Speed matters for websites, that’s been common knowledge since the days when we waited literally minutes for early-era pages to load on dialup modems. But it can also matter from the standpoint of search optimization. For a quick evaluation, plug your site into Pingdom Tools or a variety of other  services for profiling your website’s speed. There are technical methods that may be available to speed things up (such as caching) and there may be bottlenecks on your site related to content, such as far too many images and images that are not optimized for the web.

One of the quickest ways to get into speed problems is falling for the old “front page is everything” trap. In this scenario, most often seen on media sites, the assumption is that the reader is always interested in browsing through a home page that covers every imaginable topic.

This assumption takes the historic knowledge of how printed newspapers are used, and presumes that website users behave in the same way.  Unfortunately, while newspaper print designers learned long ago that limiting Page One to 7 or 8 primary visual elements was the best approach, the same design teams seem to have little problem with a news site home page that features 30-40 visual elements. Crazy.

Business sites sometimes fall into the same trap, although at least in those cases, the temptation is weaker due to far less content available.

Think of better ways to draw your readers into your breadth of content. It can be done with thoughtful, descriptive navigation and clean design. Moreover, remember that home pages are not the only route into your site – search, social media and blog links will often bring your reader directly to interior content, so design of those interior pages is every bit as important.