There are many elements that come together to create attractive and effective professional website design. Images are an important part of every website today; however, they can either help or hinder your site depending on how they are used. One notable factor in the use of images in your professional web design is size and how it affects the way the site works.
To get the most benefit from the images you use on your website without hindering its performance, professional web design services recommend properly sizing images so they load quickly without using up extra resources.
Large Image Sizes Slow Page Load
By now, we all know that page load time is a critical part of professional website design that affects everything from SEO and pagerank to bouncebacks and conversion rates. The size of your image files, even if they appear small visually on the page, affect page load speed. To promote fast loading speed, it is best to keep all images and graphics on a single page at a total of 1 MB or less.
Unfortunately, many websites are bogged down with multiple MB of image data, slowing the entire site down. To change this, professional web design services advise that not only must your images be optimized by resizing, they must be resized the right way.
More to Resizing than CMS Compression
One of the many great things about using Content Management Systems (CMS) is they simplify professional web design, taking much of the detailed code work out. Yet CMS can fall short in terms of image handling, allowing a reduction in image optimization that slows page loading.
Although CMS will generally handle an image of any size, compressing it to a pre-programmed size to “optimize” your page, there are a couple of faults with this technique.
- If you upload larger images, your page must still function using that image. The CMS will resize it, but it takes time.
- Even though the CMS will compress image sizes, your images will still end up larger and slower than they could be. The correct solution for this is to resize and include only optimized images in your professional website design.
Properly Resizing for Improved Page Loading
To optimize your images to eliminate the need for compression by a CMS and improve page load time, professional web design services recommend that you resize your images manually in a photo editing program prior to uploading to your site.
Start out by determining the largest size required for your professional web design versions (desktop and mobile) and reduce all images to no larger than that viewable size. Then compress them in the editing program by saving or exporting for the web as the right file type.
While jpgs are what most people use, there are many times when exporting as a png file creates a lighter image without the data loss that occurs with jpg. By properly reducing the digital size of your images, they will look just as good as before and your page will load much faster.
Professional web design services stress the importance of image handling and how it can positively or negatively affect how your website works. To ensure your professional web design loads as easily as it should, always use resized, pre-compressed images rather than leaving the compression to your CMS. Keep your total image load at 1 MB or below, and watch as the efficiency of your professional website design improves!