My webpages are built using CSS and I have got the art of squeezing bytes out of images down to a T but yet my webpages still have a horrible habit of loading slowly or (just as bad) loading image by image giving a horrible stuttering effect when the page loads.

 

Does anyone have any tips as to how to help improve this?

 

For example two of my worst offenders are http://www.bowes-mitchell.co.uk/index.php (Please ignore the hideous splash page and the 'div-itus' - It was a while back that this was coded) and http://www.ukbiometrics.co.uk/

About "http://www.bowes-mitchell.co.uk/index.php" you should control/check site with another hosting solution, http requests pausing sometimes. The content doesn't loading continuously and it shows itself slow. Also 224kb flash a bit problem, if you can; change this flash to 1 minimal swf with external sources.

 

About "http://www.ukbiometrics.co.uk/ " this page strangely loading faster than other one, even total size bigger than www.bowes-mitchell.co.uk/index.php. Looks like overall page size and counts of http requests is problem.

 

Both sites are coded with php, if you didn't try you should look php outbuffering to speed up your websites, but not in all cases outbuffering providing speed up. Also you can check with this tool to see what is slowing down the website http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ .

try preloaing any images you'll be opening later.

Use CSS Sprites with jQuery

Putting all your images into one file will save on HTTP requests and ultimately image file size, due to hopefully saving white space

 

And to avoid hosting jQuery and having the user download that as well, just link to googles one like they do in the article and save even more if they have been there and cached, which is a high probability.

Possibly stating the obvious here, but having a decent host helps.

@gaz545, good point, forgot about that. It takes a bit more forward planning, but its always a better idea.