Working on a simpler cleaner quicker loading site

After all these years I have decided I don't like the 'old' banner page on my site so I am playing around with it to try and make it crisper and cleaner looking. I am also making the banner image smaller in file size so that it loads faster. The old banner image was 220KB. My target size for the new banner image is 100KB or smaller.

My overall plan is to make the site look fresher and cleaner, but without actually changing the template being used—changing the underlying template is just a bit too scary.

The last time I made significant changes to the site I lost about 160 regular visitors and they never came back. That was when I upgraded from SquareSpace 5 to SquareSpace 7. I never did work out what actually happened back then to cause all those regular visitors to drop off.

Maybe my new look will get some of them back.

I hope so.