Service & Support: Usability

Performance & Responsiveness

It is a well-known fact: website visitors have very short attention spans.

Human factor research shows that, on average, a website visitor

will not wait any longer than 8 seconds for a page to load

This is a key factor in the planning and production of any web-based communication vehicle.

There are many methods for optimizing display of graphics, multimedia, and content. M3iworks’ approach is to start at the most basic level--the HTML--and apply proven techniques all the way through to the application design level.

Some of the methods used to achieve the best possible user experience include:

• Conditional metatagging,
• efficient table design,
• global styles,
• code sweeping,
• externalized scripts, and
• many other techniques

to ensure that site pages load economically--we know every byte counts! Attention to this ensures that the visitor will experience fast page loading times, a consistent presentation, and valid, timely search results.

Additional usability practices include:

• Graphic and multimedia optimization tools and streamlined design techniques to avoid extra “fluff” being translated by the browser. We will not sacrifice page load time with heavy graphics, or over-stimulate the visitor with too much media. A visitor deserves the choice to experience the website the way they want to, with the lowest possible upfront bandwidth absorption.
• Modular application design and server-side caching of objects and data queries. By making sure that our application designs are fully optimized, the visitor will participate in an efficient action/reaction experience with any interactive tool they use, be it a calendar, search interface, or streaming media clip.