Understanding why web page content size limits

At pagebuzz.com our online website builder imposes limits in many areas including images sizes and content sizes.

This has been a constant battle with customers that do not understand the difference between a picture the size of a poster and one the size of a wallet. Since they appear the same on their computer screen, they don't have a need or desire to understand the actual size or volume of data used by one image over another.

However, it has always been an issue for page download time. For that reason we have always limited the size of the upload files to keep the pages lean and fast to load. The limit does not change the image displayed, it simply sizes the image into the optimal size for the page, so no additional or unnecessary data is transferred.

As the years passed, people argued with us that it does not matter, because everyone is on broadband and even big pictures are fast to download.

Well, everyone is not on broadband and with the huge increase of mobile devices accessing websites the issue is compounded as the websites are accessed over cell towers.

While most major cities offer reasonable speed to cell customers, the vast majority of areas in the USA are still very slow.

You will see just how painful this is when you travel out of a metopolitan area and into the rural areas and experience speeds so slow you want to die.

The fact is, until all of your users have massive speeds it does not make sense to overload your web pages.

Think of it this way.

If you build a car, you don't load it with lead and make it weigh 20,000 pounds.

If you did, it would be slow, get horrible gas mileage and drive like a boat. Having the car light, fast and efficient is better. When you stop on the brakes, you stop. In a heavy car, you slow down over a greater distance. It is just less responsive.

So why build a webpage that is less responsive? Why load up so much content that the user is waiting and waiting for the page to load?

There is really no point, except that when you build the page, you are unaware that one picture is like a feather and the other is like a load of bricks.

You can see the difference in images by looking for the properties of the image, usually by a simple right click on your computer.

You can see the sizes in MB and Pixels and see that most images on your computer are much larger than they screen which they are being displayed. That is so they can be printed at a much higher quality, but not ideal to be used on web pages.

So here is the rub.

You have to learn more about image sizes and understand what it all means to make a better webpage.

That is not true if you use pagebuzz.com's website builder because it will check the sizes for you and resize the images automatically. Unless the image is over the default upload size limit and then it will tell you to resize the image before uploading to get it down to a reasonable size.

The reasons we limit upload sizes is because oversize images will tax the server as it resizes the images and take up excessive bandwidth in the process. It is like uploading a pallet of bricks and asking the server to unload all of them for you.

So it is important that the images are smaller to start with so the server does not crash trying to manage heavy and unnecessary loads.

It is all about speed and performance of your website.

We are not asking anyone to become a media expert, just understand that smaller is better. Faster is better and by keeping content sizes optimized the pages work better and ultimately, your sales will be higher and customers will be happier.