One of the biggest complaints from website visitors is about slow websites.
More than 40% of people will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. In 2016, Google reported that 53% of mobile users will leave a website in that same 3 second time period.
Technology advances and consumer behaviour make website speed a critical thing to get right in your business.
One of the things that is often missed by a business owner relates to the size of the images that they upload to their website.
It’s very easy to upload a large image to a website that can completely slow down a web page.
When you upload an image directly from a camera or mobile phone, the image is usually at a very high resolution. This can easily result in an image that ranges in size from 2Mb to 20Mb or more.
The same issue occurs when an oversized image is used on an area of the website that is set to display an image that is a specific, smaller size. This results in an image that is too large, being resized down to fit.
In both of these situations, the larger image creates a bottleneck when a web page is loaded. In order for someone to browse your web pages, all of the content needs to load in their browser first.
The content of your page won’t properly display until any of the images have downloaded. Depending on the Internet connection of a visitor and the device that they’re using, this could create a really bad experience for them. People who have a bad experience don’t tend to stay on a website for very long.
So how can you avoid this?
The easiest way is to use an image compression tool.
For WordPress websites, there are plugins that can be installed that provide image compression services. Examples of these include ShortPixel, Imagify or Optimole.
Image compression tools will automatically compress any images that you upload. This means that they’ll make the images smaller and faster loading, without sacrificing any quality. Many of the tools will also automatically resize images, so that they’ll serve properly scaled images to your visitors.
They’re the perfect option if you don’t have the appropriate skills to optimise images before you upload them to your website or a graphic designer on your team.
Optimising your images will improve the speed of your website. A faster website means happier visitors, more leads and ultimately more sales.
P.S. If you want to speed up your website through optimizing the images and learn on how digital marketing can help your business, I’d be happy to discuss this with you. Please book a meeting with me using my calendar here.
