russian) [3] to that end. If you cannot easily recreate the meaning of the text after the second translation, then you should think about using less complicated grammar and simpler sentence structures. This approach gives quick and improved results and noticeably increases success.

Figure 1: "If" by Rudyard Kipling is still easy to understand after an automatic translation into Spanish and than back into English.

Generators

Whether you create web pages automatically or on the basis of a template, you should take care to follow the suggestions in the "Web Page Generators" box. Following these suggestions might look like a lot of work, but the end effect will be that things will run faster on a variety of levels.

Web browsers process valid data significantly faster because there is no post-processing on the part of the rendering engine.

Additionally, search engine crawlers will select the content and the page titles together with the corresponding key words, thereby figuring out how to make sense of your web page.

Web page identification and relevance of a web page to search requests depend in part on how the questions listed above are resolved. If done properly, the search engine will be able to categorize your web page more precisely according to its own criteria, and the page can later be found again via the index of the search engine.

This increases the hit rate and the number of visitors, which in turn has an effect on the impact and relevance of the web presence. Content and advertisements don't count for much unless the page also has visitors.