Image optimization is set of procedures that are applied on specific image to prepare it for web usage. Eg, compression, resizing, conversion to the right format.
Serving properly optimized images for web comes with some nice benefits:
- Reduces your page load time
- Improves the user experience
- Boosts your SEO. Yes that’s correct.
- Boosts your conversion rate.
- Save disk space and bandwidth on your server
Image optimization reduces page load times
The larger your page is the more time your clients will wait for it to be fully rendered.
There are many other factors that participate in increasing the page size. Images without doubt are one of the most demanding resources we serve.
Having huge images will cause slow load times, huge bandwidth consumption (therefore increased hosting costs) and will result in abandoned sessions and probably lost sales.
To tackle the problem we should always optimize the images we upload on our websites.
The images can be optimized using various plugins that will handle the optimization procedure automatically once the image is uploaded on your WordPress website or in bulk.
Image optimization improves User Experience (UX)
Very simple. The users hate to wait, it’s well known fact. If not proper measures are taken this will result in loosing visitors or even conversions.
Optimizing your images will improve the user experience and speed up your pages. Logically this will result in increased session time and even increased conversions.
Boost your SEO with image optimization
It’s not a secret that today’s search engines determine the ranking based on the page load speed too besides the other factors. So it’s safe to say that page load speed have it’s role in search engine ranking.
There are different techniques to measure the page speed like Google Pagespeed, Lighthouse, Gtmetrix. All of those will help you find what needs to be optimized and improve your SEO.
To avoid negative effects on SEO and ranking just because of your images you should consider optimizing your images and also sizing them correctly.
Boost your conversion rate with image optimization
It’s more likely that the visitors will gain trust in your brand if your website is well designed and well optimized.
The website optimization plays crucial role in page load speed and having well optimized images/contents and faster website will surely boost your conversion rate and brand trust.
Save disk space and bandwidth with image optimization
Image optimization in most cases reduces the image size by at least half of the original size. The optimized images will take at least 50% less space compared non-optimized. It’s same with the bandwidth usage, serving optimized images will reduce your bandwidth / server costs.
To avoid high server costs image optimization can be beneficial besides the other factors like well written code, etc.
Conclusion
We created MegaOptim plugin for WordPress just because of the problems we outlined above, it solves most of the image optimization problems automatically and also comes with many other features like bulk optimization tool where you can optimize the past uploads, retina support, backup/restore support, NextGen gallery support and much more.
The service initially comes with 500 image tokens per month for FREE and unlimited plan for only $9.99
See pricing for more information.