What is the best compressor plugin to use for your website? Why would you even want to use a compressor?
Displaying a web page on a browser requires receiving many more files than just the web page. Typically each web page requires loading CSS files, Javascript libraries, font files and images. Compressing these files, especially images, will speed up your website.
Most of the data needed to load a page will be image data.
Not optimizing your images can have a severe impact on the speed of your website. This will impact your ranking positions as Google will penalize your website for loading slowly.
Even if Google doesn’t penalize your website, slow websites are bad for your readers. People don’t have a lot of patience and will not wait around for your page to load.
In this article, I’ll discuss the issues with images, explore various solutions, and introduce how the Imagify service can help optimize your images. By saving you time and boosting your website’s speed, it ensures a better user experience.
Table of Contents
Are images loading slowly?
Your web page should load in just a few seconds, ideally 2 seconds or less. If you are using large, uncompressed images, your website is likely to have a slow loading speed.
39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won’t load or take too long to load
Source: 27 Eye-Opening Website Statistics: Is Your Website Costing You Clients
Unfortunately, web pages keep getting bigger over time. Image data is the biggest contributor to the size of a typical web page.
Slow loading images are a common problem on websites and can seriously harm your search engine rankings. Images sizes vary depending on a range of factors such as:
- file format (JPEG, PNG, GIF and other formats)
- dimensions (width x height)
- compression level
Additionally, non-image factors can affect the load times such as:
- hosting service
- speed/bandwidth of web server
- using a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
As you can see, there are many factors that can impact the size of your images and how quickly they load.
Even if your website loads quickly for you, it may be slow for visitors from different regions or countries. If your website targets a global audience, it’s advisable to consider using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to improve website speed in other countries.
Automate image optimization using a plugin or free website service
Faster image loading
47% of Users expect a maximum of 2 seconds loading time for an average website
How can you speed up image loading on your website?
They are several techniques you can use:
- Use the correct image format
- Properly size your images
- Compress your images
- Offload serving images to a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Consider a faster web server by upgrading your hosting plan
- Use a lazy loading plugin to load images only when they scroll into view
Implementing these techniques can significantly improve the loading speed of images on your website.
Image formats
Different formats should be used for different types of images. JPEG is great for photographs, while PNG is better suited for illustrations or drawings. GIF is commonly used for animated images.
Newer formats like WEBP provide even greater compression without compromising image quality. Consider using WEBP format for improved optimization.
Properly size your images
The average smartphone has a horizontal display of 400-500 px, any images with a greater width will either cause horizontal scrolling or will be resized by the browser resulting in wasted bandwidth.
Automatically resizing your images can reduce download time and speed up page loading.
Compress your images
Compressing images doesn’t change the width and height of the image but reduces the file size. Different compression methods can be used including lossless methods that don’t reduce the quality of the image.
CDN
To improve image loading speed, you can offload the task of serving images to a dedicated network of servers known as a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Some hosting services, like SiteGround, provide convenient options to implement a CDN for your website. By utilizing a CDN, you can distribute your images across multiple servers geographically, reducing latency and improving the overall performance of your website.
Once you have set up a CDN, your website’s images, CSS, and JavaScript files will be automatically delivered from the nearest server to the visitor’s location.
SiteGround offers a basic CDN service for free, as well as a Premium CDN service that caches and serves web pages directly from the CDN. You can find more information about the SiteGround CDN service in this article: Secrets for Using SiteGround as Your Global Hosting Provider.
Faster web server
The speed of your web server depends on the hosting plan you have selected from your hosting provider. If you find that your website is loading slowly, there are a few quicker and cost-effective fixes you can try before considering an upgrade:
- Choose a fast WordPress theme: Opt for a lightweight and optimized theme that is designed for speed.
- Use caching services: Check if your hosting provider offers any caching services that can help improve the performance of your website.
- Implement image compression: Compress your images to reduce their file size without compromising quality. This can significantly enhance the loading speed of your website.
By implementing these measures, you can potentially improve the speed of your website without the need for an immediate hosting upgrade. However, if your website continues to experience slow loading times, upgrading your hosting plan may be a viable option.
Lazy loading plugin
Consider installing a lazy loading plugin for your website. These plugins modify the page’s behavior by loading images only when they come into view as the user scrolls down the page. This approach significantly reduces the initial page loading time for visitors, as images are loaded on an as-needed basis. By implementing a lazy loading plugin, you can improve the overall user experience and make your website faster.
Image optimization plugin will handle compressing, resizing and image format conversion for you
How to reduce image size without losing quality
Imagify optimizer offers two options for compressing images. You can select how you want imagify to handle your images.
Imagify Compression Options
LOSSLESS
This mode compresses your images without any visible change.
On the flip side, the file size reduction will be less than the one provided by Smart Compression.
You won’t make the most out of image compression and optimal performance.
SMART
This mode compresses your images at their best without impacting the quality.
You don’t need to do anything. Imagify will automatically find the best balance between quality and performance and apply the best compression level to your images.
For pro users you can set Imagify to auto convert PNG files to JPEG files (this will result in a smaller file size).
Batch compress images to save time
If you have a large number of images on your website that need optimization, individually compressing each image can be a time-consuming task. To streamline the process, you can use tools like Imagify that offer batch processing functionality. Simply select and drop the images onto the drop zone on the Imagify website, and the tool will automatically compress them for you. This saves you valuable time and effort, allowing you to optimize multiple images simultaneously.
Speed up your website with optimized images
Visit the Imagify website and create a free account. Once you have an account, simply drop your images onto the website page within the designated drop zone. The images will then be compressed, resulting in smaller file sizes and faster loading times for your website. By taking advantage of optimized images, you can enhance the overall user experience and make your website more efficient.
Your dropped images will be compressed and available to download from a zip file. Drop as many as you like then download the zip file.
With a free account, you have the ability to optimize up to 20MB of images per month. This offers a generous allocation for optimizing your images and improving your website’s performance.
If you require additional optimization capacity beyond the 20MB limit, paid plans are available to accommodate your specific needs. These plans provide greater flexibility and allow you to optimize larger quantities of images per month.
Imagify plugin
In addition to the website service, which can be used by anyone, Imagify offers a plugin specifically designed for WordPress users.
By installing and utilizing the Imagify plugin, you can optimize your images conveniently and efficiently from within your WordPress dashboard. This eliminates the need to navigate to an external site and streamlines the optimization process.
Whether you prefer to use the Imagify website or the WordPress plugin, both options provide efficient ways to optimize your images and enhance your website’s performance. Choose the method that best suits your workflow and enjoy the benefits of optimized images.
Benefits of using the Imagify WordPress plugin:
- Optimize all your images in one click
- Resize your images
- Restore your original media when needed
- Images automatically optimized according to your selected compression level
With the Imagify plugin you can see your compressed images, change the compression level or restore the original image.
The plugin also offers the ability to resize your images, providing further flexibility in managing your media assets. If the need arises, you can easily restore your original images whenever necessary, ensuring you have access to the uncompressed versions.
With the Imagify plugin, your images are automatically optimized based on the compression level you have chosen.
The user-friendly interface allows you to easily adjust the compression level. Additionally, you have access to your Imagify account settings and quota details, allowing you to monitor and manage your account with ease.
Imagify Pricing
All plans start with the free plan, no credit card required.
If you find that you need additional features or higher quotas, you can easily upgrade to one of their paid plans. The pricing is designed to be flexible and scalable, ensuring that you can choose the plan that best fits your requirements.
The current prices (March 2023) are:
Starter
free
20 MB (approx 200 images)
Most Popular
Growth
$4.99/month
500 MB (approx 5000 images)
$5 per additional GB of images
Infinite
$9.99/month
unlimited
Final Thoughts
Manually optimizing images is time consuming and the reality is you probably are not going to do it.
You want an automatic solution that, after installing and configuring, will automatically resize and compress your images on the fly. Imagify is fast, easy to use and free (for the first 20MB of data per month).
Whether you’re using WordPress or not, you can benefit from Imagify. Their website allows you to simply drag and drop files to compress them. It’s a great solution for lightweight blogging, and the free version is usually sufficient. However, if you have more demanding needs and require heavier compression, their paid plans are available for less than $5 per month, allowing you to optimize up to 5000 images.
Click on the banner to check out Imagify and start optimizing your images today.
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