Determining Load Time

So now that you know load time is important how do you find out what your sites load time is? Netmechanic offers a subscription to a service you can get for your website that tells you this and they also offer a free 1-time tool as well at http://www.netmechanic.com/products/HTML_Toolbox_FreeSample.shtml

All you have to do is enter your website address in the box and hit Test Now. Give Netmechanic a minute or so to process your information and then your reports are ready. Click on the detailed load time report and Netmechanic will tell you not only how long it takes to load but also which images, etc are taking the longest. They highlight the worst offenders in red. And for each image Netmechanic also tells you how long that image takes and if you click on the image it will show you different optimized versions of the image and how they will look. Im sure you will be amazed at how much less time it will take to load a jpeg that was saved at 90% quality versus 100% quality.

Remember some people still have 28.8 modems, and while that number is coming down if you want to make your site accessible to everyone you should keep the load time as small as possible.