"What percentage of registered eBay users in the UK and the US use
high speed internet connections."

I already have general information on the percentage of people who
have high & dial connections for both countries.

However, I think the percentages of registered eBay users who use high
speed connections would be inherently higher compared to "generic
internet" users.

Reason for asking - I am about to design a web page for listing on
eBay. I can make it either

1) a low size, low on graphics page - but this does not portray my
products effectively

2) Use a large file size (0,5 Meg file) to display graphic / images,
which displays the products effectively

My dilema is that I may put people off, if the site size is too large
and takes an age to download, & I may also put buyers off if the site
low on graphics.

I have minimised the images sizes to their minimum using "thumbnail
creation software" - still 0.5 Meg for a decent listing.

Thanks.

1/2 megabyte for a web page is absolutely huge.....Without seeing the
page, it would be hard to make recomendations, but assuming that it is
just static text/images, look into the following

1) Optomizing pictures using compression (jpg/gif)
2) Having optional links to larger versions of images
3) Splitting the page into multiple pages

If you can post an example, we might be able to offer more suggestions.

-VBallGuy 
(Not a Researcher)

Hi,

thanks for your comments. I agree 0.5 Meg is way to high & I have
tried compression but they detract from the clarity of the image.

Do you have any suggestions for decent compression software (the
software i am using - Easy Thumbnails - is pretty basic and free I
think) - Perhaps there are better packages out there ?

The page is for a list on eBay, so I am unable to split it unfortunately.

This is really the crux of my question, as I've read 0.5 Meg would
take 36 seconds even on a ISDN 128K line - way too long....

Many thanks for your help !!

To compress your images:

Download Irfanview software and save the images at the size that you want.
Image>Resize/Resample. and when you save the images (save as). . put the quality
between 60-78 and that you should make your images load pretty fast.

Or, if you have extra money, buy photoshop and save the images under
the 6/7 quality setting when you save them.

Don't forget to save in JPG/JPEG format!!