Having a solid online presence is essential for every small business to succeed in today’s digital environment. A company website acts as the online representation of the brand and gives prospective clients crucial details about the goods and services provided. But, simply having a website is not sufficient. It is also crucial to make sure that the website is optimized for improved speed, which includes optimizing pictures.
Pictures are a crucial part of every website. They are used to showcase products, services, and branding elements such as logos and banners. Unoptimized photos, however, can significantly affect the functionality and user experience of the website. Small businesses should have optimized photos on their websites for the following reasons:
Reduced Image File Size Makes Pages Load Faster
With Google Core Vitals update page load speed is a critical factor in determining the success of a website. Slow loading times can lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates, which can adversely affect overall performance of a business online. Optimizing images can significantly reduce page load times, resulting in improved website performance and user experience.
Large file sizes for non-optimized photos can make them take longer to load, especially on slower internet connections. When photos are optimized, their file size and loading time are reduced by compressing the images without sacrificing quality. Businesses can increase their website’s load speed, and make sure that potential clients can pomptly open website pages and find the information they need.
There are 2 ways to reduce file size:
- Make the image dimensions smaller (reduce from 2400x1600px to 240x160px).
- Use comression algorythm to compress the bytes inside the image file to make the file smaller, while the image dimension stays the same.
Images Improve User Experience
Optimized images contribute to a better user experience on a website. When a website loads quickly, users are more likely to engage with it and stay longer, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Optimized graphics also help the page look more appealing overall. Well-optimized, high-quality photographs can successfully present goods and services, catch users’ attention, and entice them to explore the website further.
Optimized Images are Good for SEO
Relevant photos are one of the ranking factor for search engines, making image optimization is a crucial component of SEO.
To help search engines understand the context and meaning of the photos, optimizing images also involves using descriptive file names and alternative text (alt text) descriptions. Optimizing pictures can help websites load faster, which benefits SEO. Having correct descriptive alt texts also improves accessibility of the websites for those who are using online readers, or have image loading switched off for any reason.
Correctly Sized Images Lower Storage and Bandwidth Costs
Unoptimized images have larger file sizes, which means they take up more bandwidth and storage space on the server. This is particularly valid for the businesses that rely heavily on a large number of quality images, such as model agencies, and photographers. For small companies and particularly for startups with limited resources, this may mean higher costs. By optimizing photos through using correct image size and compression, small companies can use less bandwidth and pay less for storage.
For example, there is no need to upload 3000x2000px photos of team members on “About Us” page, as it will make the page very ‘heavy’. In most cases 300x200px image will work just fine. And if you want your visitors to download full-size photos, just place a link to the larger photo nearby.
Reducing the file size of images also makes it easier to transfer them across the internet, making it easier for users to access the website from different devices and locations. This can contribute to a better user experience and improved website performance.
Optimize Images to Improve Mobile Responsiveness
Today internet is mobile-first, meaning that the majority of users will use their mobile devices to open websites. Optimizing images is essential to make sure that websites are mobile-friendly, and are loading fast.
Online tools to optimize your images
There are many tools that will resize your images and compress them. One of the easiest options out there is https://bulkresizephotos.com/.
This one will help you to both resize your image to correct dimensions, and to compress it to one of the modern file types (which is .webp as for 2023).
Look what it has done with a team member photo for “About Us” page. File size reduced by 100x. A .jpg file 2272x3408px was compressed to .webp file sized 300x450px in no time. This is just incredible!
