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3 Reasons Your Real Estate Blog Loads So Darn Slow, and the Solutions

By
Real Estate Technology with Real Estate Tomato

Slow-as-a-snail-in-molasses-in-JanuaryWant to lose the interest of a new visitor to your blog?
Ensure that it takes more than a few seconds for your blogsite to load.
Not only will you lose their attention, but your site will give the impression that it is not user-friendly.
Both are the kiss of death.

The challenge is that many of the offenders have no idea that their site is taking so long to load.

By regularly visiting their own blog, Temporary Internet Files get collected onto the site owner’s computer, facilitating the speedy display of their site, keeping them oblivious to the ugly reality.

A new visitor to your site has no 'build up' of temporary files, so their first experience entails loading all the files on your site upon visit. If you have any of the following challenges, your site may be guilty of turning off new visitors.

1. Image Size.

It's not the visual size of the image, it's the file size.
An image that appears no larger than a postage stamp can actually be a 5MB image that will take several seconds to load on even the fastest of internet connections.

The Solution:
Avoid resizing images inside your blog article editor.
This is where challenge happens. Shrinking an image in the blog editor does not make the file size any smaller.

Resize before uploading them to the blog article editor using an image editor.
My preferred free image editors:
Irfan View – Downloadable program
Picasa – Downloadable program
Pixer – Online
Picnik – Online (registration required)

To Get The 2 Remaining Reasons and Solutions You'll Need
To Make the Jump To It's Original Location on the Real Estate Tomato:

continued: 3 Reasons Your Real Estate Blog Loads So Darn Slow, and the Solutions

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Comments(9)

Matthew Zgonc
Aksland Real Estate - Modesto, CA
Realtor, CFS, CVS
Good post. Many people use too many graphics
Jan 27, 2008 11:28 AM
Jan Wood
None - Gallatin, TN
TOMATO:  I didn't have any idea I was to resize before uploading... another thing on my To-Do list.   I use Picasa all the time... love it!
Jan 27, 2008 11:51 AM
Kenneth Cole
Weichert Realtors Appleseed Group, 2043 Richmond Ave. S.I.N.Y. 10314. office phone 718-698-9797, Appleseedhomes.com... - Staten Island, NY
NYS Licensed Real Estate Salesperson
Great advise.  Thanks.  I'm saving this.
Jan 27, 2008 11:51 AM
Kay Perry
Kay Perry, Broker - College Station, TX
Great tips.  I think I need to work on my photo resizing quite a bit.  Thanks for the information.
Jan 27, 2008 12:03 PM
Marlene Bridges
Village Real Estate Services, Inc. - Laguna Hills, CA
Laguna Homes|Laguna Condos|Laguna Real Estate
Hey Tomato - Thanks for the tips. Learned some helpful new things here.achiote
Jan 27, 2008 05:15 PM
Susie Blackmon
Ocala, FL
Ocala, Horses, Western Wear, Horse Farms, Marketing

I learned about IrfanView from you guys.  I've learned TONS of things from you guys (and I'm not half way through my training).  I'm in HNL at the CRS Convention, anxious to get back home so I can resume my Tomato training.  Thanks for all you do.  I will have new things I want to do on my site now that I've picked up some great ideas here at the Convention, although I am surprised that so few people have caught on to blogging yet.  From your 'raving fan,'


 

Jan 29, 2008 10:42 PM
Jill Wente
Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate | Gary Greene - Spring, TX
Realtor, CRS, MCNE, CHMS
I did not know about the graphic size. I don't use a lot of graphics but I guess I should be resizing them.
Jan 30, 2008 04:47 AM
Real Estate Tomato
Real Estate Tomato - Cottonwood, CA
Real Estate Website Design Done Beautifully
Just to be clear.  These issues and solutions are more for the application to an Outside Blog vs an AR blog.  The reason: AR curbs image size, the # Of blog articles per page is fixed, and the sidebar is not that commonly abused with widgets (however, some certainly still are!).
Jan 30, 2008 04:50 AM
Maureen McCabe
HER Realtors - Columbus, OH
Columbus Ohio Real Estate

I took three widgets out of my side bar today because they were slowing my blog down.  I only meant to take out two... oh well.

I think I probably have an image size problem on my other blogs.

I read this the other day... went to the site to read all.  some of it stuck.  Thanks

Jan 31, 2008 11:44 PM