Adding images to text improves the retention of information from 10% to 65%. Pictures often tell a story better than words. Your website needs images that will communicate to your intended users even before they read your copy.
Investing in high-resolution pictures for your site isn’t debatable. Yet, you have to be willing to invest in optimizable photos. Typically, pictures have a large file size, which can affect your page loading speed.
The pictures on your site can determine how you rank on Google. You need to know how to optimize your web development images for better website performance. Keep reading to learn the best ways to optimize your website photos.
1. Assign Descriptive Names to Your Site Images
The name you give to your images matters in optimization. Don’t use the default name assigned by your camera. Use keywords for your pictures to help in image SEO.
Key-word rich and descriptive file names are essential for image optimization. Search engines also assess your image file names when ranking. When naming your file, consider the plausible naming patterns that your customers are likely to use.
While at it, remember your alt attributes, which also require optimization. The alt attributes are simply the description for your image. These attributes have an impact on SEO, and you need to be well-conversant on their utilization.
2. Choose the Desired Image File Type
The file types commonly used for web images include PNGs, JPEGs, and GIFs. Once you create an image, you have the option of saving it into either of the formats. These file types have pros and cons, and it’s essential to understand each before deciding on which one to apply.
PNGs are ideal when you have an image with fewer color tons. It also works best if you want a transparent background, which is often necessary when making logos. If you want high-quality PNG images, opt for PNG-24 but be ready to deal with the large file size.
Most web developers use JPGs file format as they are perfect for complex images and colors. If your photo has tons of colors, gradients, patterns, and shadows, JPG will help. Their vast color palette gives you unlimited options.
You can convert HTML to JPG or from any other format, such as word document. With this file type, you won’t have to worry about having large files. The features of JPG ensure that you get the best image resolution for the web.
GIF is another common option when thinking of optimizing web development images. This file type has 256 colors, which makes it limiting. It is mostly used for animated images.
3. Resize Your Images
Did you know that half of the people visiting your site will jump ship when the loading speed exceeds three seconds? In fact, a loading speed difference of half a second can reduce or increase sales by 10% for eCommerce sites. When adding images to your website, compromising on load speed is a grave mistake.
Large files on your website can affect the loading speed. Fortunately, you have several image compression apps at your disposal. These tools remove unnecessary data such as geolocation and color profiles from your photos.
While resizing your images, you need to balance between resolution and size. However, higher resolutions come with large size files. Consequently, these images will slow down your site’s speed, which will harm user experience and ranking.
To have a balance between quality and size, consider a medium compression rate. For your eCommerce sites, the web development images should be 70 kb or lower. With large files, achieving this size can be difficult, but you need to compress the pictures as much as possible.
4. Image Optimization
You need to compare and contrast the image file formats to determine the tools to use for image optimization. Adobe Photoshop is arguably the most popular tool. Other tools, such as FileOptimizer and JPEG Mini, are equally useful.
Optimized photos will grow your traffic significantly.
If you’re already feeling like image optimization is overwhelming, you can automate the process. A WordPress plugin will automatically compress and reduce the image size once you upload it on WordPress. You’ll save time and still have a better website performance.
You can use plugins such as Imagify or EWWW Image Optimizer Cloud. There are several other plugins, and each operates differently. It would help if you researched widely before settling for one over the other.
When using thumbnails, you need to optimize them as they can potentially reduce your loading speed. The file size for your thumbnails should be small enough. You might want to have an alt attribute text that varies from the bigger version of the image.
5. Test Your Web Development Images
Testing your images is a great way to assess whether they are converting. You might realize that fewer images are increasing click through rates. Conversely, more images are likely to improve the experience of users leading to increased sales.
You can further test some of the angles that potential customers prefer. A survey of your site visitors will guide you in providing a view that resonates with most users. The only way to know the type of shot that customers prefer is interacting with all the prospective clients landing on your website.
It would also help to test the product listing that’s ideal for your category pages. Visitors’ activities on your site will give you significant insights to establish preferable product listing categories.
Optimized Web Development Images Are a Resource for Your Website
If you’re a website owner, high ranking is likely one of your goals. It would be best if you focused not only on the text on your site but also on the pictures. Web development images can have negative or positive impacts depending on how you present them.
It is crucial to think about the image size for the website while still maintaining the quality. With the right tools and strategies, image optimization is less daunting. However, you can consult with professional web developers for the optimization of web images.
Do you want to convert your files for better optimization? Check our site for free jpg to pdf conversion.