Here’s how your team can pitch in at each stage in the compression process: To get maximum results from minimized image files, you’ll need to be diligent about compressing all existing photos, GIFs, and videos on your website, as well as all future images that will be added down the road.Īchieving this lightweight zen requires several members of your web team: designers, developers, and any content creators who can add files to your site. So now that you’ve recognized the issue, how can we limit image file sizes to keep your website light and speedy? Compressing Your Workflow Since page load time is one of the many things search engines evaluate as part of their ranking algorithms, it’s in webmasters’ best interests to compress files to keep website speeds fast. Adding GIFs and videos to a website only amplifies the issue, and has the potential to bring your website speed to a screeching halt. Photo files in the form of JPGs, PNGs, and SVGs are some of the most common offenders, but modern websites are now going well beyond static imagery.
One oversized image may not seem like a big deal, but when this is compounded over and over again, the kilobytes quickly add up. This issue is so common, Google has even dedicated an entire section of its Developers website to the topic. Or content-rich educational websites with images and graphics to aid in the learning process. Think about how many images appear on an e-commerce website with hundreds, or even thousands of products. While advertising content adds lag time to any website, it’s photo-dense websites like the New York Post that take the longest to load.īut this issue isn’t restricted to editorial websites, and certainly isn’t restricted to just mobile users. Last year, the New York Times released an infographic detailing how many seconds (as well as dollars for data usage) certain publications’ advertising and editorial content takes to load on mobile devices.
Creating an image- or video-heavy website makes for a beautiful design, but giant image files can seriously slow down load times and negatively impact the user experience.