Always provide an email address or preferably a phone number where the visitor can contact your authority. A regular review of the content of the site is most important. During the Foot and Mouth epidemic this should be reviewed daily and any new information added immediately. As the network gets back to normal the frequency could be reduced to weekly updates. Checks also need to be in place to ensure that all the links work and are appropriately crossed referenced with new material.
Any image placed on a web page increases the time it takes to download and become viewable.
You can use image manipulating software to reduce the size of the image file but this reduces the clarity of the image. There is therefore a compromise to be made between clarity of image and file size. Full colour images can be larger in file size than black and white images of comparative physical size. This file type offers options for suitable file compression which reduces the size of the file and impacts on download speeds. All professional image manipulation software offers options to compress pictures.