What Is Image Optimisation?
Image optimisation is the process of reducing the file of your image down to the lowest level without compromising the quality of the image displayed to the end-user; to enable you to keep your page load time as low and fast as possible.
Resizing and compressing — which reduces the file size while preserving the quality of the image.
Why Is Image Optimisation Important?
Over the last decade, our attention spans have dropped from 12 to 8 seconds, making it less likely that a user will hang around waiting for your site to load. Research shows that website conversion rates drop by 4.45% for every additional second of load time.
If images are large and unoptimised, it can make your website slow and clunky, which can put a lot of users off as long waiting times deliver a poor user experience.
Lazy Loading can be implemented to help enhance your user’s experience and make your website appear to be loaded efficiently. While optimising your images for SEO purposes will help ensure that your images rank well on search engines such as Google.
How Should I Name My Image Files?
It’s best to name your images in a relevant format with something descriptive that accurately represents the content and context of the image.
The name of your image files is more commonly described as “Image Alt Text” and can help drive your images into Google’s product and collection page images; as well as providing accessibility by voice command to those who can not see; they may even drive some additional revenue.
What’s The Best Image Size For Desktop?
It's best to look at the pixel dimension of your images as you're making them. As long as they're a minimum of 1024 pixels wide (for a horizontal image) they’ll display well on most desktops. The standard resolution for web images is 72 PPI (often called “screen resolution”).
What’s The Best Image Size For Mobile?
The best image resolution for most smartphones is 640 by 320 pixels, although you should ideally maintain the original image’s aspect ratio, or the output image will be distorted.
Need Support?
If you need more support with image optimisation and site speed, Blend Commerce may be able to help. Simply click here to see how our team support you and your Shopify store.
