When you open a website, your browser downloads a number of files. All these file are of different types and they are all needed to render the webpage correctly. It has been shown that if you want your website visitors to stick around, you have to make your website as fast as possible. If you have lots of files, or even huge files, your website will be slow. Images are among the biggest files in terms of size. It, therefore, follows that if you want your website to be as fast as possible, you have to optimize its image loading capabilities.
Size Does Matter
One of the easiest ways to optimize image loading is to make the images as small as possible; not in physical dimensions but in the amount of data they hold. To do this, you can compress them. You see, images have a lot of metadata inside their code. This includes things such as the camera used to take them, the software used to edit them and so forth. Stripping them of this data will make them lighter while still retaining their quality.
One of the easiest ways to optimize image loading is to make the images as small as possible; not in physical dimensions but in the amount of data they hold. To do this, you can compress them. You see, images have a lot of metadata inside their code. This includes things such as the camera used to take them, the software used to edit them and so forth. Stripping them of this data will make them lighter while still retaining their quality.
Caching Is A Good Option
This one is for websites that have a lot of repeat visitors and thus repeated image loading. As mentioned, every time the website loads, the browser has to download all its files. You can ensure that the visitor does not download the same images over and over if they visit the website multiple times by caching them on their browser. The way to do this is by doing file caching using the htaccess file.
When doing caching, you have to set what is known as an expiry period. This is the amount of time before visitors have to download all the images again. For images, you can set an expiry period of about a month as images do not change that often on a website. In this way, or a full month at least, the visitor will only download the new images and not the older ones thereby making the website faster for them.
You Need Image Optimization
Image loading can hold up your website and make it slow. when this happens, your visitors are likely to leave. This is why it is important to optimize your images and ensure your website loads as fast as possible. Reducing their size, both physically and the data they hold, as well as caching them for a reasonable amount of time can help with this. Be sure to explore the options or combination of options that help your website best, your visitors will thank you for it.