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importance of image optimization

March 9, 2021

written by
Stephanie Patton

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words,  they help to tell a story and grab the attention of readers. But as much as we all love images, if not used correctly, they can have a negative effect on your website’s performance.

 

what is image optimization?

Image optimization is delivering an image in a smaller file size while keeping the original quality of the image. There are 3 things that play a role in image optimization:

  1. dimension (width and height of the image)
  2. compression (higher compression means smaller file size)
  3. file type (jpeg, png, gif, etc)

 

how does it help?

Ensuring that your images are optimized helps in multiple ways:

  1. with User Experience and conversions:

When someone visits your website and your images are optimized, then they are less likely to leave your website. This is because it takes a lot of patience to wait for un-optimized images to load. So having a better page load speed increases the numbers of visitors staying on your website for longer. Research has shown that people expect a site to load in under two seconds and that for every 1 second improvement in page load time, conversions increase by 2%

2. with SEO:

How? Since images have an effect on load speed, un-optimized images will make your page load speed decrease, causing Google to rank your website lower. This is because Google cares about how users interact with your site, and if the data shows that people abandon your page like lemmings, Google knows you’re not a good recommendation for them to make on their search engine. You could have the best content and sell the silver bullet to life’s lessons but if your page takes too long to load, you won’t show up on SERPs.

 

how to do it?

Our award-winning web developers love this topic and we feel that optimizing images is pretty simple.

The easiest way if you are a Mac user is by using ImageOptim by adding your images to the program it will automatically compress your images to the best size.

Other great resources to optimize your images are TinyPNG and OptimizeZilla.

When using these resources, it’s best to make sure your images are at least lower than 1MB this way your images will not only be optimized to perfection but also look great too.

So now you are set to show your images to the world. 

 

next up?

Now that you know you should be optimizing your images, see what the 3FO brand design team recommends for choosing what images to use.