How To Get Quick-Loading Gorgeous-Looking Product Photos

Apr 22, 2023

Uploading these pictures to your online store could be costly. With every photo or file you upload to a site, the page's loading time will be increased. Customers, regardless of what level of interest they might have, aren't willing to be waiting for very long.

One of the most common questions store owners are faced with is: How do I accelerate image loading speed and still maintain a stunning design? It may seem like a challenge, but there's actually a lot of straightforward ways to ensure you have a balance between speedy photographs of products and stunning photos.

Let's take a look at why site speed is crucial. In the following section, we'll discuss the strategies to decrease the time it takes to load your product photos while preserving their quality.

There are many motives how having fast loading images of merchandise is as crucial as having beautiful ones. The reason that many store owners think of first concerns searching engines.

The truth is that faster websites will perform better with regard to result pages, but it's not a matter of any other variables. Additionally, the higher you are in search results, the greater organic search traffic you'll drive to your site. However, SEO isn't the only reason why speed matters. Google only made speed a ranking factor at the beginning to ensure that they prioritize User Experience (UX) on the web.

The gist of it is that in the end is that customers don't want to sit around waiting. They don't want to wait for deliveries. They don't want to sit in a queue waiting for answers or information, or to wait for your store to fill up. If you provide your prospective customers a slow and laggy website what will that say about their overall experience?

man sitting with arms crossed

While large images can slow down loading pages that can impact SEO, these slow pages may also -- and most importantly, they may irritate people that visit your website. This is why it's important to strike the right balance between the speed of your site and its beauty.

So, let's move on to the methods you can employ to cut the dimensions of your pictures to a smaller size while still preserving their high-quality.

Make sure to save images in WebP or JPEG size unless you want transparency

There is a general consensus that WebP should be your first preferred format. You can also use JPEG as an alternative when you need transparency for some reason. In the event that you require transparency, it's recommended to choose transparent PNG.

Some formats are bigger or less convenient for online compression. While you may be inclined to use a funny animated GIF on your website's product pages, it's best to think twice. It's not worth the quick laugh the customers may get.

The size of the files for this picture of a teacup with ice with white backgrounds, when it is saved in a variety of widely used photo formats. There was no compression of the image within this photo. This is the only dimension of the file that were saved when the image was in 1280x853 pixels at maximum resolution.

white cup of tea on a platter
image sizes listed for GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF, and WEBP

It's evident that the most compact file format is WebP format. This is closely followed by JPEG which is a close second. The most large size of file formats is in the TIF the type of file. The GIF file size is more than twice as large as a WebP file. If it was an animated GIF, the file is more than double the size.

Images can be saved not just with different sizes and in their best quality, but they have unique compressing capabilities as well as compression abilities. After optimizing image files for each image in Photoshop using settings that produced in images similar in to their visual quality, the following were the results:

image sizes after compression

The WebP image is saved at the smallest file size -which was by a wide margin. The JPEG could also shrink the size of the file by an impressive amount. The PNG did not have any benefits in terms of file dimensions as the reduction in the file dimensions of GIF wasn't significant. The use of LZW compression of the TIFF image saved an enormous quantity of the file's size as is the case, but the resultant file size is more than 2.5x larger than an uncompressed WebP image.

If you've got a lot of photos on your website Then you can see how compressing WebP or JPEG files would save you lots of space as well as make the loading times relatively rapid.

NOTE: AVIF is another image format, which tends to be less compressible than WebP. While it has widespread support however, it's not nearly the same in the same way as WebP. If you're making use of Adobe Photoshop to process pictures, you'll need install a plug-in that allows users to see AVIF photos and then save the images within AVIF format.

Utilize compressing images to make them ready for the web.

They want images of their products which have high-definition, large images that can be zoomed into (if you've got an option for zooming on your website, that's). This is, thankfully, possible with the help of compressing software for images.

Some of these software programs are so effective that an untrained eye is incapable of spotting the difference between images that are compressed or not.

photographer taking a picture with a camera

Before compressing your pictures before compressing them, it's crucial to determine what the biggest image size will be at the point that the images will display. Mobile devices typically have display with high resolution that has more the number of pixels per inch than desktops, however HD displays are more prevalent for desktops.

It is possible that images with an area of 500px within a space of 500px doesn't seem to look very good. Likewise, images that are 1000 pixels or larger is better suited to 500px on a retina desktop or smartphone display.
    Explore your images sizes to see what size you're able to find most balance to fit the product. Additionally, if you're providing a zoom feature for the images of your products, you'll have to pick larger pictures than if you used thumbnails for your images only.

When you've determined what the maximum dimensions of your image will be, you'll be capable of changing your images with high-resolution products into optimized web-ready images.

We'll look at some of the applications you can employ to make quick-loading images on your site.

Adobe Photoshop

If you're using all versions of Adobe Photoshop, there are various ways to save your pictures in an optimized format for your specific needs. You can use the Save as option. Be sure to change the file's name, in the event that you save it in the same format as was used in the initial file. It is also possible to make use of Export to or the old Save feature to use Weboption (until when it's removed from Support).

Photoshop compression settings

Each option has steps inside the procedure of saving, which permit you to adjust the settings to reduce images. Each of the options will provide different features and capabilities.

  • The only way to save is Save As. Save As will allow you to save a WebP file.
  • The only two options, Export As in addition to Save for Web let you modify the dimension of your image during the process of saving. If you're saving using Save As the option, you'll need to resize your image in the way you'd like to have within Photoshop from the beginning.
  • The previous save for Web feature is the only choice that displays the estimated time to load as well as the final file size before exporting the image. It also allows users to change the parameters used to create the animation loop on an GIF, and offer the option to choose what metadata to include and not be included in the image.

The other alternatives in all of the methods are identical: select which option you prefer to use, whether it is to delete metadata, or embed the color profile of your choice as well as adjust the image's quality (lossy or lossless).

Do you have no Photoshop? Do not worry, you can play around with these online software tools

The majority of people don't are able to access Photoshop, but this shouldn't be a reason to put you off. There are many web-based tools for free that can reduce in size your pictures.

Two of the most effective tools include the Kraken Image Optimizer as well as ShortPixel. These tools reduce your photos down to a tiny dimensions while maintaining their quality.

compression tool in action

When the software has finished with the uploaded photos, you'll have the option to save them to your computer and then add them to your store.

Both the free versions have restrictions on the quantity of files or maximum file sizes that can be uploaded also, meaning it's somewhat more time-consuming as compared to Photoshop or the paid versions. But it is free and if you do not have a massive online store that sells hundreds of items and products, this could work for your needs.

Using ? Change the WordPress settings, or use the plugin

There's a chance that you don't be aware of the fact that compression of images is an option included in WordPress. It compresses JPEG images down to 82 percent of the size that they originally were and that could not be sufficient for websites which require huge, high-detailed, detailed photos or galleries that are massive.

The best way to control this compression that is built within WordPress can be to modify WordPress's functions.php file. This lets you increase or reduce the level of automatic compression according to how you are comfortable with the degree of automated compression, which happens before your photos are uploaded to the Media Library.

Do you want to make it easier? Consider a plugin. ShortPixel is a plugin on its own, which works for all file formats, and includes Apple's HEIC format so you can insert images using your iPhone. With a free account, you'll receive 100 credits each month.

Enable a content delivery network for your store

While modern Internet connections as well as improved hosting capabilities have sped up the amount of time it takes for customers to visit your website, some issues with connectivity. It can impact the loading times, especially if your client is situated around the globe away from the location where your server is in.

Luckily, there's a method to improve speed for the file types (and not just for those large files, such as photos of products or product photos, neither). A Content delivery network (CDN) displays stored content by using servers that are physically near to users, rather than content that is readily available and distributed from a single location. This improves surfing experience for everyone users.

With a CDN like Jetpack, cached (that is, not current-to-the-second) copies of your store will be shown to visitors. Your visitors will have the ability to download content from the CDN server closest to them. This speeds up loading time dramatically, especially for photos that are large as well as media file.

In conjunction with compression, using a CDN can be a fantastic way for serving images from your store very quickly, especially if you do not update your shop frequently. If something requires an urgent update, you can turn on the CDN off.

Another method to reach the balance you desire are quick and impressive

These suggestions are among the most meaningful ways to balance photographs of your goods that are attractive and load fast. These are some other suggestions to remember:

  • Choose background colors that are white. In general, the less shades an image has more shades, the less the size of its file. This is even more relevant when compression is in use as the color palette gets further reduced.
  • Eliminate unnecessary photos of your product. Do you have photos of the shoes you're selling from 10 different perspectives? It's probably best to reduce them to five and cut the length of the process of loading half.
  • load first thumbnails, then only display the full size on click. So, shoppers don't have to have to wait for larger pictures.
  • Lazy load images. Lazy loading images increases page performance by loading images that are above the fold, and also loading additional images as users scroll back to the place they're at on the page. The Jetpack plugin is not only able to offer CDN functionality, but also the lazy loading images. Jetpack is also a host of a variety of WordPress optimization tools which, although not always directly connected to images, could improve speed and enhance the user experience.
  • Strip unnecessary metadata. Depending on the nature of the image file, it could be storing a lot of information about metadata like copyright keywords tags, geodata images as well as descriptions of the images and more. There are times when you may like to keep this information and you may reduce the size of your files by omitting the metadata when compressing your photos.

Fantastic product pictures don't need to be slowing your website (or your buyers)

There's a chance that the best way to get stunning photos of your items is to settle for a sluggish store, or that the only method to speed up page loading speeds is to opt for small images which are reduced to a great extent. We disagree.

Just a few improvements to the photos you offer, you'll achieve the ideal balance of stunning and fast loading. Additionally, your site or the customers you sell to should slow down.

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