question regarding flash files influance on the site speed
 

My homepage home.tpl calls 3 swf files and 3 banners to be displayed, most of them always stays displayed regardless where you are on the store, in other words they get loaded with every page u visit, the total size for all these flashes and banners is huge, just over 2mb, would that affect my site performance? and is it true that the max size for a homepage contents should be <100k? any advise/thought is appreciated .

Re: question regarding flash files influance on the site speed
 

Of course it affects your site performance - no one is going to want to wait for 2mb worth of banners to load :)

Re: question regarding flash files influance on the site speed
 

Re: question regarding flash files influance on the site speed
 

Not everyone is on high speed - really depends on your market. You have about 5 seconds to grab a users attention when they first load your site - if half the content on your home page gives the annoying 'loading' graphic, chances are, they are going to leave.

Re: question regarding flash files influance on the site speed
 

Think also of the effect on bandwidth that 2Mb of files downloaded each visit will have - could be expensive if you have a lot of visitors.