Do you know how long a user is ready to wait for a page to load? According to Google research, 53% of visitors wait only three seconds.
The world has become more digital and people have so many options to choose from. Therefore, a website has to be fast and attractive in order to be a strong and successful competitor in the industry. If you run an online store, it’s essential to have high-quality pictures. But they can significantly increase the time required for loading a page. That’s why image optimization is a number-one thing to take into account. You need a helpful online image optimization tool to improve media processing. It will cover the major issues and eventually save a lot of time.
Visual content requires at least 50% of the website’s storage space, but image optimization helps to reduce this number. It also enhances SEO and speeds up your website overall.
Optimize photos for the web to enhance the website’s performance
There are four ways to start the ball rolling.
- Image Compression. It converts pictures in order to reduce image file size. Compression can be divided into two types: lossy and lossless.
- Responsive Images. This is a technique for adjusting the content in order for it to look good on any device that a visitor uses.
- Image Reformatting. It converts pictures into web-friendly formats (mostly, it’s either JPEG or WebP).
- Lazy Loading. This technique is responsible for optimizing page load times. The system loads the content partially, depending on what the viewer is reading at the moment.
Note that an important part of proper image optimization is choosing the right web image formats. Some image file extensions don’t have features that you may need. For example, they have either limited or extended color choices; not all of them are good for small elements; or, they may not support transparent backgrounds. Having a comprehensive understanding of their pros and cons will help you choose the best image format for web in your specific case, or choose the proper tool for image optimization. Eventually, it will help you avoid any quality distortion or file size enlargement.
To achieve the desired results, there are lots of photo editors and specific software. Choosing the most suitable option may be tough. It depends on the amount of media content you want to process as well as understanding whether you want to utilize any tools or perform optimization manually.
The Main Techniques To Optimize Images For Web
There are four widely used techniques listed below. Among them, you can find free options available, such as online editors. While setting up an image CDN will most likely require some investment. However, if you would like to use this service, there are certain providers that suggest a free trial period.
Basic Image Compression
The first step to take is to find the most appropriate image compressor for your specific purposes. To make the right choice, you should consider the prices, customization options, which image file types the compressor supports, and whether it provides the best service to emphasize its benefits.
The basic compressors’ toolkit covers the commonly used and well-known formats, such as PNG, JPEG, GIF, SVG, etc.
Also read: Top Best Tools For Resizing Images In Windows 10 Operating System
Advanced Image Compression
The advanced compression technology is used for next-gen formats, such as WebP. Such formats are deemed to have more potential and be a better choice in delivering top-notch results in comparison to PNG or JPEG. However, since the next-generation formats are the newcomers to the stage, some of the browsers still don’t support them. It causes the inconvenience of installing additional plugins or extensions.
Image CDN
In order to provide Internet users with faster content delivery, a CDN has hundreds of servers around the world and stores cached files there. Image CDN is based on these principles and has an additional focus on images. It’s designed to resize, convert, and compress the pictures automatically and adapt the content to any device’s screen size.
Cookieless domain
There’s no need for image files to go along with cookies since users don’t interact with them. This option is helpful mostly for the sites that are full of rarely cached static content. For instance, if you often change thumbnails or rarely access the archives, it’s highly recommended to use this option. Otherwise, there’s no need to create an additional domain and set up the fallbacks.
Conclusion
To sum it up, technical performance is vital for providing a good experience for your visitors. Even if you have highly informative content, it will be difficult to attract and keep the visitors on a slow website. Image optimization is a huge step to take in order to improve your site’s performance overall.
