Despite more and more Internet users switching to broadband each year, a good portion of the web users are still accessing the internet via old and slow dial-up connections.
Apart from these older internet users, Google absolutely counts fast page loading times into its Algorithm.
One sure fire way to slow your page down is with large image files. So from a design point of view it is therefore unwise to use large un-optimised images when building a new website.
Create Good Quality Images with Small Image Size
It is generally accepted that all the text on a website will load in quickly even on a dial-up connection.
The real culprit of slow-loading website pages is mostly large images and therefore it is very important to strike a balance between using enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.
The best way to do this is to Optimise every image on a website to make sure it loads in the least time possible.
How To Optimise Your Images
One way to do this is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary image information which has the effect of reducing the image file size without affecting its appearance.
Using Photoshop, when saving an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears allowing the choice of “quality” of the JPEG image — normally a setting of 5 is good enough to preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size.
Alternatively options include saving images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size.
Images can also be saved in GIF format — the image editing software clips away all colour information not used in the image, hence giving the smallest file size possible.
However, it is worth noting that saving an image in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of the image itself.
If this seems to hard, may we introduce a more efficient system.
Built-in Image Optimisation
The best option for website owners is to install the latest handy Plugins that are available for download within WordPress. Our developers even have accesses to some WordPress Themes that have built-in image compression software, that makes it real easy to get your images down to very fast loading sizes.
Do you need help with your current website? Hire our developers. Are you ready to start your online journey? We offer some of the most competitive website solutions for any local business.
Getting a professional to build and maintain your website, is very affordable. Beautiful websites, beautiful price, that’s what we’re about.
Give us a call or get in touch via our contact form if your interested in adding image file compression and optimisation to your website. (or have our developers do it)
It makes life for the web-master that much easier.