One of the important parameters which is considered while evaluating the quality of any website is the time taken to load the website. Internet users are often busy, so they prefer to spend more time on websites that open quickly. Search engines also realize that internet users prefer quickly opening websites and website speed is an important parameter in ranking websites in search engines. One of the main factors which affect the time taken to open websites is the time taken to load pictures that are displayed on the website. Some tips which can help a website load pictures quickly are discussed below. Call Phoenix SEO Geek for more information.

Image size and format

The time it takes to load a particular image depends to a large extent on the image that is uploaded on the website. The image file size depends to some extent on the dimensions of the image. Typically the photo taken on the camera or phone will be a high-resolution image and the file size will be large. While displaying on the website, only a smaller image is required so the file size should be reduced before uploading. While JPEG, PNG, GIF are the most popular image file formats, increasingly web designers are opting for the WebP file format which is approximately 30% smaller than the standard file formats. Most of the browsers are also supporting this file format.

Mobile friendly

Increasingly people are using their mobiles for accessing the internet and up to 60% of the website visitors will be having a smartphone. The data connection for the mobile internet is slow in many countries, so it is advisable to use fewer images on a website so that all internet users can access the website fast. The sizes of these images can also be reduced to the extent possible so that it does not take much time for the images to be loaded in the browser when the website is being accessed.

Require fewer resources

Instead of using image files for the buttons, background, and other standard graphics on a website, it is better to use HTML/CSS coding for generating the buttons, gradients, background for the website. The webmaster will have to deal with fewer files and the amount of data being transferred will also be less. Additionally, other techniques like lazy loading can also be used to load images faster. In this technique, only the image files which are visible in the browser are being loaded, the images which are not visible are not loaded, increasing the loading speed.

Using a CDN

A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of servers worldwide that are caching data so that the image files can be loaded quickly. Many websites have their server located in the United States and visitors from all countries worldwide. The time it takes to access data and image files from a website hosted on a server in the United States will be more for a person living in Brazil. If the web hosting company is using a CDN, the images will also be cached on a server in South America, and the images will load quickly for a website visitor from Brazil.

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