Slow-loading pages can harm your e-commerce website’s search engine rankings and increase bounce rates. Large or heavy images can cause this, making visitors abandon your page before buying anything. Fortunately, there are several ways you can optimize your images to improve performance.
In this post, we’ll introduce image optimization and its benefits. Then, we’ll show you how to optimize your product images and explore some helpful tools you can use. Let’s dive in!
An Introduction to Image Optimization
Image optimization typically refers to compressing or reducing the file size of your images without compromising quality. If your product image sizes aren’t optimized, it could lead to a slow e-commerce site.
As a result, your customers may leave your website, which could mean a lost sale for your business. Image optimization can also refer to how your images are processed by search engine crawlers. We’re going to discuss both types of optimization, but it’s important to note that they are closely related.
Page loading times partially determine your site’s overall performance, which has an impact on your Core Web Vitals score. This is a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience (UX).
Your website’s UX also impacts Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Therefore, your images can influence how well your e-commerce site ranks in search results for multiple reasons.
In a nutshell, compressing your product images can help improve the overall performance of your website (literally and in search engines). The good news is you are able to do so without sacrificing the quality of your photos.
By finding a balance between image file size, compression level, and height and width, you can achieve image compression while maintaining sharp, professional photos of your products. Ultimately, image optimization means ensuring that you are displaying your products in the best possible light.
How Optimizing Product Images Can Benefit Your E-Commerce Site
Your product images are important to your online store because they present the goods that you are selling. When you supply accurate and high-quality photos to your users, they may be more likely to trust the product. At a minimum, they hopefully won’t be shocked when your product doesn’t look like the image on your site.
As we mentioned, optimizing your photos helps the overall functionality of your e-commerce site. It can offer you many benefits, including:
- Improved overall customer experience
- More accurate customer expectations
- A boost in SEO rankings
- Increased conversion rates
All in all, if you want to improve your website, enhance your buyer’s experience, and increase sales, optimizing product images is a great way to do it.
How to Optimize Product Images for Web Performance (4 Tips)
Now that you know what product image optimization is and how your website can benefit from it, let’s take a look at a few ways you can do just that.
1. Resize and Compress Images
Product image bloat can cause your e-commerce website to lag. Resizing images can help reduce file size and improve site speed. Oftentimes, however, compressing image file sizes can compromise the quality of your photo, which means it won’t accurately portray your products.
Fortunately, there are easy solutions to this problem. Using tools such as TinyPNG can help you compress image sizes without reducing image quality:
Doing so is simple; all you have to do is upload your product image. Then, you’ll be able to download your newly compressed file to your e-commerce site. This will allow you to display crisp photos for your items, without causing load times to slow down.
2. Modify Image Formats
There are three types of image formats that you can use to display your items: JPEG, GIF, and PNG. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but certain formats are better than others when it comes to your online store.
In general, a GIF isn’t a good idea for your e-commerce website because it involves a moving image. In most cases, JPEGs are the best option for e-commerce. They offer the best quality for the smallest file size, which means your photos will render well without slowing down load time.
PNGs are a good second option for the same reason. Most photo editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, will allow you to modify image formats:
Using this kind of tool, you are able to switch the format of your product images. This will help you maintain the quality while choosing the ideal format for your website.
3. Use Concise File Names
What you name your photos can have an impact on your site’s performance in search rankings. That’s because search engines will ‘crawl’ your image files to check for relevant information. If what they find is optimized and readable, you may get a boost in rankings.
Creating descriptive file names that include relevant keywords is vital for optimized product images. You can start by checking out your analytics to see what keyword patterns your customers use. This will point you in the right direction when you’re deciding on practical and optimized image names.
For example, if you sell makeup, you can use a few keywords to describe the image. As an example, the product image featured below could have a name like “eyelash-mascara-set.jpg”:
It includes all of the keywords relevant to the product image without packing in too many descriptors, which can hinder optimization. Using a dash in between each word is the best way to separate them.
4. Improve Images with an Editor
Equally important to having a compressed image is ensuring that your product photos are high-quality and professional-looking. Using the right tool allows you to modify your product images to your liking. You can make important edits such as changing the colors and sizes of your photos to get them to render well on your site.
There are plenty of free options available to choose from. You can use a tool like GIMP to help you retouch your product images:
GIMP is compatible with other plugins and extensions, which means that you can use it in combination with other tools to make further modifications to your images.
Conclusion
Large or poorly-formatted product images can slow down your online store. Optimizing these e-commerce images can speed up your page and improve the user experience. Techniques such as compressing file size and modifying image format can help improve your site’s performance and increase your sales.
Do you have any questions about how to optimize your product images? Let us know in the comments section below!
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash