Insights

Why optimised images are important to improving your website speed

Having a website that is quick and efficient to access is a major advantage to businesses making their mark in the online space. One of the best ways you can ensure this is by optimising your images to the web, ensuring that they don’t slow down the content your audiences attempt to access. Not only this, but Google and PageRank also takes into account the size of images on your website, penalising those that are too big. Here we look at a few things you need to know about optimising your images for the web.

What size should I be aiming for?

The quality of your images depends on the number of pixels they are made up of. Web quality imagery only needs to be around 70KB, although you should use this more as a rule of thumb as large images may have difficulty compressing to this.

What kind of file type should I use?

As well as the size of the file, the file format will also impact on the quality and download speed of your image. The most popular format is JPEG, which automatically reduces the file size, although can distort over time when recopied by multiple people. A popular alternative to this is PNG, which can support more colours and retains its quality over time.

What programs can I use to optimise images?

There are a number of simple techniques and programs you can use to ensure that your images are optimised for the web. Adobe Photoshop, for example, has a simple ‘save’ option for web-quality imagery, and will automatically reduce it down to the necessary size. You can use a number of free tools that exist on the web, such as Pixlr or FotoFlexer if you don’t have the budget for Adobe Photoshop. These are great public resources that allow you to reduce the size of your imagery at the click of a button.

Look to an expert

If you don’t feel comfortable in ensuring your images are optimised for the web, trust in the expert web development skills of the iFactory team. We offer companies expert web design that ensures all aspects of your site are optimised to give your users an excellent experience, as well as helping your rankings in search engine results.

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