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In times when I want to brutally cut down on my daily internet cost; times when I am close to exhausting my quota and it’s barely 15 days into renewal of my subscription, I apply my #leanStartup perspective to surfing the internet. So here is what I occasionally do: I set images ‘turned off’  by default in my browser settings. It is one of those ways some of us practice to save internet cost. Another reason is that this helps to speedup the page loading time if I am on a “plug and pray” internet service. Any link I follow loads up faster without the images turned on, except I had it white listed before. If the look of the content ends up being un-interesting, I simply close the page, and I end up saving the cost of loading the, sometimes, heavy images, which usually takes more than 50 percent of the required. This happens most times. In a case where I discover the content is worthy, I go right ahead to consume the content of the site without images turned on, and I get a pretty good experience all the same. I’m thankful for these kinds of websites. But there are some websites.. ehen; the buttons are images, the links are images even some large looking texts in the body area are images and then, the images that should be images would not have descriptions or captions (to be a bit technical, alt tags – alternate tags). So with images turned off, the website looks blank and one may not be able to maximize the experience. How many people turn-off images? I don’t know. You may argue that most people don’t turn off images when surfing websites, you may be right; I would like a poll to back that claim though. But beyond whether they turn-off  images or not… Google search engine, from the last time I checked, crawls text. That is how she is able to give you results when you do a search. Did I just refer to Google using a feminine pronoun? Oh well… If you or your web developer then decides to make your links and buttons, images and not include alt tags and the other necessary optimizations, don’t complain if you never get traffic to your website from Google; and of course your website would almost look like a tabula-rasa (blank slate) with images turned-off. Two tips to avoid this 1. Don’t use images for links and buttons 2. Always include “alt” tags for every image on your website with a descriptive text phrase. e.g If I have the picture of a random restaurant in Lagos to be put on a website, the alt tag can read ‘Majeunlo fast food, Lagos’. So if someone has images turned off, they could easily see the alt text which describes the image or if they search on Google for “restaurants in Lagos” their websites would likely show up on the results page. Ok, that aside. Why should Google be female? Why did I on impulse, say “she”? I think that was influenced by the iRobot movie. Hehe. Have a success filled 2014!  
Ayo DawoduAyo Dawodu is a technology startup developer and norm opposer. I’m always looking to improve the economic figures of Africa by helping small businesses exploit technology. I’m an avid fan of Android. Follow me on twitter @tjwizking
 
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This article was first published on 28th December 2013 and updated on January 28th, 2016 at 7:48 am

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