A picture may be worth a thousand words but in the online world this is only the case when website image optimisation has been taken into account. Too many businesses don’t realise the impact that just throwing an image onto their website without first optimising it can have. Images often account for the majority of the downloaded bytes on a webpage which can dramatically affect your website’s performance. Let’s take a look at some of the key reasons website image optimisation is vital to your website’s performance.
1. Images are usually the first thing a website user will see
When a website loads, the first thing you usually look at is the design, including imagery. It is this that forms a user’s first impression of your website, so you want to make sure that impression is a positive one. Poor quality images or a slow loading page can be enough to turn a potential customer off your business and send them scurrying elsewhere.
2. If images aren’t optimised for web it can slow down your site
If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, more than half of visitors will leave. Of course you want to ensure your images are crisp and high resolution but if those images cost you website speed, the price is too high. Luckily it’s simple and straightforward to optimise web images so that they reduce in size without compromising on resolution.
3. Correct website image optimisation improves your SEO ranking
What you may not realise is that slow loaded websites are actually penalised by Google. Since Google users value speed, so does the host and so not taking this into account can significantly affect your rankings in the popular search engine. If you’re unfamiliar with SEO, check out this blog on what it is and why it’s so important.
4. Website image optimisation boosts conversions
It stands to reason that if image optimisation improves your website loading speed and SEO ranking that the flow on from this is improved conversions—and who doesn’t want this?!
Hopefully this has convinced you of the importance of website image optimisation and you think twice before putting an image up on your site that hasn’t taken this into account. Stay tuned for our next blog where we go into how to optimise your images for web.
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