WordPress, the open source platform is highly known to build scalable websites at ease. And, also enjoys the virtue of powering some of powerful websites worldwide. However, the WordPress websites sometimes struggle from slow loading issue.
Why is it so?
Images- the “nice to have” element is the culprit.
Yes, the modern websites are stuffed with a lot of images because exploiting the visual capabilities of the web is a trend and if not followed, businesses will lag behind.
The visual content is considered as more impactful in engaging the users for longer run and enhance the website presence. So favoring the trend is good to go! 🙂
But, how about the concerns that the images addition is raising?
The images inclusion affect the speed of website loading, acquire extra server storage space that increase website bandwidth and this is something that big daddy aka Google frown upon.
Here image optimization is a great panacea.
Image optimization isn’t about resizing of images while it is the removal of unnecessary metadata from the images without making any compromise with its qualityand make the images get down to the smallest possible size.
There are many WordPress plugins available that compresses .JEG, .GIF or PNG file images one by one or in group automatically. Under the optimization, proper file type are chosen because one file type cannot work everywhere, the thumbnails are created to generate a small preview of the images and pretty more.
Let’s take a glance at the benefits that businesses will reap or potential pitfalls that can be avoided with WordPress image optimization:
– Enhanced ranking
Image optimization will reduce the web page size and thus the time the website it takes to load will certainly get minimized. Google SERP consider swift loading of the website as a major factor because such slow loading site results into poor experiences. Therefore, the image optimization can help website to rank higher in search engine results.
– Better performance
Businesses can squeeze out the best performance out of the website when the customer is browsing the website that’s full of images and the pages get loaded in a second. Remember, milliseconds can make a huge difference in the customer behavior and sales volume.
– Increased sales
Slow speed kills the conversion.
According to a survey, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds.
It signifies a few seconds of difference can drive sales down the drain. With image optimization when the website loading is improved, the traffic and conversions would also increase.
– Amplified ROI
Investing into image optimization is really worth as the speedy loading of site bring more conversions which means more sales. Increasing volume sales would heighten the bottom line revenues.
For instance, Shopzilla, the company that manages the portfolio of shopping brands found that after 25% increase in traffic, the revenue gets uplifted by 7-12%.
Try, test, measure and then use…
WordPress image optimization is the leverage point that can shoot up the traffic coming to the websites, conversion, sales and ROI. Also, smaller image file sizes uses less bandwidth and takes up less storage space on the server that saves huge bucks, which otherwise have spent unnecessarily for storage and bandwidth.
There are some key strategies that you should follow during WordPress website development and image optimization. Let us know what tactics or tools you use to optimize the site loading. Do share your views in the comments below.
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