Last updated - April 13, 2023
A well-known ranking factor for Google’s search results is page speed. Why is it so important to Google? They know that users are not willing to wait more than a few seconds to find the answer to their query. For image-heavy websites, this can be detrimental to SEO as a slow loading speed can increase bounce rates and lower ranking positions. But we’ve got some great tips on making your image-heavy website faster.
Since 5G connectivity and Internet access are not available in many regions of the world, it is no wonder platform owners are highly concerned with optimization, caching, and other ways to make their websites work faster. As visual content is known to attract more visitors, this creates a quality vs performance dilemma.
In addition, not only should your website load fast, but your images will also need to be optimized for mobile users. Google’s recent updates have made it clear that some of their top ranking factors are mobile usability. Therefore, whilst updating your images for better loading speeds, you can also improve your website’s mobile friendliness and boost your optimization even more.
With most websites having a loading time of 10 seconds or more, it is about time you applied some highly effective solutions to make your website lightning-fast at zero cost. Here are 5 tips that you can apply right away to make your image-heavy website load speed increase.
Resize all your materials
Many webmasters do not pay attention to resizing images uploaded originally, even when they create a website version for mobile devices or implement major layout changes. It is not unusual to see a 1920x1080px image on a website browsing from a smartphone with a 4” screen.
Needless to say, a simple revision of these drawbacks may bring your website up to speed in no time. A good way to make this practice stick is to install automated plugins such as TinyPNG or Smush, that convert and resize all uploaded images in accordance with your set rules. This may be especially convenient when working with outsourced specialists who may not be aware of your internal corporate standards. Remember that you should optimize your materials for popular mobile devices to avoid layout issues.
Check your format and compression settings
Normally, JPG or jpeg is still the go-to choice for modern websites. However, you may want to experiment with the WebP format, especially if you are focused on mobile device users. Test the difference between high-quality images and WebP format images next to each other. If you can’t see the difference between a lower-quality WebP picture and a higher-quality JPG one from several devices used by you, chances are your customers will not see it either.
Therefore, you can save plenty of storage space and loading time with these lower-quality images. They likely will not impact the quality of your content and will lower bounce rates due to loading times.
Use CDN and optimize content for mobile devices
Simply put, if there is a long distance between you and your visitors means that the content is delivered to their devices more slowly. Content Delivery Networks or CDNs are geographically distributed servers that help to deliver online content faster. This tool is especially useful for image-heavy websites as it will transfer the content to visitors quicker and therefore, reduce loading speeds globally.
Finding a good provider will ensure a flawless user experience, which is especially important when visitors head to your website using a poor mobile connection with an annoying server lag. The use of responsive image tags such as ‘sizes’ also allows you to automatically select the optimal image size for a particular mobile device.
There are also some extra benefits your website will gain from using CDNs including improved security, and lower bandwidth hosting costs.
Implement lazy loading
The logic of many webmasters suggests loading all images from a certain page on the visitor’s device before showing the actual page to minimize future transfers. While this logic seems impenetrable, this method can be the reason why your loading speeds are long. As a result, a low percentage of visitors will actually see everything that is loading anyway.
Lazy loading implies that only the information present in visitors’ ‘field of view’ is transferred to their devices in advance while additional data is uploaded upon request. After all, a customer may decide to purchase one of the first 10 items on your e-store instead of browsing through the next 200+ ones. This image optimization method is beneficial for all parties, the visitor receives your content faster and you have the opportunity to warm the lead with your content, potentially increasing sales.
Consider your hosting options
Some people tend to underestimate the most generic problems. A cheap hosting provider or package could seem like a good solution during the initial phase of starting your website. Is it still effective when thousands of visitors may encounter bandwidth limitations and leave without even waiting for your website to load?
The hosting bandwidth is the amount of data that a website can deliver to visitors over a certain period of time. This is important for image-heavy websites as they require more bandwidth to deliver all of the content. Therefore, any limitations on this can mean your website is ineffective and incorrectly loading to your visitors which won’t be good for any of your metrics.
Dedicated hosting and virtual private servers or clouds should be your logical choice as soon as you get a steady supply of traffic to your website or begin experiencing problems. Unlimited bandwidth also makes your platform more stable in the case of DDoS attacks and ensures consistent delivery of your website.
Final Thoughts
Visual materials are much more powerful than text since they can convey emotional messages or show your products to website visitors right away. Optimizing your pages to load in 5 seconds or less is a must if you want to stop discouraged users from closing your window and going to the next Google result.
The time to act is now. Modern automated tools such as the Smush plugin for WordPress, allow you to resize thousands of your images or adjust their compression settings almost instantly without any extra charge. There really is no excuse to not capitalize on this opportunity to substantially decrease your hosting costs while also maximizing your customer satisfaction and boosting your SEO efforts.
