Multiple variant web page size increase penalty?

**forresthowie** · 15 June 2016, 01:36 PM

Hi all,
I'm sure this has been covered before but my searches didn't bring anything up. I'm doing a variety of web seo checks
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ and
http://www.clickminded.com/seo-check-site-analysis/
and in both cases my web page loading time increases with a new variant. I'm already struggling to produce a page which is graphically exciting but isn't too massive in terms of file size and load speed.
Am I right in thinking that each new variant increases the web page load (and either doubles it or comes close to doing so?)
If anyone could kindly post a link to a post about having 'visually appealing' multiple variants without killing load time please could you post them?
Many thanks
Robert

**Egg Bramhill** · 15 June 2016, 03:14 PM

Am I right in thinking that each new variant increases the web page load (and either doubles it or comes close to doing so?)

Yes, each new variant will increase the load time, BUT by a very small amount. Xara only creates one of each page for the site. So there's only one index.htm, contact.htm, about.htm for example. Provided you've shared assets across the variants, the increase in load time is minimal. All the pages assets are held within the index_htm_folder. There will be only one image shared by all variants for example.

A Xara created site checks the viewport size and determines how the page is to be displayed in the browser window.

How many variants are you creating?

**Egg Bramhill** · 15 June 2016, 03:18 PM

Robert, re those SEO sites, a member recently said these SEO services were akin to snake oil vendors. Not 100% correct but not to far off in my opinion.

Try using :
https://tools.pingdom.com/

**forresthowie** · 15 June 2016, 03:45 PM

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Robert, re those SEO sites, a member recently said these SEO services were akin to snake oil vendors. Not 100% correct but not to far off in my opinion.

Try using :
https://tools.pingdom.com/

Yes I can imagine!
Thank you so much for your help. What's baffling me is this... the maths isn't working out for me.

I load a page with text only and it (according to ClickMinded) weighs in at 433kb and loads in just over a second.
This has two variants - neither has an image.
Then I add three images, at a total size of 336kb...
and I share these across both variants...
Then the total load size comes in (according to ClickMinded) at 1354kb and takes a lot longer to load.

I can't work it out.

**zaphodeist** · 15 June 2016, 04:24 PM

Utilities>>Web Properties>>Website - If the Retina box is checked the number of images increases and they are heavier

Click image for larger version.

Name: retina.jpg
Views: 102
Size: 15.5 KB
ID: 113054

**forresthowie** · 15 June 2016, 04:49 PM

Thank you for your help. I just did what you said and I'm sure it will make a difference when I re-add my images.
As is my test page currently has no images I can see but ClickMinded SEO check says it is showing 24 images on the page. Aside from the home button and the logo I can't see any? Could this be an issue?
Thank you for all the help I'm being given and apologies for taking up so much time.
Yours,
Robert

**Egg Bramhill** · 15 June 2016, 06:14 PM

As is my test page currently has no images I can see but ClickMinded SEO check says it is showing 24 images on the page. Aside from the home button and the logo I can't see any? Could this be an issue?

If you're using a drop shadow on your page background each variant will have a image for the background- not large 5 to 10 Kb at most. There will also be a transparent gif named 0.gif and a png named 1.png which will match the pasteboard background. Buttons will also have images, 1 for off and 1 for over each.

However 24 images seems high. What happens if you turn off the retina images as John suggests? Can you attach your test xar?

**forresthowie** · 15 June 2016, 06:20 PM

Hi there,
Thanks again,
The retina thing didn't make much of a difference but this was no doubt because I was working on the page with all the images (I could see) deleted.
http://www.actualeducation.co.uk/test/blank.htm - this shows as having 16 images.
PS sorry, what's my xar?

**Egg Bramhill** · 15 June 2016, 06:36 PM

I'll look at the site in a minute. Xara has two file extensions, either .xar or .web. So if you could attach your testsite web file

**forresthowie** · 15 June 2016, 06:59 PM

Oh I could do that but this test page is just because I've recently hit a brick wall...and sadly the site is well underway! I've deleted all the other pages and just kept this one in - hopefully that will help.
Thank you so much. I'm most likely to have done something really stupid at somepoint.
Yours,June 2016 after image optimisation version 4 one size.web
Robert