Using Graphics on your site

The web is not a print and a home page is not a magazine cover . If your customer is looking for your magazine in a news stand you want your magazine to jumb right at them and say buy me this is where a good big size picture will do the magic. On the web , the user is already at the site and has already chosen to do business with it so let's keep it usable and attractive looking at the same time .Let's start with three rules of thumb when using images and photos on your site

1- Pay attention the image file size, If you look through a book or a magazine and see all the beautiful pictures you will not care if those pictures were few bytes or gazillion megabytes, In the print world there is no experimental penalty to viewing images with large file sizes .To the contrary on the web large files which means longer downlaoding time that can cause your audience to leave your site in frustration ,regardless if that image that is being loaded is astonishing one or not.

2- Try to repeat same graphical element throughout the site to give it a special style, you can obtain this graphical element from your logo shape or from the concept of your design .

3- Use the same style of graphics throughout your site. For example, use all black and white images, make them the same shape apply the same effects on all and use same border if any.

You want your site to be visually appealing, attractive and loads fast and at the same time you want to use lots of images .So what are you going to do?

Solutions for this problem is to make sure to:

	Optimize Your Images - Optimizing essentially reduces the file size of a picture so it loads on a Web page as quickly as possible.
	Use compressed jpeg for photographic images or continuous tone artwork
	Use compressed gif for graphics or images that contain line art
	If your site is a business site use images sparingly use a lot of copy (site text) to convey your goals
	If you site is an art site and pictures and images are essential , Use thumbnail for displaying larger images and try to use your splash colors using html coding whentever it is possible
	As much as possible keep download size for each page to a max of 10 seconds

Always remember, what appeals to the owner or the designer is not necessarily the same as what visitors need. Most of the times visitors are looking for specific information, and they want to get there quickly. Use images to accent and enhance the website, images should be used to provide a tasteful, professional frame for your copy and not replace it.