Designing Light Web Pages
Medical website designers are charged with creating informative medical websites that all patients have the ability to access. In a day and age where technologies such as Flash and Rich Internet Applications can make a physician website aesthetically pleasing, using them is not always good practice, as these technologies can actually prevent some patients from being able to view the doctor’s website. To ensure that everyone can view a web page, medical website design services need to get in the practice of designing light web pages.
What Is a Light Web Page?
Professional website designers measure web pages by file size. Everything that makes up a web page adds to the page’s total size. These elements include:
- images and pictures
- content
- Flash
- Rich Internet Applications
- JavaScript
- Cascading Style Sheets
As the website designer adds more and more of these elements, the file size increases. As the file size increases, so does the time it takes for the page to load in the visitor’s browser. If the visitor is stuck waiting around too long for a large page to load, you can be assured that eventually they’ll leave your medical website and look elsewhere.
Does This Mean No Flash?
Flash can add a great deal to any physician website. It’s attractive, can be interactive, and can be a great way to deliver content. Unfortunately, it does cause a tremendous increase in a web page’s file size.
This does not mean that Flash, or other size-increasing technologies, need to be left out of website design for doctors altogether. Flash can be a great tool if used with some best practices in mind:
- Always design a secondary page without Flash for visitors who do not have broadband. This allows them to access your site’s content without being affected by slow Internet speeds.
- Use Flash when it enhances your website, not just for the sake of using Flash.
- Design Flash content wisely. If you decide you absolutely must use Flash, streamline its design as much as possible to keep file sizes at a minimum.