The first thing you can do is eliminate any superfluous graphics or elements. You don't have to pare it down to plain text, but take a critical look at your page and see if everything on it is really necessary and cut what isn't. When you've trimmed the excess, you'll need to optimize the graphics that remain. This simply means you need to reduce the file size to speed download time. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.
Software programs exist that are designed specifically for optimizing graphics.
You might be able to do it to some extent yourself with your image-editing program. Back to the applets. Once again I would remind you to take a hard look at the applets you've included. Applets are fine as long as they don't cause excessive download time. The second portion of your facelift is endeavoring to rid your page of anything visitors might find confusing.