Did you know that optimizing your images before uploading to WordPress can have a huge impact on your website speed?
Many beginners simply upload images without optimizing them for the web when starting a new blog. These large image files make your website slower.
You can fix this by using image optimization best practices as part of your regular blogging routine.
This article will show you how to optimize your images for faster web performance without losing quality. We will also share automatic image optimization plugins for WordPress to make your life easy.
What is Image Optimization? (Optimized vs. Unoptimized Images)
Image optimization saves and delivers images in the smallest possible file size without reducing the overall image quality.
While the process sounds complex, it’s actually quite easy these days. You can use one of the many image optimization plugins and tools to compress images by up to 80% without any visible loss in image quality automatically.
How does Image Optimization work?
In simple terms, image optimization work by using compression technology like “Lossy” and “Lossless,” which helps reduce the overall file size without any noticeable loss of quality.
What does it mean to Optimize Images?
If you ever received a recommendation to optimize images by your WordPress hosting support or by a speed test tool, then all it means is that you need to reduce the file size of your images by optimizing them for the web.
Why is Image Optimization Important? What are the Benefits of Image Optimization?
While there are many benefits of optimizing your images, below are the top ones that you should know:
- Faster website speed
- Improved SEO rankings
- The higher overall conversion rate for sales leads
- Less storage and bandwidth (which can reduce hosting and CDN costs)
- Faster website backups (also reduces the cost of backup storage)
Since we know fast websites rank higher in search engines (SEO) and have better conversions, image optimization is something that every business website must do if they want to succeed online.
Now, you might be wondering how big of a difference can image optimization really make?
According to a Strangeloop study, a one-second delay in website load time can cost you 7% of sales, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
If these aren’t enough reasons to speed up your website, then you should know that search engines like Google also give preferential SEO treatment to faster loading websites.
This means that by optimizing your images for the web, you can both improve website speed and boost WordPress SEO rankings.
How to Save and Optimize Images for Web Performance?
The key to successful image optimization for web performance is to find the perfect balance between the smallest file size and acceptable image quality.
The three things that play a huge role in image optimization are:
- Image file format (JPEG vs. PNG vs. GIF)
- Compression (Higher compression = smaller file size)
- Image Dimensions (height and width)
- By choosing the right combination of the three, you can reduce your image size by up to 80%.
Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail.
- Image File Format
The only three image file formats that really matter are JPEG, PNG, and GIF for most website owners. Deciding the right file type plays an important role in image optimization.
To keep things simple, you want to use JPEGs for photos or images with lots of colors, PNGs for simple images or when you need transparent images, and GIFs for animated images only.
The PNG image format is uncompressed for those who don’t know the difference between each file type, which means it is a higher-quality image. The downside is that file sizes are much larger.
On the other hand, JPEG is a compressed file format that slightly reduces image quality to provide a significantly smaller file size.
Whereas GIF only uses 256 colors and lossless compression, it is the best choice for animated images.
On WPBeginner, we use all three image formats based on the type of image.
- Compression
The next thing is image compression, which plays a huge role in image optimization.
There are different types and levels of image compression available. Each will vary depending on the image compression tool you use.
Most image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo, GIMP, Affinity Photo, and others have built-in image compression features.
You can also save images normally and use a web tool like TinyPNG or JPEG Mini for easier image compression.
Although it’s a bit manual, these two methods allow you to compress images before uploading them to WordPress, and this is what we do on WPBeginner.
Several popular WordPress plugins like Optimole, EWWW Image Optimizer, and others can automatically compress images when you first upload them. Many beginners and even large corporations prefer to use these image optimization plugins because it’s easy and convenient.
- Image Dimensions
Normally, when you import a photo from your phone or a digital camera, it has a very high resolution and large file dimensions (height and width).
Typically, these photos have a resolution of 300 DPI and dimensions starting from 2000 pixels and more. These high-quality photos are well-suited for print or desktop publishing. They are not suitable for websites.
Reducing file dimensions to something more reasonable can significantly decrease image file size. You can resize images using image editing software on your computer.
For example, we optimized a photo with 1.8 MB original file size, 300 DPI resolution, and image dimensions of 4900×3200 pixels.
We chose a JPEG format for higher compression and changed dimensions to 1200×795 pixels, and it reduced the image file size to 103 KB. That’s 94% less than the original file size.
Now that you know the three important factors in image optimization, let’s look at various image optimization tools for website owners.
Final Thoughts and Best Practices for Image Optimization
If you’re not saving images optimized for the web, then you need to start doing so now. It will make a huge difference in your site speed, and your users will thank you for it.
Not to mention, faster websites are great for SEO, and you will likely see an increase in your search engine rankings.
Outside of image optimization, the two things that will significantly help you speed up your website are using a WordPress caching plugin and a WordPress CDN.
Alternatively, you can use a managed WordPress hosting company because they often offer caching and CDN as part of the platform.
We hope this article helped you learn how to optimize your images on WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to improve your WordPress security and the best WordPress plugins for business websites.
