Rather than only lazy load an image, you can load a low-res placeholder stretched to fill the space, then replaced with the lazy loaded image.

However, be careful about lazy loading 'above the fold' it will give bad results in page speed. For a home page its usually best to render the immediately visible content as statically as possible and then lazy load below the fold, either as convenient or as the user scrolls.

Thanks JohntheFish,

Actually the ugly loading is only for the full-width header feature image and the overlayed search form.

Both the feature image and search form are contained within the same div - can I not use some script (lazy load?) to tell the browser to wait until both are loaded?

please see this page -http://gotimetrekkers.com/search_results?...