Images are the most powerful content uploaded on any website, especially in the E-Commerce industry. For example, a study conducted by Bright Local has claimed that around 60% of online consumers consider search results with images.
In addition, many other researchers have proved the importance of images.
Uploading high-quality and appealing pictures on your website can offer plenty of benefits. Here are some of them!
- Images you upload on the website provide a better user experience
- They encourage users to stay longer on a web page
- Properly optimized images can drive more traffic
- Rightly designed product images motivate users to make purchasing decisions.
- Images also support the writers’ arguments about different things
- Helps in effective communication
However, randomly uploading images on your website doesn’t help achieve these benefits. To utilize them, you must optimize them before uploading. Otherwise, the photos you upload can backfire.
This guide will help you know how you can adequately utilize website images. Let’s know!
What Should be the Image Quality?
The image quality must always be the first thing you should consider regarding images for websites.
High-quality images always play a vital role in a website’s success. When the photos are of high quality, visitors get a positive vibe.
So, every image you upload on the website should be high-res. Otherwise, your visitors may not like your pictures and prefer other websites.
However, only some images should be of the exact resolution. For example, the hero image and logo resolution must be different. As well as the hero image, should have the best resolution possible. For example, 1600×500 pixels are the best if you have banner hero images.
Moreover, it could be helpful if you design it and do not download it from any platform. You can select 32×32 pixels for favicon images, which are less crucial than hero images. It can also help if you try to read the set standards before deciding on the image quality.
Otherwise, you may make decisions that can harm your website later.
Which Image Format is the Best for Websites?
If you analyze pictures uploaded on websites, they are primarily in four formats: JPG, PNG, WebP, and SVG.
Out of these four image formats, JPG is the first preference of most web admins. The most significant benefit of JPG images is that they can be compressed up to the maximum level without losing quality.
Moreover, their actual size is also much smaller than PNG files. So, those who have to upload multiple images on their websites try JPG files.
PNG format is usually used for images with transparent backgrounds. PNG files are commonly used for icons, logos, product images, and profile images.
The downside of PNG is that its size is usually larger than JPG files, making it the second choice.
WebP is good when it comes to images for websites. This format is equally suitable for pictures and animations. That’s why some web admins use it over both PNG and JPG. However, it should still always be the third priority.
SVG is an excellent choice for logos and icons. It is great for images with a single element.
What is the Perfect Image Size?
The images with high-res and quality are always very heavy in size. Those heavy-sized images can impact websites’ speed and enhance their loading time, which is always harmful to websites.
Internet users don’t prefer spending their time on slow websites. They leave such websites within the first few seconds. If you want to retain your visitors, make sure to use an image compressor before uploading a heavy-sized image. It is better not to upload pictures above 4MB. Those images could backfire and ruin your efforts.
However, always compress photo size to a level without affecting their quality.
Otherwise, the image compression process won’t provide any benefits.
Maintaining the image quality is as important as optimizing its size. That’s where you can use an image compressor that let you compress image online and guarantees to maintain the image quality during the whole image compression process. It will help you provide a better user experience and leave a solid impression on them.
How to Optimize Images for SEO?
Once the image compression process is completed, it is time to upload it. However, your work still needs to be completed.
Now you have to optimize your images for SEO. Optimizing images according to SEO standards is essential to bringing more traffic to the website. By adequately optimizing images, you can also target platforms like Google Images that can provide more traffic than you can imagine.
To optimize for SEO, you should properly describe your image in its name. Moreover, it can also help if you use the proper alt tags. Alt tags help search engines know more about your website images.
It would be best to make the images responsive for every device and browser because you need to know which devices netizens will use to visit your website.
Furthermore, you should also add captions to define the image and objects displayed in it perfectly.
Lastly, you must remember to add the images to the site map of your website. The site maps guide search engines about the organization of all the data on your website. When you add pictures to the site map, you tell crawlers that specific data exists on the website.
