Image Optimization – Are Your Site’s Images Helping?

Images play a huge role in Franklin and Nashville web design. To drive that point home consider that over 72 million people use Pinterest and there are over 50 billion pictures pinned to Pinterest boards. Pictures are a vital part of digital marketing, social marketing, and web design. Be that as it may, simply uploading a picture to a site is not enough. Pictures must be optimized for them to be fully effective and appreciated. Here’s why.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Digital images can be huge and pictures that are large often load slowly, use a lot of system resources, and can even cause your site to appear unreachable. A decade back this was a very common problem. Remember those load bars that would show you how much of the image was loaded? Back then, pictures were just slow.

Today, pictures have to adjust to fit a variety of devices and screen sizes. Consider the different sizes of laptop screens, mobile phone screens, tablet screens, and home computer screens. A large image file takes too long to load on smaller devices such as phones. That delay in loading is enough to make those visitors leave the site.

It Goes Beyond Load Time

It is not just about load times either. Picture quality plays a huge role in site satisfaction for internet users. A large picture that does not scale to fit the screen is pretty much useless. The opposite can be true too. Pictures that are too small or that do not expand fail to deliver the details that online shoppers and searchers need. Those kinds of issues drive away potential customers or decrease the value that web content has.

• Image Size: Quality web design fixes these kinds of problems before they occur. A professional web designer understands integral parts of images. What size should the image be for your web page? What size should an image be for Facebook? It is no longer a one size fits all scene. Every type of platform from web pages to social media has a different image size requirement.
• Resolution: What about resolution? Is there an optimal resolution for web images? Yes. However, like image size, the resolution requirements change from one type of application to the next. If you choose the wrong resolution, the picture is blurry.
• File Type: To make things even more complex, the type of file that the image is saved as also plays a role in image quality. Should your images be JPEG or TIF? Many of the answers to these questions come down to intent. What type of role or job does the image hold? Where will the image be placed?

These are the sorts of questions that Franklin and Nashville websites must address. In fact, quality web design begins with a purpose that is greater than just creating a site. At JLB, we design sites based on the list of tasks that the site needs to accomplish. This process includes working with images so that they support the site, the site’s goals, and so that the enrich user experience. Are the images on your site helping or hindering?