Reducing Load Time Through Image Optimization

Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web's population is browsing the web using their phone or other mobile device. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for mobile users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a slow connection. One of the biggest causes for a website to load slowly is the use of large images on your website. It is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use an image compression website to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance. We personally use and recommend TinyPNG.com.

Simply drag the image files into the box at the top of the page and it will start to compress them automatically. Once they are compressed, download them to your computer and then upload the compressed images to your website.

If you use WordPress, there are some image optimization plugins that you can use to compress your images automatically, however, we still recommend using TinyPNG.com over using a plugin as plugins can slow websites down and introduce vulnerabilities that are simply not worth the time saved using the plugin.