Image Optimization for the Web- Increasing Speed and UX

Posted on: April 2nd, 2020

Many e-commerce websites nowadays actively use image optimization techniques to get better results for their websites in general. There is no doubt that visuals are more appealing to online visitors than dull, boring, and static content. In its simplest of definition, image optimization refers to the reduction in the file size of an image without sacrificing its quality and to make your images rank higher on Google as well as other search engines.
Image optimization can be carried out for all of your images using various tactics. For instance, you can name your files in an appropriate manner that describes them ideally for any user who might be interested in searching for them online. Then there is the alternative text known as alt attributes where you can add appropriate keywords.
Moving onwards, you need to make sure that image dimensions and product angles are also adequate. The width and height of the image come into play, and so does the actual display. Going for higher dimensions for images that exceed your display capacity, then you are just overloading data than its actual requirement. However, the question arises as to why one should go through all such hassle in the first place? Let us answer that probe by offering some of the various benefits image optimizations have to offer to your website and users:

Improved Page Speed V/S Enhanced User Experience

Even if you run a website that heavily depends on visuals and graphic content, image optimization can offer you considerable improvements to your page speed. Image optimization not only makes your website lighter (less bandwidth and disk space required) but also helps in increasing the speed of loading images on your web pages. Just imagine a visitor who saw your ad on social media or any other marketing platform, got enticed with your offer, quickly jumps to your domain, eager to do business with you. However, the web page they are trying to load is taking too long (not even 5 seconds) and this agitates them to the point where they shun the idea of buying your product altogether. No one wants that to happen!
Slower loading times result in negative user experience. With the number of images, visual aids, eye-candy, and other elements continuously growing on websites, you cannot simply sit back and watch others proceed. Images and visual elements are the driving forces that bring in more traffic and complement your website’s UX. In fact, many websites rely heavily on images as they comprise more than half of their content type. Without optimization, your website continues to eat bandwidth, let your customers wait longer for the page to load, and lowering your possibility to generate revenues. In fact, many of these issues can be addressed by simply using the right image formats.

The Benefits It Entails For Website Users

Support SEO Efforts

We all know that Search Engine Optimization primarily focuses on ranking your website higher on SERPs (search engine result pages). However, image optimization is a type of lost arts when it comes to SEO. It seems like many businesses out there have simply forgotten about it. Image optimization requires that you use relevant and unique images offering the highest quality possible and occupying the smallest file size. However, if you really want to give your SEO a boost, then one can consider adding a caption to their images or using alt attributes to add in additional keywords for crawlers to read. So even if your image doesn’t load for some reason, your website still gets to have a better rank, all thanks to your alt tags/alt descriptions that are in their place doing their job.

Boost Conversions

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that your website performance and page loading time have a direct impact on your conversion rates. At max a 4 seconds loading time per page is bearable. Any millisecond longer and the visitor on your website would simply bounce off of your page. Starting from timeframe 0 seconds, your websites conversion rate drops by 4.42% every second till the initial 5 seconds. Average conversion rate is the highest at 31.79% during the time frame 0-1 seconds. After the fourth second has elapsed, the conversion rate stands at meekly 9.68% (Source). Optimizing your images leads to faster loading times and better conversion rates.

Better User Engagement

With the majority of the websites in the present era working and improving on their loading times, customers generally have high expectations of receiving better loading times. With this surge in demand for faster and lighter websites, naturally, image optimization becomes a necessity if you want to stay competitive within your industry. For users, surfing through the web at lightning-fast speeds is preferable. Nobody wants to wait an undue amount of time to get to where they want to go. It is all about convenience and facilitating the users these days. Plus rivalries within a select industry mandate that you keep ahead of the competition and make sure that your customers stick with your domain rather than visiting a competitor’s website. You can take an InDesign course to achieve better outcomes for your user engagement as well.

Reducing Server Load

A server load can be simply identified as the number of processes that are waiting in line to access the computer’s capacity to utilize information. A higher server load is associated with a higher cost that a company has to bear. No one wants that! High server loads often reflect website errors, slower performance, and site down responses. They are initially meant to be investigated by server administrators, server owners, and server providers. Image optimization can help you reduce this burden and offer you better or lower/faster server loads. Hence the general rule of thumb is that the fewer loads you imbue your server with the better performance your website will have in the end. You can also discuss your website issues with corePHP in order to get their consultation and improve your website’s performance.

Generate More Traffic

Image optimization brings in support for your SEO, plus search engines like Google and the rest simply adore faster loading times with relevant and high-quality images. Thus it is quite evident that with image optimization, you can generate more traffic for your website. People will be willing to stick to your website due to the improved user experience and faster loading times. Plus you are able to incorporate high-quality images into the mix. All of this activity on your website will naturally promote your products and services on other online platforms as well, thus bringing in a healthy amount of visitors to your website every single day. Resource providers like Soshace can also work in collaboration with your team to offer you better results.

Conclusion

With adequate image optimization on your website, you can achieve higher visibility for your domain on search engines. Image optimization not only offers support to your SEO efforts but also improves your Click-Through-Rate as it also provides enhanced user engagement and enriched user experience. Since image optimization doesn’t compromise on the overall quality of the image and instead focuses on achieving the best results for your available display dimensions, it is a win-win situation. Both the users of your website and your administration benefit from image optimization tactics. Users get to experience an exciting time on your website without any lags, and you get to attract their attention towards your offered products and services.