The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability. When a user is opening your website every object on the page (e.g. images or scripts) will require a round trip to the server. Those HTTP requests will delay the response time of your site, and if you are loading dozens of objects this delay can add up to several seconds.
The first step to reduce the delay from HTTP requests is to reduce the number of objects on your website. Get rid of unnecessary images, headers, styling features and the like. If possible you can also combine 2 or more adjacent images into a single one.
Secondly make sure that your requests for external files or scripts are combined in a single location. For example instead of using three CSS files to create the layout of your page:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/header.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/body.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/footer.css" />
You should use a single one with all the styling information:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/style.css" />
With javascript libraries such as jQuery, Mootools and Prototype becoming increasingly popular and an array of ready built plug-ins available that can give your website that extra functionality it is very easy to end up with multiple javascript file calls in the web page. By combining these files into one single file you would reduce the number of http request dramatically.
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