Web Site Design - How Heavy Images Are Damaging Your Site and How to Fix It

Images and graphics make the web a more interesting place, but as a web site owner you must be careful not to overdo it with heavy image files.

The Problems With Images That Are Too Heavy

Customers browsing around the internet tend to be impatient creatures and do not like waiting for "slow" sites to load. Very often the biggest culprit is big, heavy image files that take longer to load. If your competitor's site has lighter images then chances are that customer will be happier surfing there instead.

There are also SEO factors to consider. Search engines like Google take into account your page load times and score accordingly, with heavy graphics files being one of the worst offenders. If your site ends up with a lower ranking then your site's findability will be reduced making it less likely that a customer will be able to find you.

How To Fix It

Lighter graphics files do not mean that your site will have tiny graphics of very poor resolution. In many cases you can optimise or use workarounds to get the best of both worlds: deliver a high quality experience to the user while minimising the time it takes to load the files up.

Are You Using The Correct Format?

Are you using the correct image type? GIFs are great for simple images with only a few colours. Logos, buttons, charts, block diagrams, cartoons, banners, and text headings are all good example of areas where you could be saving space by using a GIF. If you have a simple image then you could well be "wasting" space using a JPG format instead of GIF with no appreciable gain in quality.

PNG files are perfect for transparency. Consider that using a PNG with transparent areas can not only end up looking more stylish but could save you in weight as the same dimension in JPG could weigh heavier, depending on the complexity of the background being used. JPGs are a great format, but make sure that you are optimising them in order to get the maximum "bang for your buck".

Optimisation: How To Get The Lightest Possible Image Without Compromising Quality

In graphics editors like Photoshop use the Save For Web option and adjust the settings for image quality, number of colours used and so on until you reach an acceptable level of quality. It is very likely that you can significantly reduce the weight of your image files while maintaining a perfectly acceptable screen quality.

Permission And Thumbnails

The internet is all about permission. If you show a web user a thumbnail image and give them the option of viewing the larger, detailed version then that often works better than forcing the user to sit though the download of a gallery of images that they might not be interested in anyway. This could vastly reduce the total load time of a page.

Summary

Optimising the images is an important aspect of business web site design. Reducing the weight of your images files will probably not improve your SEO rankings overnight, but at least your site will be delivering a better user experience and your web site SEO will benefit over time.