How to Optimize Website Images for Better Performance

Images are the essential parts of websites. The images effectively communicate to the audience, improve the aesthetics of a website, boost conversions, and offer a great user experience. However, randomly uploading images without optimizing them can have adverse effects.

You must know that the pictures or every other graphical content you publish on your website hugely impact its performance. Your images directly affect website speed, user experience, and performance over search engines. Therefore, you should continuously optimize images before uploading them to your website.

Most website owners hire professionals to optimize images. However, it is not as difficult as it seems. If you have a bit of spare time, you can do it yourself. Here are some easy and effective ways of optimizing images in no time!

Focus on Quality

Uploading high-quality pictures on your website is mandatory. Otherwise, those images won’t convey any message or win visitors’ trust. They may think that if you compromise on image quality or user experience, you can compromise on everything. So, it will leave negative vibes that could harm your website and overall brand.

You should ensure that every image you upload on the website is of the best quality. Furthermore, those images must be elaborative, where every element is visible. It can allow you to win visitors’ trust. If you are running an eCommerce store, you should always present your products in the best possible way, as it enhances conversions. So, it is better to use a good camera for product photography and perfect clicks. Moreover, you should also give a final touch during the editing process.

Compress Images

Although presenting images in their best quality is mandatory, they must not exceed the 20MB limit. The more data your website stores, the more time it will take to load on users’ systems. If you want your websites to load faster or take less time, you must compress image sizes before uploading them.

However, remember that compressing doesn’t always mean that you have to reduce its quality. You can use a lossless image compressor that doesn’t affect the image quality but makes minor coding changes and compresses the image efficiently. There are multiple such kinds of online photo compressors that provide lossless image compression to every user without costing them anything. You can get help from them before uploading them on your website.

Select the Right Image Format

Besides image compression, you may also need to change the image format according to your needs and preferences. JPEG, PNG, and WebP are the commonly used image formats for websites. Each has pros and cons, so you may not rely on one format for every image. Instead, you should choose a suitable format to optimize images for websites.

JPEG is one of the most used image formats for pictures. Most pictorial data we contain on our devices is in this format. There are three primary reasons behind this image format’s popularity. 

1. JPEG format is widely accepted and supported by almost every device and browser.
2. This format also shows the images in their best resolution.
3. JPEG images contain less space than PNG and many other formats.

After JPEG, many people use the PNG format, which is quite good when presenting images of their highest quality. Therefore, this format is picked by most eCommerce stores that cannot compromise on resolution. Some of the expected benefits of PNG are mentioned below.

1. The key advantage of this format is that its quality remains to save no matter how many times you edit or save it on your device.
2. It also supports a wide range of colors so it is the best for eCommerce stores.

WebP is also getting popular among website owners, as you may have noticed that most websites upload images in this format due to their size. WebP images don’t take a lot of data, even when the photos are of the highest resolution or quality. The key benefits of this format are as follows.

1. The size of these images is usually lesser than the other formats. 
2. It is a better choice for animated pictures.

After learning about the benefits of each format, it is up to you which one of them you prefer according to your needs. However, whichever format you choose must fulfill all of your needs. Otherwise, it may slow down your website and get you nothing in return for your efforts.

Must Include Image Alt Tags

Image alt tags are mandatory when discussing a web’s performance over search engines. These tags enhance websites’ visibility over various search engines. Image alt tags tell search engine crawlers about the images’ context. When search engines work against some queries, they may display the web page where the same tags are used. That’s how these tags assist websites in getting better rankings.