In this post, I will look a little deeper into using YSlow to optimize your web pages for speed.

Let’s start off with the Grade section. Usually, when you click the Grade tab, YSlow will quickly run through a few processes and show you a gray progress bar. It is collecting information, analyzing and grading your page’s performance. YSlow shows your overall grade in the top left, and by default, it will show all 22 metrics (in some order that I haven’t figured out yet) and their grade. Click each of the six sections on the top to show only metrics in those categories (e.g., server). The Grade tab is a great way to remember some things to check in analyzing your page’s performance. Remember, though, not all 22 metrics should be taken as hard and fast rules. It often depends on the type of your site and your specific situation.

One way to quickly see what is going on with your performance is to analyze how many HTTP requests (i.e. any request for any type of file your browser makes when displaying a web page) are occurring as well as how much data is being downloaded. The Statistics tab shows a nice overview of this information with pie charts to boot. There is obviously a direct correlation between the amount of data that is downloaded to the amount of time it takes to fully display your page. The Statistics tab shows the total data amount, or “weight,” that is downloaded as well as how many HTTP requests were needed. It breaks this into two helpful categories: Empty Cache and Primed Cache. Empty cache represents the situation where you have never been to that site before and you visit the page that is being analyzed for the first time. Technically, it means that browser does not have anything the page requests already stored in temporary memory. After making those requests, it stores what requested files it can into temporary memory so that the next time it needs to request those files, it can just pull them from the temporary storage, which is many times faster than requesting it over the Internet. Primed Cache represents the scenario when your browser has at least some of the requested files already stored in memory.

Next to each of the two pie charts, YSlow displays a categorized table of items it requested and the “weight” of all items in each category. The categories are: HTML/Text, JavaScript File, Stylesheet File, CSS Image, Image and Favicon. If either your empty or primed cache shows more than one request for a CSS image, these images may be good candidates for CSS image sprites. Image sprites is a technique used to reduce the amount of HTTP Requests by putting all multiple images in one larger image (like a pasteboard) and using the CSS background-position rule to only show the appropriate image at the appropriate area of your web page layout. How practical this may be depends on whether any of the images reside on other servers and whether any of them are 8-bit (256 color) images. If the files exist on other servers, you should ask yourself if you should combine them. One reason you may not combine them, even all images are full-color is that the image is often updated by some other website that resides on that 3rd party server.

Use similar logic for determining if you should combine the Javascript and Stylesheet files that your site uses. To be able to combine the files, you’ll have to know which files to combine. That is where the Components tab comes into play. I’ll cover that section in my next post. Until then, enjoy your break.

What is Lorem Ipsum? Lorem Ipsum, also known as “greeking” in the design industry, is simply dummy text that is used as a placeholder for the actual text that will fill a certain area of a design.

Blocks of text are essentially visual elements in a design. They are groupings of smaller shapes that make up larger ones visually. It is extremely important to keep this in mind when designing, because you may run into a problem when the Lorem Ipsum you’re using does not match the word count of the actual text that is coming from the client. You might have a beautiful design in the beginning and in the end have to redesign entire areas to fit your content.

Think of page layout being similar to putting a puzzle together. If you are missing pieces of the puzzle, it is much harder to put together and can be quite a headache for the designer and later, the client. If there are spaces that are detrimental to the design, then it is all important to acquire the actual text that will be used before starting the layout process. In some cases, the client may be working on the content and can only give an idea of the word count that will be used. That’s when Lorem Ipsum comes in handy!

Another useful attribute of Lorem Ipsum for designers is that clients won’t get hung-up on whether or not you spelled “the” correctly. They may have the urge to read and make comments that are not directly related to the design. Lorem Ipsum keeps everyone on the same page and allows the creativity of a design to be noticed.

I cannot stress enough the importance of having a solid landing page to direct website visitors to. This is especially true when you are running a Cost Per Click (CPC) Campaign. If you are going to pay to drive a visitor to your site, you ought to make sure the visitor is sent to a page that clearly and concisely represents not only your offerings, but more importantly the offering that this particular visitor was searching for. In other words, it is rather frustrating for a searcher to click on an ad for a pair of Nike shoes and instead be sent to a page for Nike shirts. If you’re lucky, your visitor will be patient enough to go through your navigation and locate the Nike shoes page they should have been sent to in the first place. More than likely, however, the searcher you already paid for will just click on the back browser and find another ad. So how can online retailers prevent bounces like this from occurring? Although there is no way to guarantee a low bounce rate, there are steps you can take to improve it and your landing pages are a great place to start.

A good landing page will possess a clear cut call to action. What do you want your visitors to do? Examples: Click here to receive your coupon, Fill out this form to generate your free report, Enter your email address to be added to our monthly newsletter, etc.

In addition and beyond just the importance of user experience, Google very specifically factors in landing page quality and relevance as part of their algorithm. This algorithm determines where your ads will appear and how much you will have to bid. Therefore, having an effective landing page will not only improve the experience for your searchers, but also afford you the ability to garner better online real estate and at a lower CPC.

What are you waiting for? Get busy and start to improve your landing pages!