In the expansive world of online material we have available to us today, everyone is always looking at the pictures. Pictures communicate so much information, however, taking time to perform image optimization to ensure your images are loading quickly without loss is essential.
If you haven’t figured this out by now, you should have realized that how images are handled across the web is forever changing. Everything from using the right sizes, compression (image optimization), and ensuring that your images load quickly across whatever type device they are being viewed upon.
Furthermore, I will be helping you gain a better understanding of what types of images are best utilized to ensure you’re gaining the most traction for them. So what are the most commonly utilized images across the web? That’s a great question. Let’s take a look and see what’s what!
The most common image formats are JPEG’s, PNG, JPG, and occasionally GIF’s. However, I do not recommend the utilization of GIF’s, as they are too distracting and take away from the message you are trying to convey.
When it comes to image optimization, you want to try and utilize and image and has a decent amount of control such as lossy or lossless compression. I am not going to get into the technical aspects of those as that is not the focus of this article. The most popular two image formats used across the web are JPEG’s and PNG’s.
So what’s the difference? PNG’s are what’s known as Portable Network Graphics and they support using a transparent background to use in conjunction with other images that you may choose to lay them across. The only problem is that the file sizes of most PNG’s is usually fairly large. This will result in your images taking longer to load and if being viewed on a mobile device who may not have a great connection, then this will certainly affect their bandwidth.
JPG’s on the other hand, are smaller in file size and do offer up some variable that you can achieve if using a popular photo editing software platform such as Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Furthermore, this allows you to reduce the file size without taking too big of a hit in the overall quality of your images. While my preference is to
If you’re a Mac user, there is an amazing tool that will assist you in reducing an images file size substantially. It is called ImageOptim. You won’t find it the app store, however, you can download it directly from their website here for FREE.
it’s simple to use. Once you have it installed on your machine, you open up the application, take your picture and drag it into it and allow it to work its magic. Just so you get a better understanding of how it is working, I recommend have two copies of the image you are working with. This will allow you to go and check the reduction in overall file size so you can easily see how much has be reduced in the image file size.
Most people don’t take time to take this into consideration when utilizing images upon their website or social networking sites. However, it’s always great to have to variations of your image, particularly for your ministry website. Why you ask?
Simple, again this gets back into the whole issue of an individual’s bandwidth and connection speeds from which they are viewing your website. Most generally people viewing a website from their home are usually using a PC or Mac. So you truly want the better quality image to be displayed. However, if they are visiting with you from their mobile device, the smaller sized image in both file size and quality will play a huge role.
So let me use this as an illustration. Let’s say you are on a desktop from home, then using an image that is say 1200px X 890 is nothing out of the ordinary. However, for best results on a mobile and to ensure that your viewer is able to see the entire image without worrying about the cropping effect that usually takes place, then using an image size of around 976px X 580px will provide better scalability and delivery results.
What’s a CDN? Glad you asked. It’s what is know as a Content Delivery Network. While some hosting providers have it included in their hosting packages, most may charge a small fee for the use of it. However, it does help immensely when it comes to propagating your images quickly and serving them up to your site’s audience.
When it comes to hosting, don’t be so quick to jump on the “cheap bandwagon.” You’ve heard the expression in regards to “you get what you paid for?” This certainly applies when it comes to hosting providers. Furthermore, not all hosting providers are created equal. Sure it’s easy to jump onto the Bluehost, or Hostgator bandwagon, however, I can almost guarantee you that down the road, you are going to have more issues to contend with than your image optimization concerns. But I digress!
If you’re not using an amazing hosting provider for your WordPress website such as Flywheel, then you will want to check into using CloudFlare for your CDN needs.
Let’s take a minute to truly gain a better understanding of why image optimization is crucial in today’s online world. Watch the video below.
As you can see after watching, my friend Adam also provides several other tools that can be incorporated within your WordPress based website to help you achieve better image optimization and load times of your images.
It’s merely a matter of finding what works out best and sticking with it and making sure that you’re taking every step possible to reduce both the file size of your images without loosing the overall quality that you are looking for when they are delivered across the Internet.
I certainly hope that you found this article helpful. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment. I will respond as quickly as possible.
Site Designed & Hosted by Ark Web Design
