Who would have thought that you would need to optimize your images before you upload them to your website, right? Well, I hadn’t thought of it until earlier this year so don’t you worry, you aren’t alone. My website designer and cohort was mentioning it as part of our website build for a client of ours and charging extra to optimize all of their images. Wait, what do you mean, what are you optimizing I said, because when I think optimization, I am thinking about search engine optimization and optimizing images with alt tags and titles.
Size matters
So what she meant is the size of the images. We buy images from tons of different places and depending upon the type of file it is (ie. jpeg, png, etc), they come with various sizes and well… loading up the file as we get may be the largest file size. Or, after we add text to them, borders or our url, they might get larger at that point. Do you know the size of your images you upload to your website? Consider blogging once a month or even once a week, and how much load time that can take for larger files. How many do you have on a page and what can that do to your overall website speed.
How to optimize your images
That same web geek mentioned Tinypng.com as a website to optimize images but I found a few that were even too
big to optimize there. Ugh, right? So in my searches I found BulkResizePhotos.com and that allowed me to do the same kind of thing in bulk so those two have been bookmarked on my internet favorites this year. Then, I had asked her about a plugin, heard of one called ‘WPSmush’ by WPMU Dev for WordPress sites. She said that she heard it was pretty good too, even for the free version. So, I figured hey, can’t hurt, so I added that to my site to pick up images already there and additional ‘smushing’ for images I had optimized.
So my point… check out those few FREE sites, or find some of your own, to easily optimize your images before uploading to your site and consider another plugin to optimize images already on your website. Consider how these little optimization tricks will save your load time on your computer and just your overall space.
Image changes on this blog
For example, the two images on this page were (laptop loading images) 2480×2480 (102 KB) and (ipad w images over it) 4300×3000 (2.78 MB). I then reworked the images in PicMonkey where they were changed slightly to 2628×2628 (460 MB) and 3392×2411 (1.30 MB), respectively. However, after optimizing them on TinyPNG, they were optimized back down to 2628×2628 (161 MB) and 3392×2411 (475 KB). The cool thing is that once I uploaded the images to my Media Library on my WordPress site, they were smushed further by 29.64 KB (11.2%) and 23.81 KB (6.5%). Imagine where these images started when they were ready and where they ended as they were loaded on my website. Now, imagine ALL of your images on your website and how they can affect the overall speed of your website…. You’re Welcome!
Don’t lose your audience during the website load process
Keep in mind that when users come to your website, they are visuals and like to see pictures to help understand the story or what you are explaining but when your images take up so much time for your website to process, it becomes slow. Nothing like getting to a fabulous website and everything loads slowly… Bye Felicia… you are losing your readership. You need to be sure your website is readable but also loads fast enough. We only have so much time to capture our audience, make sure it isn’t while your page is buffering or loading.
Hopefully this has been helpful, but if you have any questions about your website load speed, images on your website, blogging or search engine optimization, please drop a comment below or contact me with those questions. I look forward to hearing from you.
~Kristen
Great info Kristen. I never would have thought of optimizing my photo size! I do think about size when I purchase them, but that’s about as far as I get with it.
I know Lisa.. that’s why you have an SEO guru on call and another working with you. 😉
Size always matters. You just have to dig deep and understand the logic so you know how to adapt. Thanks for the great insights.
That’s right sista, I knew you could relate Christy! lol
Great tips. I have used WP Smush and it works pretty well. The first time I did it, years ago, the images were way too big. It wouldn’t Smush them. I think the limit was 1 MB. Thanks for sharing.
I just started using it and it went back to some of my older images and you are right on the limits.. but something is better than nothing Sabrina.
Great information Kristen. I mostly use my own photos and upload them to Canva to get the size I want and add text etc but I’m not sure if that actually optimises them. I tend to use quite a few pics in each post, especially my craft projects, so I’ll definitely check out WP Smush. Thanks fo the tip.
Consider the dimensions but also the full size. I will tell you the only thing Canva or PicMonkey does is changes the dimensions not the full size. Definitely check out WP Smush Tami!
Thankfully my partner does all the creating & uploading of photos & understands what you are talking about. Our coach taught her. I do use Canva to guide me. Our website & blogs are image rich & so load does matter. Great info.
So glad that your partner does. Glad you use Canva but that is only for dimensions not for total size. Be sure you are reducing them Roz.
Thanks, Kristen! This is great info… I have had trouble with the size of my images sometimes. If I install the plugin, will it check what’s already there and fix things? I shudder to think about going thru all my pics and reloading… If there are a few that are too big, I could handle it. Thanks!
WP Smush will only review so many images, 50 I think for a period of time. I agree that you aren’t going to want to go back and redo all images… however, what you might want to do is start doing it correctly now and each week update one or a few old ones that didn’t get Smushed Kim.
Kristen – Love the “size matters” quip! Heck, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as PicMonkey! Well, now I do. You’re right – slow loading blogsites or videos or websites are a turn-off. Good to know there’s something we can do about it. Thanks!
You didn’t know about PicMonkey.com Joan? GASPSSSS. Glad you enjoy my silly quip… and hopefully you are on track to getting your site up to speed/par.
This is one of my favorite? hot-button topics. It’s one of the first things I do with all my web clients. Maybe because I’m an image geek. BTW, love WPSmush. It’s the best I have found yet.
And once you get the sizing right, then it’s time to think about naming and alt tags. Great first steps for making your images benefit your website.
YAY Marie, so glad that this was valuable to you Marie.. many just don’t get it for sure. Agreed on the alt tags, I have a blog on that too! lol
Ugh this is such a pain point for me- my images always seem to be all over the place on my website! I will definitely be checking out some of these tools to get on track!
So sorry to hear that Kayla, if you need help, let me know.
This was something I epically failed on years ago, but I’m all good now. I ensure every new clients images are correctly named before uploading.
I’m so glad you have your stuff together for you and your clients Sonya!
Going to get Smush now…. I’ve had that on my to do list for a while, so thanks for the reminder!
You are quite welcome Jennifer and thanks for the inspiration for this blog. 🙂
Awesome! I have a follow up question. I’ve started Smushing since I initially commented. Are you using the regular version of the plugin, or have you upgraded to the PRO version?
I’m using the free version Jennifer… which are you using? I use the other tools and Smush so mine are optimized w/o having to pay either way!
Oh no, more stuff for my “to do” list:) When does this world of social media every get done? Good information, and agree, and will do a deeper dive to make sure I am doing this piece. Thanks for posting great content!
It isn’t just social media Robin… but the internet, your website and more.. NEVER ENDS! lol Glad that you find my content valuable!
Fantastic information. I’m new at working in my dashboard and saving this blog for when I get to that step. Most of the photos I use are ones I took myself so I’m curious to see how the optimizing affects them.
It doesn’t matter if you buy or take the pictures yourself Candess, you need to optimize them for size! Thank you!
thanks Kristen. Never thought of this as an issue before but will pay attention now. I have noticed that the few images i created in Wordswag early on take forever to load!
WP Smush sounds like just what i need!
Yes Alene.. you need to take a look and see what happens to the size once you smush, for sure.
I thought of search engine optimization, too, when I saw the title of the post. This is an important topic, because if your images are not optimized right, and your page loads slowly, you will lose a lot of visitors. It gets frustrating to be on a site that takes a long time to come up. Thanks for the information.
So glad to hear that Dan… and glad that you already understand the value!
Great topic, Kristen! My web designer just added smoosh to my sites when I was asking her what to do about my website speed. Seems to have picked things up a bit. Thanks for the additional info on how to optimize images. Good stuff!
So glad to hear that it is beneficial to you Brenda! YAY!
More great information, as always. I want my images to display well, but didn’t think about load time. Duh. Thanks for that.
Of course Jackie, happy to help!
OMG, I needed this! Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve bookmarked this to work on.
So glad Carol.. happy to help, as always
Hi Kristen,
Great tips on optimizing images on your blog or site 🙂 I actually have WP Smush and find it so easy to do that to my images BEFORE I upload them 🙂
Thanks for the great information!!
YAY! That’s awesome Joan, so glad!
This is very helpful, Kristen. I had no idea you should and could optimize your images. I’ve just optimized all my images thanks to you using WP Smush.
Perfect so glad to hear, keep me posted on your issues Joyce!
Didn’t think of image size. I can see how it would be beneficial to load time. Thanks for the resources to check out.
Yes ma’am and you are quite welcome Karen!
I saw this article title and HAD to read this. I appreciate the optimization tips and tricks. I didn’t know you could do that and honestly didn’t pay much attention to to picture sizes…until now. Thanks:)
YAY Thanks Tandy, you rock.. glad that I sparked your interest and you got the value that I had intended!
My images were optimized when I had my VA completing my blog. She would make sure the images are low-resolution and sized appropriately for web us, name the images with descriptive titles, define Alt Text for each image and add a title for each image. I’ve been handling my blogs for the last few months and I rarely do any image optimization other than define the Alt Text…just been “slapping” them up due to time constraints.
I hope you are able to get back into it Rachel as it could cause long term slowing affects in your website sooner or later and add much more work to your load.
Oh, snap! Now I have something else to put on my “do right” list. Thank you for giving us free sites to search! My hero!
You are quite welcome Liz… all about free ya know!
Kristen,
This is a great article that is very useful for me and other’s. The tips on the size of the visuals is important and really helps me out . Thank You for sharing such a powerful and helpful article for writers and entrepreneurs.
Thank You,
Lori English
You are so welcome Lori, glad you see the value and hope you use them!
Kristen, I blog on my site. Can I still use WPSmush?
Not likely since yours isn’t a WordPress site. I would suggest using the other tool – TinyPng.com to make yours smaller and then upload. However, you don’t have a ton of content/blogs, but it would still be good to do it as you upload more/new content than to deal with it later when you have a ton. Thanks Virginia! PS – more blogs!!!! 😉
And you need to be sure you add at least an image for each blog and page on your site.