How to Get Fast-Loading, Fantastic-Looking Product Photos

But adding these images to your online store could cost you. With each large photo or media file that you upload on a page for a product loading time is increased. And your shoppers however interested they may be, aren't willing to be waiting around for a long time.

The question store owners have to answer is What can I do to speed up image loading while retaining a high-resolution appearance? This may sound like a challenge, but there's actually quite few simple ways to balance speedy product images and stunning images.

First, let's have an overview of why website speed matters. We'll then go over some tips for how you can improve the loading duration of your images but still maintain their quality.

Why the speed of your website is important (hint this: it's more than just about SEO)

There are many reasons for why loading speedy photographs of your products is as crucial as having beautiful ones. The reason that many store owners think of first is search engines.

It's true that faster sites have better performance in search rankings, all other things considered equal. The higher your rank in the search results, the more organic traffic that you can drive to your site. It's not the sole reason speed is important. Google only made speed a ranking factor initially in order to give priority to User Experience (UX) on the web.

What it boils in the end: shoppers don't want to wait. They don't want to wait for shipments They don't wish to be waiting for responses, and they certainly don't want to wait for your store to load. If you give a potential customer a slow, laggy product page, well what do you think that says about the rest of their experience with you?

So while large image files can slow down loading pages which can harm the SEO of your site, these slow pages can also -- more crucially, they can annoy the customers. That's why it's important to strike that equilibrium between beautiful and fast.

In this way Let's look into ways to make your photo files smaller while preserving their quality.

Make sure to save images in WebP or JPEG format unless you need transparency

The general consensus is that WebP is the best preferred format, with JPEG as second best except if you need to be transparent due to a reason. In the event that transparency is needed, you should opt for a transparent PNG.

Others are more expansive or more difficult to use for online compression. If you're inclined to put the funny animated GIF on your product page it's best to reconsider. The trade-off in loading time isn't worth the quick laugh your shoppers might have.

Let's take a glance at the sizes of files for this image of a cup of tea on a white background when it was saved using one of the most common image formats. No image compression was run in this image. These are just the file sizes for saving the image in 1280x853 pixels, at the full resolution.

It is evident that the smallest file is the WebP file, with JPEG in a close third. The biggest size of file is the TIF file format. It is estimated that the GIF file is almost double the size of a WebP file. If it were some kind of animated GIF the file would be even larger.

Images not only save at different file sizes at their best quality, they also have various compression options also. After performing image file optimization on all of the above image files in Photoshop by adjusting the settings to result with images that were similar in visual quality, these were the outcomes:

The WebP image was saved again to the smallest file size -- and by a very vast distance. The JPEG was also able to reduce its file size considerably. Its PNG did not see any reduction in size and the reduction in file size of the GIF was minimal. The use of LZW compression on the TIFF image has saved a huge amount of file size as however, the final file size is more than 2.5x larger than the non-compressed WebP file.

If you're a website owner with thousands of files on your website You can observe how using compressed WebP or JPEG files would save you tons of space while keeping your image load times relatively fast.

Note: AVIF is another image format that tends to offer better compression than WebP. Even though it does have widespread support, it's still not as popular in the same way as WebP. If you use Adobe Photoshop for processing images, then you'll have to install a plug-in that can open AVIF files and store them in AVIF format.

Use image compression to create Web-friendly images

The customers want photos of products which are big, high precise, and are able to be zoomed into (if there is an option to zoom on your website, that's). Thankfully, this is easily achieved with the help of images compression software.

A lot of these programs have become so powerful that an untrained eye is in awe of the distinction between images that are compressed and those not.

Prior to compressing your photos You'll need to figure out the size that is that your pictures will be displayed. Mobile devices typically have larger resolution screens with higher pixels per inch as compared to desktop computers. However, high-definition displays are becoming more common on desktop.

There is a chance that a 500px wide image displaying in a 500px-wide space isn't very appealing, and a 800px or 1000px-wide image looks better constrained to 500px on a retina desktop or smartphone display.

Play around with your image sizes to find out what your ideal balance lies to fit your product. Additionally, if you are using a zoom function to your images of products it is recommended to choose larger images than if you had thumbnails.

Once you've decided the maximum size of your pixel will be, then you're able to move on to converting the original product images in high resolution to optimized, web-ready images.

Let's take a look at some of the tools you can use to create fast-loading product photos on your website.

Adobe Photoshop

If you are using every version Adobe Photoshop, there are a few different ways to save your images using optimised formats. It is possible to use the Save as option, but be sure to modify the name of your file when saving the file with the same file format that the original file. Additionally, you can utilize Export as or the legacy Save feature for Weboption (until it's removed from support).

Each of these options include steps in the process of saving that allow you to adjust the settings for compression of your images. However, each option does come with different options and options.

• The only way to save is Save As. Save As can allow you to save the WebP file.
• Only Export As as well as Save for Web allow you to modify the pixel size of your images when saving. If you're making use of Save as it is necessary to resize your image to the size you'd like it to be to be in Photoshop in the beginning.
• The old Save for Web feature is the only choice which can provide you with the approximate time to load and the size of the file after saving your image. It also allows you to change the animation loop settings on an GIF and provide you with granular options on what metadata you can include in your image.

The other options in all methods will be the same -- choose whether or not to remove metadata, include the color profile of your choice, as well as adjust the image's quality (lossy as well as lossless).

Do you have no Photoshop? Problem solved: Try one of these web-based tools

There aren't many people who have access to Photoshop however it shouldn't stop you from using Photoshop. There are a lot of web-based tools for free that are designed to make your photos smaller.

Two of the top are Kraken Image Optimizer as well as ShortPixel. Both tools shrink your images to a surprisingly small size while still preserving quality.

After the software is done uploading your images you'll be able save them to your computer and then add them to your store.

The two applications' free versions contain some limitations with regards to the amount of files or maximum file sizes that can be uploaded as well, which means it's somewhat more time-consuming of a process than using Photoshop or the paid plan. It is absolutely free, and if don't have a large catalog of hundreds of items it could work for you.

Are you using a plugin ? Edit the WordPress settings, or use the plugin

It is possible to not be aware that compressing images is an option integrated into WordPress. The compression reduces the size of your JPEGs to 82% of their original size, but that might not be enough for sites that opt for huge images with high resolution or massive galleries.

The best way to manage this compression built into WordPress is to modify the WordPress functions.php file. This allows you to enhance -- or even decrease, if you prefer the quantity of automatic compression that occurs prior to your images hitting your Media Library.

Want an easier route? Try a plugin. ShortPixel has their own version that works for just about any file type including Apple's HEIC format so you can insert images using your iPhone. When you sign-up for a free account you will receive 100 credits every month.

Enable a content delivery network for your store

Even though the latest Internet connections as well as improved hosting capabilities have sped up the amount of time required for a shopper to load your website, there may still be connectivity issues. These can slow down site load times, especially if a shopper is across distance from the server located.

Luckily, there's a method to speed things up for these files (and not just for those large files such as product images also). A content delivery network (CDN) shows files stored on servers located that are physically near to the visitors instead of content on demand from a single location. The result is a faster experience for your customers. the customers.

With a CDN like Jetpack, cached (that is, not current-to-the-second) copies of your store will be shown to visitors. The visitors will also be able to access material directly from the CDN server closest to them. These two things can speed down load times dramatically in particular for big photos as well as media file sizes.

In addition to compressing, utilizing a CDN can be a great option to deliver product images extremely swiftly particularly when you do not update your shop on a regular frequency. Of course, if you need to update your store in a hurry then you'll need to turn off on the CDN off.

A few other ways to balance quickly and amazing

The ideas offered above are among the most meaningful things you can achieve a good balance between product photos that look nice and load swiftly. Here are other tips to keep in mind:

• Select White backgrounds. The less colours an image is made up of more colors, the less size is. It is also applicable when compression comes into action and the palette gets smaller.
• Remove unnecessary images of your product. Do you have images of your shoes that you're selling from ten different angles? You can probably reduce it to five and cut the loading time in half.
• Start loading thumbnails before bringing up the entire size when you click. This way shoppers will expect to be waited for larger images.
• lazy load of images. Lazy loading images improves page speed by only loading images over the fold, and also loading additional images when users scroll to where they are in the webpage. The Jetpack plugin does not just provide CDN capabilities, but it also offers lazy loading for images. Jetpack also has additional WordPress optimizers that, though not directly connected to images, could improve speed and enhance user experience.
• Eliminate irrelevant metadata. Depending on the reason for your photo file, it could contain a significant amount of information about metadata such as copyright Keywords, tags, geographic data such as descriptions of images, and so on. In certain situations you might want to keep this information, but you can also save some file space by omitting the metadata when compressing your photos.

Beautiful product images shouldn't be required to slow your website (or your buyers)

The best way to get stunning photographs of products is to opt for a sluggish store, or that the only option to get quick-loading product pages is to go with tiny images that are compressed to a high degree. However, we disagree.

Just a couple optimizations to your product photos You can achieve the perfect balance between fast-loading and stunning. Also, neither your website -- nor your shoppers should speed up.