Are you someone who has put tremendous effort into building their website but never spent any time optimizing the images?
Then you need to hear this: Images are essential to any website and can be the main culprit behind slow websites.
Pictures are added to a website to increase credibility and enhance the appearance. However, when left unoptimized, they can hurt the visitor retention abilities of your otherwise fantastic website.
Most visitors like to interact with graphic visuals, while others depict the quality of content by the pictures you choose.
Unfortunately, images take more time to load, which might irritate certain users, making them leave the website. Now, we don’t want that, do we?
This is why we have created this article that explains image optimization and its importance, so you can attract organic traffic and increase engagement on your website.
Page Contents
What is Image Optimization?
But did you know that a whopping 40% of users only wait for two seconds before ultimately abandoning a website? With so much competition in the cyber world, there is very little chance of retaining a customer. This is why you must look for a viable solution that keeps them interested in hanging around and exploring your website.
One of them is Image Optimization.
Image optimization is a process that lets you deliver high-quality images that focus on the optimal photo sizes, format, and dimensions. Paying special consideration to all these factors is essential in improving your ranking on search engines and attracting visitors.
How To Optimize Images For Your Website?
There are different ways to optimize images on your website. Here are some tried and tested methods that will help make your pages load faster:
1.) Pick a Suitable Format
You first need to pick an image format most suitable for optimization and relevant to your website. PNG and JPEG are two of the most popular and compatible picture formats.
PNG is a lossless compression that does not deteriorate in quality when you resize or compress the image. JPEG might lose quality due to resizing and compression. However, it is lightweight, easy to load, and can accommodate multiple pictures.
2.) Compression
After choosing a format, you must compress the image to a suitable size. Multiple free image compression tools are available online that can help reduce the size of your picture without impacting quality. Lossy compression can degrade the quality, which is irrecoverable.
Contrarily, a lossless compression might yield good results, but it does not shrink your images significantly.
3.) Use Alt Tags and keywords
Another essential component of image optimization is properly using Alt tags and keywords. We recommend describing the image as it is rather than using keywords arbitrarily. Alt tags also increase accessibility, so your content can reach a diverse range of audiences.
Instead of naming your pictures with random combinations, choose a description-keyword combination that defines them as they are. For example, in this picture of kittens:
- Don’t save the picture to generic file names like IMAGE, 12345, etc.
- Go for file names like Kittens, Persian kittens, and kittens resting on a sofa.
Using the appropriate keywords and image names will enhance the chances of your images appearing on Google Images. This is a great way to divert traffic to your web page.
4.) Image Type
Custom photography plays an excellent role in adding a personalized touch to your website and accurately representing your offered services or products.
You can opt for pictures taken from the phone’s camera or get a professional shoot for a realistic effect.
Contrarily, using images from stock photo sites is also a good idea if you lack material. If appropriately chosen from a high-quality site, you can find editable pictures and transform them according to your specific requirements.
What Is The Importance Of Image Optimization For A Website?
Now let’s discuss the benefits that image optimization provides for your website.
1.) Improvement in Page Loading Speed
The page loading speed of your website is the time it takes to open any webpage with all its contents. Most popular websites are optimized to load between two to three seconds. Anything more than that, and your visitor will start seeking an escape.
Optimizing images through compression can reduce their weight, allowing the website to load in seconds. Make sure that the quality is not lost during the compression process. This results in better loading time and reduces the organic traffic bounce rate.
There are different tools to analyze and evaluate the loading speed of your web pages. What you pick depends on your budget and the intensity of website analysis you are expecting.
2.) Better SEO
SEO is undoubtedly the backbone of any modern online business. According to Google, a website with high-quality content and a better loading speed is ranked higher by crawlers on SERPs.
Since loading speed and SEO are directly proportional, you can manage them regularly to get results.
Although search engine optimization takes time to deliver results, it is possible to improve your website by being patient and staying on the right track.
Besides image optimization, users also need to focus on the quality and relevance of the content. Also, update the business site regularly and avoid tactics like keyword stuffing.
3.) Improve Conversions
The main aim of any website is to increase its conversions. A conversion can be different things for different people. For instance, if you are an online boutique, a conversion would be making a sale.
For service providers, a conversion is when someone signs up for their service through their website. A conversion for an online blogger would be getting comments, likes, and organic viewers on their blog.
In order to increase your desired conversions, you need to optimize the images on your website and improve the loading speed.
This will give a positive impression in front of shoppers and provide them with the confidence to purchase from you again. A shopper is likely to return if they love the interface, speed, and quality of your product/service. Focus on optimizing your images in every possible way for better loading time.
4.) Reduce Load on Server
Image optimization is essential to save server memory and minimize its load. When a server has extra capacity and isn’t overloaded, it will reduce the website loading time. It will also make your website available for people without any unexpected crashes.
For instance, in this picture:
Compressing it to 700 kb will add more weight to the server than one under 350kb. However, a 350kb picture will have a lower quality.
Suppose you have two identical images, one image size is 900kb, and another image size is 340kb. Then the second image will lower the server’s load and save you bandwidth.
5.) Better User Engagement
Websites that deliver an outstanding user experience are more likely to receive organic reviews and return customers. Simply optimize every image on your website to provide a user experience that packs a punch.
A delay in the website speed can reduce your conversions by 7%. That doesn’t seem like an appropriate thing, does it? To avoid a reduction in sales and checkouts, make sure that the website does not halt in the way.
Optimize Images for Better Results
Image optimization is necessary if you want your website to load without interruption and/or crashes. Proper techniques that deliver quick results are essential for better loading time, SEO, and increasing revenue from your site.
Furthermore, you can help reduce the bounce rate of a website and retain visitors by uploading fully optimized images relevant to what you have to offer.
In this article, we have discussed simple ways to optimize the images on your website that you can easily follow. However, if you want a complete package, consider hiring someone offering professional services to take care of your website requirements.
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