When a visitor lands on your website, all of the objects or components of the page have to be downloaded via HTTP requests. These components include the HTML page, CSS stylesheets, javascript files, images and Flash.

The more components there are and the larger the components are, the more time it takes to load the page. So the best way to speed up website load time would be to reduce the number and size of objects and components per page.

There are several ways to reduce the number and size of objects and components on a website.

1. Combine CSS and Script files into one file instead of multiple files. By combining files you reduce the number of requests which in turn speeds up the load time.
2. Reduce CSS file size to less than 20K. Delete white space that’s not needed and use containers efficiently by targeting large chunks of HTML and avoid the need to use extra classes and styles.
3. Optimize your images by reducing the size of the image. Reduce the file size of any image to less than 100K. Anything over that will slow down load time.
4. Reduce the number of images per page. Combine multiple images to image maps if possible. The total size of the image map maybe the same, but there will be fewer HTTP requests.
5. Eleminate navigation images by using CSS techniques to achieve colored backgrounds, borders, spacing, roll over effects etc. avoid using images for navigation whenever possible. This can greatly improve your website load time, especially if you have lots of navigation items.
6. When an image is embedded into an HTML document with the img tag, this can increase the size of the HTML file. Sometimes this is very necessary. But avoid this for images that are displayed on all of your pages. Instead use the background property in CSS to display the images.

By reducing the number of files and reducing the size of your files you can reduce the number of HTTP requests and improve your website load time.