Introduction
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s why adding attractive and helpful images to your website is crucial. Because online customers cannot pick, touch, or inspect products, images are an integral aspect of marketing as they allow consumers to learn more about colour, quality, and characteristics.
Image optimisation impacts user engagement and the user experience. One of the best steps you can take as an e-commerce website owner is to optimise the images on your website to improve page load speed and your site ranking.
What is Image Optimisation?
Image optimisation converts large files to the smallest possible size without sacrificing image quality. Several plugins and tools on the market easily compress images by 70-80% without losing quality.
The Importance of Optimising Images for the Web
- Image optimisation speeds up page loading. If your website takes too long to load, it can drive visitors away to your competitors.
- It enhances user engagement and improves the overall user experience. Users spend more time on your site if a page loads quickly.
- It improves SEO rankings in Adelaide. Google values speed and factors it into its search rankings.
How to Optimise Images for the Web
Here’s a step-by-step guide to optimising images for your website.
1. Get descriptive with your images
Most users use the default name for images assigned by the camera. However, from an SEO perspective, using relevant keywords in your image descriptions can help improve your search engine rankings. Not only do search engines evaluate the content of your website, but they also crawl the filenames used in the images.
2. Optimise alt attributes
Alternate text helps describe an image when the browser can’t display the image. Additionally, if the user hovers the mouse over the image when it is not loaded, the alt text helps the viewer understand what the image is about. These two improve the SEO value of your web page and are the most effective techniques for Google and other search engines to recognise e-commerce products.
3. Choose images with the correct dimensions
By providing multiple side views of the products you offer online, consumers will have a thorough knowledge of your products. Because one image can’t show the whole look of a product, it is best to provide the inside, front, and back of the photo. Adding a description to the base of your alt attribute can improve your search engine visibility. Furthermore, when you put extra effort into your website, Google rewards you with multiple searches.
Avoid using large images on your website for a better user experience. Most website owners put large-view images on their websites and use code to make these images smaller. In practice, however, the files containing the images are much larger, and hence, this process slows down the website loading time. Instead, you should provide the ability to use smaller images and the option to display them in a larger mode in pop-ups or other windows.
4. Reduce image file size
Page load speed is a crucial factor in the Google algorithm for ranking websites. Most visitors do not wait more than 3 seconds for a website to load, and the page loading time of websites, in general, is increasing. One way to reduce file size is to use Adobe Photoshop’s ‘Save for Web’ option. This technique allows webmasters to set the image file size as small as possible without compromising quality.
5. Choosing the right file format
We are all aware that there are three common file types used to upload images to the Internet. JPEG, GIF, and PNG all have distinct effects on the same image.
JPEG
It is one of the older formats for image files and is now the standard file format for images on the Internet. Therefore, you can easily compress JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) image types. This gives you the freedom to get small but high-quality images.
GIF
The file extension is .gif, and the image quality is slightly lower than the JPEG file type. It is mainly used for icons and decorative images. It is also compatible with animation.
PNG
PNG images are now more popular than GIFs. Not only is the quality excellent, but it also offers more colour options than GIFs. The file size of PNG images can be much larger than JPEG images.
Conclusion
Optimising your images for the web will significantly speed up your page loading. This way, you can provide a better user experience and improve your search engine rankings.
