How to Prepare Images for Your Web Site – Part 3
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost 

Image optimization significantly improves your site's effectiveness. Whether your success is measured in revenue per user, page views, unique visitors, or pure profit, accelerating your Web site makes a huge difference. 

Part 1 of this article discussed when to use images for your 
web site and what image file formats to use on the Web.
Part 2 discussed how to optimize your images for the Web
Part 3 will present more ways to optimize your images so 
your web pages will be fast loading. 

Studies show that a one-second improvement reduces click-aways up to 65%. Faster page views means more page views and a better user experience. This leads to higher user retention and therefore more revenue. 

Here are a few ways this can be done: 

Creating Thumbnails
Make 2 copies of your large image in your favorite image 
editing software (Fireworks or Photoshop). Make a small
“thumb-sized” version of your large image and put it on
your first page. Put the large version of your image on another page. Link the small image to the larger one. When visitors click on the small image it will take them immediately to the larger image. 

Pre-load graphics 
If you want a large image to load fast, you can pre-load the graphic on another page. Create a 1x by 1x pixel of the larger image and insert it at the bottom of an earlier page 
(it will appear as a dot and the visitor won't even know it is there). The browser caches the image. When the visitor arrives on the page with the large image, it appears almost immediately.