We viewed your site and it comes up pretty quickly for us although I do see some pauses. The issue is not so much JPGs vs. GIFs but the actual size of the files and the quality of display. Whichever type gives you the qulaity you want and keeps the filesize of the images smaller is the best. In general, GIFs are used for "clipart" type images. JPGs are used for photos.

 

Another cause of slowness can be the web hosting and type of database. I assume if you're planning to have that many products, you are using a SQL database. If you are using Access, that will be a MAJOR problem and you should switch to SQL. With large numbers of products, you can also have a database administrator add specific optimizations to increase speed.  We have worked with Mark at Cognecy for Product Cart database issues and I would recommend contacting him for help with that ( http://cognecy.com/contact.html - http://cognecy.com/contact.html ).

 

For the web hosting, if you are using a shared hosting service and their servers are busy with 1000s of other sites, your site performance is effected as well. It looks like you are using Jolt Digital for hosting. They are usually pretty good. If you continue to experience slowness issues, you may want to ask them for help.

 

How are you loading your Browse by Brand drop down box? If that is dynamic, i.e. pulled from the database on the fly as each page is loaded, I would recommend changing that to either be a static drop down, i.e. hardcoded in the header, or generate it as needed from the control panel like the Generate Navigation function. That would make that part of the page load quicker.

 

Hope that helps!

 

From the information Hamish provided the site content is too 'heavy' but I don't think that was the only reason it took so long.

 

It would appear to be more of a server related issue. It's certainly worth doing as Netprofits suggested and checking your database type. A store that size needs SQL.

 

Nigel