Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies

OVERWEIGHT SITES

Nobody likes to wait for a web page to display, yet most of us do just that, day after day, because companies have built “overweight” web sites. An overweight web site is one that uses too many graphics or too much complex scripting (or both). Put simply, the greater the weight, the greater the wait.

And although overweight web sites can be a mild frustration for users in the U.S., they are a major obstacle to users outside the U.S., where high-speed Internet connections are often few and far between.

Have a Coke and Some Patience The Coca-Cola U.S. web site, shown in Figure 3.3, is a bandwidth hog. It makes extensive use of Macromedia Flash, a software development tool used to create animated sites. The home ...