Well, neither of those example stores impress. Both are using
needlessly huge pics.

The first one here I compressed to 39K
http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/...-fem_500px.jpg
This is the original 100K
http://i1010.photobucket.com/albums/...-fem_500px.jpg

Tell me you can see an appreciable visual difference, yet one will
load almost 4 times faster. I could easily get it down to 28K with a
tiny but acceptable amount of fuzzies on the fine text.

I have been programming websites for probably 15 years, can't recall
when I started, but it is not an afternoon's book reading to do it.

Dave