I have created a website using nopCommerce 2.60 version The link of the website is http://www.superbcart.com/
I am using Sql Server 2008
For banner images in home, i have created separate module to admin to upload banner images, the banner images in home page are loading from db.
I don't quite understand why the website(homepage) still takes so long to load and the click on any category from menu It takes a while too. It seems that the picture load takes long.
I use http://www.webpagetest.org to test page speed.
I would suggest you set up an unmodified copy of nop 2.6 on the same server to test speed without graphic/other modifications.
your results http://www.webpagetest.org/result/120821_V2_8MJ/
what I would do
1. Fix the broken links
2. Get rid of the huge banners or compress them significantly loading 1MB of content is always going to be slow.
3. Your web page is 2.6 MB - somehow designers and developers have forgotten that web pages should be as light as possible (I suspect designers no longer bother to think, certainly some of the designs we get in indicate the designer doesn't have a clue). Try aiming for 0.5 MB at the most.
4. If you are on a dedicated server and the processor load is not maxing out turn on dynamic compression in IIS for the website. (static compression should also be on in any event).
5. If the processor load is maxing out at 100% then upgrade your server with more ram and more processors. Do ram first, paging to disc is going to load the processors anyway.
6. take the swf of the front page - maybe use a popup window or some such.