In the pre-social media era, a picture spoke a thousand words. Today, it probably speaks a million (or even more). It is a tried and tested way of making the audience connect with the brand and deliver the message effectively. It is no wonder that brands, big and small, turn to images for establishing their brand identity. However, like all good things in life, images pose a problem to websites – they can be heavy and cause the website to load slower. And, users do not like a slow website – neither does Google. Hence, it is important to optimize images on your website for speed and quality. In this article, we will offer some tips and tricks to help you optimize images on your WordPress website.
Are you using the right format?
Images come in various formats like GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, etc. These are all images but have different sizes and resolutions. Most websites prefer the JPEG format because TIFF, GIF, and PNG formats can add to the load of your website due to their high resolutions.
Therefore, it is important to ensure that you choose the right image format – if the resolution is important then opt for PNG, GIF, or TIFF, else stick to JPEG.
Quality of the image
With high-end mobile cameras and DSLRs becoming common, high-quality images are expected from every website. In simpler terms, images on your website need to have a high resolution. But, a high-resolution image means an increase in its size and a subsequent increase in the loading time of your website.
Ensure that you offer the best possible resolution to your audience without compromising on the load on your site. However, there can be exceptions to this rule. For example, a photographer or a designer needs to showcase high-res images on his site and users probably wouldn’t mind waiting for those extra seconds for the images to load.
You can use image editing tools to compress and resize your images while maintaining their quality.
Use plugins to automate the process
Most, if not all, of us, are aware of image editing tools like Photoshop. It helps you edit, compress, and resize images within no time. However, optimizing images can be a time-consuming process. Hence, many site owners leave the optimization process for later and focus on other aspects of their business instead. In WordPress, you can automate the image optimization process by using plugins like Imagify, WP Smush, Imsanity, etc. These tools automatically perform optimization tasks ensuring that the images on your site are of the right size and quality.
Conclusion
While image optimization can help you improve the load time of your website, your web host can play a huge role in further enhancing the speed of your website. A good WordPress Web Hosting provider integrates CDN and caching to boost the page load speeds by up to 1000%! Further, automatic WP database optimization and backups, WP updates, regular security scans, and redundant storage architecture offered by such plans can further add to the performance of your site. Follow the tips mentioned above, get yourself a good web host and make your audience fall in love with your website. Good Luck!