7 Reasons Why Your Web Design Images Should Always Be Optimized
If you’re not optimizing the images on your website, you could be missing out on big SEO opportunity. Here are 7 reasons to optimize web design images.
If your web page takes more than three seconds to load, more than 50% of users will abandon your website.
Your site’s performance is now mission-critical to your top line. As an example, Amazon declares that if they were to slow down their site by one second, it would cost them $1.6 billion per year.
Thus, you must ensure your site operates at the best speeds, and that includes optimizing the images you use for the best performance.
Here’s a look at some reasons why you should invest in optimizing your web design images.
What Is Image Optimization?
Image optimization is concerned with making the file size of the images on your site as small as possible as well as tweaking other qualities, without reducing their quality. When you want to optimize your site’s images, you are typically looking to improve the page load speed.
When your website pages load faster, it can signal to the search engine algorithm that your site is a high-quality one, which can help improve your search engine optimization (SEO) performance. With the images of your products on fast loading pages, they can rank better on search engine result pages (SERPs).
The Benefits of Optimizing Your Web Design Images
The core mission behind image optimization is to connect potential customers to your products. By delivering better on-page SEO performance with your images, you help users find your products when they most need them. Here are some specific reasons as to why you should optimize your images.
1. Better Page Load Speed
The most immediate reason as to why you should optimize your images is that it improves your site’s page load speed. But why is this critical?
Page load speed is the amount of time a web page will take to load completely. There are several factors that impact how quickly your site’s pages load, and users love websites that take two seconds or less to load.
For most sites, images will comprise over 60% of the overall content. As such, when you tweak your images to reduce their size without affecting performance, you significantly lift your site’s overall speed.
Visitors to your site won’t have to wait around for the images to load, which makes for enhanced customer experience.
2. Lift Your SEO Performance
In 2010, Google sent out an update that indicated the importance of page speed to website rankings. Specifically, the update made it explicit that the search engine operator would be considering site speed when it came to ranking sites.
Therefore, when you compress your images, you reduce their total file size, and your site runs faster. The faster your website will run, the more useful the search engine’s algorithm will find it, which then lifts your rankings.
3. A Compelling User Experience
When users find your website enjoyable to use, they tend to keep coming back. Such stickiness is what makes for long term customer values, and optimizing your images can contribute to capturing return visitors.
For example, aside from making your site faster, optimizing your images gives them proper alt texts and titles. Both of these make it easier for search engines and users to learn what your images are all about quickly.
For visitors who are visually impaired or rely on screen readers, these changes deliver a significant improvement to how they use your website. Additionally, you can also get to improve your on-page SEO as well.
4. Boost Your Conversion Rate
Since optimizing your images can lift your site speed, the benefits customers receive from this can help grow your conversion rates.
Image optimization is tied to and feeds directly towards your ranking. When your site comes up in the SERPs, a user can see the images of your products alongside the other information. As more users are exposed to your products in this way, your website receives increased traffic.
If you deploy reasonable lead management strategies to the traffic you generate, you will be able to lift your overall conversion rates.
Moreover, high quality optimized images add value to your content. If a user finds the material to be of use to them, the odds are high that they will share it with others. These shares (social or not) win over more traffic, which also contributes to your growing conversion rate.
How to Optimize Images on Your Website
There are several approaches you can take to make the images on your site smaller while still serving users richly. Here are some ideas you can try out.
1. Use the Right File Type
Depending on what image you are uploading on your site, you will need to leverage the most optimal image format. There are several formats you can use, but the most common ones for website images are JPEG and PNG.
For the typical photograph, JPEG is the best format as it keeps the image at a relatively small size. Despite the small file size, JPEG ensures that you correctly handle all the colors the image has.
On the other hand, PNG is most suitable for large size graphics, primarily if they feature large, flat areas of color.
2. Balance the Size and Resolution
When you’re optimizing your images, you need to factor in the best balance between size and resolution. An image with high resolution means it comes in a larger size, slowing down your site. On the other hand, if you diminish the resolution too much, you lower the quality.
Seek to have a resolution that gets a user to adequately appreciate the image without it having to be the highest possible quality. That helps you improve the user’s experience by moving the image closer to them while not slowing down your website.
3. Title Images Correctly
Don’t give in to the urge to use the default title for images when uploading them. Instead, use keyword-rich titles that can better help users understand what the image is about.
Consider the terms potential users use to search for similar images online. Such phrases, when used as image titles, can help users find your images faster on SERPs.
Don’t Lose Your Users
As websites play a more critical role in supporting business sales, how fast they load takes center stage. No matter the size of your firm, you need to ensure your web design images are optimized so that your site can take less time loading. The faster users can get to the information they need, the better chances you have of converting them.
Four Winds Agency specializes in website evaluation design and development while also helping firms meet other digital marketing needs. Talk to us today for website services that help you spread your message to the right target market.
