Image optimisation is the process of reducing an image’s file size as much as possible without compromising the quality of the image. This is so that the time to load a webpage remains low. The right combination of image file, compression and image dimension is the key to successfully optimising an image.
Images give life to a website and visually describe your brand and products. Images capture users’ attention quickly and are processed by human brains much faster than text; this is why we add decorative images to a web page to improve the aesthetics of the website. However, if an image is very heavy, a webpage will take more time to load. If the time taken in loading a website is more than 3 seconds, the customers abandon the site visit. So, it becomes far more important to optimise images so that the webpage loads quickly. Here are the benefits of optimising the images:
Improve User Experience
A website that loads quickly enhances the user experience. Optimising images will result in faster loading of a webpage which means users will not have to wait for long for a page to open. A better user experience means visitors will spend more time on the website, resulting in an increased conversion rate.
Save on Storage and Bandwidth
Optimised images consume less space, so they will require less storage space on your server. Moreover, optimised images will use less bandwidth.
Boost SEO with Image Optimisation.
Using relevant keywords for images is important to ensure your web page rank on search engines when it comes to image SEO.
Search engines take into consideration the speed of a webpage while determining ranks. Image optimisation will make a webpage load faster and help in SEO. Google and other search engines prefer sites that load fast. Moreover, Image SEO will also help you rank better on Google and other such image search engines.
The speed of loading a webpage depends on factors such as design, layout, and images it has etc. Undoubtedly images consume most of the resources. The larger the image, the more time a page will take to load. Since image takes a lot of space and is an important element on any webpage, they must be optimised for better web performance.
Search engines also crawl image file name other than text on your web page. Therefore it is vital to use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for images. Thus, there are so many options available to optimise images for better performance and user experience.
