The Kestrel Echo*

As broadband speeds have generally improved the demands of bandwidth heavy content, integrating social platforms, software frameworks on further compound web pages already over burdened with excessive graphics and complex page structures. As website design has developed sophistication so has the expectation of the web user. As broadband services have improved web designers and developers have become increasingly lazy on the issue of website optimisation.

This not only affects the download speed but impinges on user experience. Worst of all, for web developers,  it gives even more advantage to platform specific apps that tend to be more focused, detracting further from the web as an attractive platform. Never mind how unappealing bloated, media saturated pages are to the rapidly rising numbers of mobile web users.

Taking a lead from this Mens Health article on the subject of sustained weight loss I am going to explore what we can do today to make the web a leaner, more responsive space.

State your weight loss aims and focus
What is the core purpose or aim of your site? It is vital to reach a definitive answer which everyone involved in your site buys into this as any room for disagreement down the line can only result in compromise. Compromise can only result in your weight loss efforts being diminished or halted entirely.

Mental preparation for weight loss
With a clear vision of your priorities prepare yourself for some stubborn bargaining with both yourself and your site support team. New feature requests, new content types, etc. will be be proposed/demanded and it will be up to you to remain focused on your top priority, a lighter and more responsive website.

Keep a food diary to monitor weight loss
There are a wealth of free tools available to help you easily achieve this. The YSlow plug-in for Firefox is a good tool for dissecting the components of your web pages. It gives a clear break-down of a pages components, as well as the nifty Grade overview of a page. All the while giving useful feedback on how you can go about improving it. Your personal trainer, kinda.

You really should have traffic tracking software in place already, most likely something like Google Analytics. Yes it does introduce a page weight all of its own yet I think the benefits it offers out-weight the page burden. Without measured progress and perspective how can any progress be tracked.

Lifestyle and weight loss
There is the old acronym Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). I think this has huge relevance in this context, though perhaps a small adjustment to the wording would focus that relevance further. Keep It Streamlined Stupid. Also, there is no reason why this shouldn’t also apply to the number of categories of content you publish, the number of products you want to sell or variety of information you attempt to remain authoritative over. Remaining focused in this regard can also reap great rewards, least of all is a slightly quieter mind.

KISS – let this be the Occam’s razor that keeps us focused on the simplest answer being the best, though conversely the simplest may not be the easiest to implement.  For instance is it better to install a plug-in to make some third-party functionality available or take the slightly longer route of going through the third-party API yourself and implementing only what you need. Thus removing any unnecessary extra code.

Be realistic about weight loss
There are aspects of a modern web page that can’t be omitted. We of course need the underlying HTML page. Without at least some CSS our pages will be so unappealing to visitors that most likely there won’t be any in no time, so again some is required. The reality is that we must compromise between streamlining pages and delivering something engaging. For me the balancing point rests on requirements rather than trends, common sense over feature fetishism, Getting Real instead of MS Project.

Cut out snacks to maintain weight loss
There is always the temptation to add quick hacks to implement a new feature. Inevitably these hacks are not done as well as they could be if they were well planned. They add bloat to your pages, slow the page delivery and are doubtless non-essential.

Eat a healthy diet to maintain weight loss
Keeping constantly up-to-date with the latest versions of all the software you use. Keep up-to-date on the most effective ways to use that same software. Don’t sleep – stay tuned in and actively focused on making and keeping your pages bloat free. Otherwise there is the very real reality of you waking up some day soon and finding your website has joined the expanding bloated hordes. The same way so many of us humans have.

Keep it Streamlined Stupid.