Broadband users vs. dial-up users

I have been struggling lately with trying to optimize my site for two groups of computer users, those with broadband and those without. If you have a fast connection, you want good quality graphics and lots of them if you are considering buying something. I want to see what it looks like in detail before I buy. I also get annoyed having to click through lots of pages to get to what I want. It is estimated now that 50% of computer users have broadband at home or work, and 61% of active internet users have it.

But that still leaves an awful lot of people with slow dial-up connections. I have been looking at the percent of my site visitors who leave in less than 30 seconds, and I know a good portion of them are dial-up users who get tired of waiting. I have been trying to trim my web pages as much as possible, but for some it is nearly impossible to get them under the recommended 100k, which is the magic size beyond which most dial-up users won't wait.

I have got my home page and main category pages down there. But I don't see how to do that with my wedding fan programs page, which shows a small picture of each style available. I have trimmed the picture size and optimized them as much as possible while still leaving them visible, but I can't get it under 167k. And forget about my motif and font selection pages! They are huge. I just hope people understand that if they are choosing a motif from a large selection, that selection will take a while to load.

I guess I hope that among Internet users, people buying online are younger and more tech savvy and therefore more likely to have broadband. And the numbers keep going up, esp as the price goes down for DSL

Still waiting for the magic answer here.