Bad News for Slow Broadband – Average Web Page Size Now 2.3MB

The latest HTTP Archive statistics, which collects and analyses the World Wide Webs (WWW) digitised content, has confirmed that the average web (website) page size is now 2.3MB (MegaBytes) and that’s up from 1.95MB one year ago and 0.7MB five years ago.

Precious few of us consider the size of websites today, not least because the majority now have access to much faster broadband connections than 5-10 years ago and in the grander scheme of things a few MegaBytes on a web page here or there might not seem like a lot of data to worry about. Indeed for most people it won’t be a concern.

However web page bloat is only going in one direction, up, and not everybody has access to a “fast” connection, but we’ll caveat that by saying that generally anything above 2Mbps (Megabits per second) of broadband speed is usually enough for a reasonably smooth browsing experience.. usually; 2.3MB will download in about 9 seconds on a 2Mbps connection, assuming no compression or clever caching is being applied to speed up the loading.

On the other hand that 2.3MB is just an average and experiences do vary. For example, ISPreview.co.uk is deliberately intended to be a fairly uncomplicated website so that those on slower connections find it easy and quick to use. Our front page is home to about 72KB (KiloBytes) worth of text, 140KB of images and probably 100KB of scripts / styles for managing polls etc. (a total of 312KB or 0.31MB if you prefer).

On the other hand the front page of tech blog Gizmodo UK is about 27MB and packed with lots of dynamic adverts, high-res animated gifs etc. All of that would take nearly 2 minutes to download at 2Mbps (note: even compression systems won’t help with already well compressed images). Hardly very smooth for those still stuck on slower connections, in fact it’s more akin to the old dialup days.

Mind you connection speed is only part of the problem and websites aren’t just getting bigger, they’re also becoming more complex and harder to process (i.e. it helps if you own a modern computer / tablet etc.). All of those scripts and clever interactive wizardry that you see on some sites comes at a performance cost.

This is also a concern if you happen to use a capped Internet connection. On this front Mobile Broadband (especially when roaming outside your home country) and Satellite users often suffer more than most because related connections frequently come alongside smaller (capped) data allowances, which often only equate to a few GigaBytes. Needless to say that if you’re not careful it can impact your bill.

At an extreme you can often tackle some of these slowdown issues by using an Ad Blocker, but remember that doing this can seriously damage the revenue stream of the often “FREE” site that you’re visiting (it’s not free for the owner – without that revenue the site may eventually close, add a paywall or suffer other problems).

So it’s wise to practice Ad Blocking or similar methods ethically by only applying it selectively if the site is causing you genuine problems or crashes. Similarly Ad Blockers often break automated systems and scripts that have no relation to advertising, which can stop some website systems from working correctly and may hurt your experience.