If you've ever designed a website, then you've probably already found that it can be tempting to squeeze as many graphics as you can into your site design to achieve a certain look. However, this should be avoided at all costs, as doing so would most certainly end in graphical overload. There are a number of reasons why graphical overload is a bad thing. Here are a few reasons why graphical overload is problematic for any site, and ways in which you can remedy the problem:
Your pages take too long to load. Graphical overload will greatly increase your loading time, and people are, by nature, impatient. If you place too many graphics on a page or incorporate ones that are too large, the page will take so long to load that the average person (who normally only gives a site about 5 seconds to load before clicking off) will simply grow impatient and go elsewhere.
In order to prevent this from happening, you can use fewer pictures and use a graphic editing program to re-size your images. You'll have to do it via a graphics editor, rather than simply resizing it in CSS or HTML, because you actually be making it smaller this way. Simply resizing it while writing the code will still result in slower loading times. Also, use compression in your graphics editor, as JPEG files can typically be compressed to around 25% before you even see a quality difference. Fiddle around with it a bit to see which compression levels and formats are best.
It's just too cluttered. If you have more than 4 images on your web page, than you are guilty of graphical overload. When you have more than a few images on a page, then your visitor simply doesn't know where to focus their attention. It's much like a newspapers are formatted. You'll never see more than 1 picture on the front page, because the editor's understand that any more than would detract from the main story. With a website, however, you are dealing with an even smaller space, so keep it to one (or two images, if you really have to), and provided important information below the image.
The website should be focused on content, not graphics. Whenever visitors to your site are having to search through your site for the information they came for, or simply find it difficult to focus on the actual content because of all those graphics, then you're experiencing graphical overload. So, only use the graphics that are absolutely necessary, and avoid using them just because they look good.
The exception to the rule...photo galleries. Of course, if you have a photo gallery on your page, then there are going to have to be multiple images. However, why not create thumbnails, rather than just putting the pictures up there. By doing this, your visitors can just click on the thumbnail to see the larger image, and you will avoid longer loading times and increased bandwidth.
Avoid graphical overload by following these simple tips. Graphics in your web design should be used sparingly, and should be used solely to support your content, even if that content happens to be graphical.
