Performance
Optimising your images: WebP and compression
Images are often what slows a site down the most. Optimising them well speeds up loading and improves the experience.
Why images slow a site down
A photo straight from a camera sometimes weighs several megabytes, while the screen displays only a fraction of it. Multiply that by the number of images on a page and the loading time explodes, especially on mobile. And a slow site drives visitors away and penalises search ranking.
The good news: you can greatly reduce the weight with no visible loss of quality.
The WebP format and compression
The WebP format offers quality equivalent to JPEG for a significantly lower weight. It is now a standard recognised by all recent browsers.
- Convert your JPEGs and PNGs to WebP
- Apply reasonable compression
- Resize to the size actually displayed
An image 4000 pixels wide displayed in an 800-pixel block wastes resources: reduce it beforehand.
The right reflexes day to day
Before publishing an image, ask yourself two questions: is it the right dimension and the right weight? A common goal is to stay under a few hundred kilobytes per image. Think too about lazy loading, which only loads images when you scroll down to them.
These simple actions, applied to every page, transform a site's speed. At Skywebis, we systematically optimise visuals for a fast site on all devices.
Skywebis builds custom, fast, SEO-optimized websites with no forced subscription. You stay the owner of your site.
Discover our solutionsFrequently asked questions
Does WebP degrade photo quality?
No, at an equivalent compression level it retains visual quality comparable to JPEG for a far smaller weight.
What weight should I aim for with a web image?
A few hundred kilobytes is often enough. The key is to resize to the size actually displayed.
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