Make your GIFs the right size. This compression is very useful for line art and computer drawings. You may want to consider another format for these types of animation. To conserve bandwidth, do whatever you can to make your image compact and small. There are a couple of areas to work in.
Lets start with the individual images.
GIF allows for any number of colors between 2 and 256. The fewer colors the less data and the smaller the graphic files. Not all software will let you set the bits per pixel for GIFs or the colors of the palette. 4 will export GIFs in 16 or 256 color format. However it uses a set palette.